Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

House Republicans meet with Trump to discuss overturning election results

Trump loyalists are planning a last stand Jan. 6.

President Donald Trump huddled with a group of congressional Republicans at the White House on Monday, where they strategized over a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results next month, according to several members who attended the meeting.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) — who is spearheading the long-shot push to overturn the election results in Congress — organized the trio of White House meetings, which lasted over three hours and included roughly a dozen lawmakers. The group also met with Vice President Mike Pence, who will be presiding over the joint session of Congress when lawmakers officially certify the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, as well as members of Trump’s legal team.

“It was a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th,” Brooks said in a phone interview. Continue reading.

Republicans Talk ’Secession,” But Who Would That Hurt?

The loudest sound on the American far right today is the angry whining emitted by sore losers who claim their candidate was defrauded but know for a fact that he was simply defeated. Their tune is grating, but their seditious words are troubling, with supporters of President Donald Trump repeatedly warning of “civil war” and even “secession.” Fans of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh hear those ominous words every day now.

Presumably, such divisive sentiment is why many “conservatives” are so enamored of Confederate flags and other such symbols of treason. If the democratic process doesn’t give them what they want, they threaten bloodshed and the destruction of the nation to which they once pretended to pledge allegiance.

For the most part, those menacing broadsides are just impotent bluster. America has a perennial surplus of bullies who brandish weapons to bolster their fragile masculinity and intimidate their adversaries. A small cohort of those goons are dangerous and even potentially deadly; the most consistent perpetrators of domestic terrorism in recent years have been white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists, not radical Islamic terrorists. Rolling up the violent political gangsters should be a top priority for President-elect Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which will follow four dark years when the Trump administration tolerated and even encouraged them. Continue reading.

Right-Wing Media Figures Still Refuse To Admit Biden Won

The new era of competition between Fox News and its would-be rivals, Newsmax and One America News Network, appears to be fueling an unwillingness by commentators at all three networks to accurately describe Joe Biden as the president-elect, even after the Electoral College met this week.

Since losing the election, President Donald Trump has increasingly trained his criticism on Fox News. He has ranted that his personal propaganda outlet has proven insufficiently supportive of his illegitimate effort to overturn the results based on phony voter fraud claims, urging his supporters to instead watch Newsmax or OAN. Fox has aggressively course-corrected in hopes of maintaining its audience, while the smaller networks have lashed out at the dominant player in hopes of ripping away more of its viewers.

Overnight, for instance, OAN’s Pearson Sharp highlighted that his network “will officially not be calling Joe Biden the president-elect.” He went on to say that OAN is “the only broadcast news network out there with the integrity to report that this election isn’t over,” criticizing Fox, Breitbart.com, and Newsmax for having “caved.” Continue reading.

Once friends, Biden calls Lindsey Graham ‘a personal disappointment’ for not recognizing election win

Washington Post logo

When Stephen Colbert asked Joe Biden on Thursday whether he could patch up his once-close friendship with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the president-elect’s expression turned somber.

Graham, a close ally of President Trump, has declined to acknowledge Biden’s election victory and was accused of pressuring Georgia to discard mail-in ballots in a state that went for the Democrat.

Biden, who has made his willingness to work with Republicans a key campaign promise, declined to say whether their relationship was salvageable. Continue reading.

Legislative survey shows deep GOP divide on election

The Hill logo

Republican state legislators are torn between moving past an election that President Trump lost and fighting tooth and nail to get him a second term, even if that means calling for Congress to overturn the certified results of an election.

The Hill asked every Republican legislator in the country for their thoughts on the election, including whether they recognized President-elect Joe Bidenas the winner.

About half of the 200 or so Republican legislators who responded to The Hill acknowledged Biden as the winner, while about a quarter said they did not believe Trump had lost his election, or that Biden’s win was legitimate. Continue reading.

How Geraldo Rivera, the sensationalist showman of ’80s TV, became the voice of election reason on Fox News

Washington Post logo

The investigative reporter-turned-freeform celebrity is now a seasoned pundit delivering a firm message to Trump fans about the 2020 race: “It’s over.”

Geraldo Rivera thought he “would never work again” after hosting one of the highest-watched busts of all time in 1986, when he cracked open a vault belonging to gangster Al Capone on live television and it turned out to be empty.

The famously mustachioed Rivera has had several other acts since then. He hosted a tabloid talk show in the late 1980s and 1990s, where he got decked in the face by a chair during a scuffle involving white supremacists. He attempted to resurrect his once-serious journalism career by joining Fox News in 2001 as a war correspondent but was essentially booted out of Iraq in 2003 for divulging troop positions. He bravely tried the cha-cha on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” in 2016 — and was the first to be eliminated.

But now in 2020, at 77, Rivera might be playing the most important — and unexpected — role of his life, as a contrarian truth teller who has been pleading with President Trump, whom he considers a friend, and the president’s most passionate supporters to accept that their side lost the election. Continue reading.

Texas Outfit Linked To Assault Over ‘Voter Fraud’ Promotes Conspiracies And Violence

A former police captain was arrested and charged with assaulting an air conditioner repairman whom he falsely suspected of carrying 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck. The organization allegedly paying the former cop to prove supposed election fraud is led by a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and its Facebook page is filled with conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office stated on December 15 that it had arrested and charged former Houston Police Capt. Mark Anthony Aguirre “with Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.” The office stated:

According to Aguirre, he had been conducting surveillance on the victim for four days under a theory the victim was the mastermind of a giant fraud, and there were 750,000 fraudulent ballots in a truck he was driving. Instead, the victim turned out to be an innocent and ordinary air conditioner repairman.
Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out, according to the document. When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre, pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man’s back – an image captured on the body-worn camera of a police officer.
Aguirre directed police to a parking lot nearby where another suspect, who has not been identified, took the truck. There were no ballots in the truck. It was filled with air conditioning parts and tools.

According to the district attorney’s office, Aguirre was working for the Liberty Center for God and Country and “never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 … with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.” Continue reading.

‘These are not crazy people’: GOP defends its voter-fraud push, ignoring obvious perils

Washington Post logo

The electoral college this week officially voted to make Joe Biden the next president of the United States. Multiple GOP senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, made statements recognizing Biden’s status as such. But on Wednesday, a GOP-led Senate committee pressed forward with a hearing on supposed irregularities in the election that multiple Republicans and witnesses attached to actual fraud.

And the message, repeatedly, was: Why not?

“This hearing is not dangerous,” Senate Homeland Security Committee and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in defending the proceedings. Johnson added: “I said its goal was to, quote, ‘resolve suspicions with full transparency and public awareness.’ What’s wrong with that?” Continue reading.

Senate GOP has accepted Biden’s win but continues to push Trump’s baseless fraud claims

Washington Post logo

Senate Republicans may be acknowledging President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Trump, but the politically charged fight over Trump’s fallacious claims about voter fraud rages on — and threatens to overshadow legitimate efforts to safeguard future elections.

A Wednesday hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee became a forum for Republicans, led by its departing chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), to re-air Trump’s baseless case against the election results in swing states as the president cheered them on from a distance. Complaining that courts threw out Trump’s election lawsuits on mere “technicalities,” GOP senators and aligned witnesses warned that until their concerns were addressed, public trust in the security of the election process would not be restored.

There is no evidence of significant or widespread voter fraud, as the president and his allies continue to insist. Trump’s own attorney general has made that clear while the courts overwhelmingly have dismissed his campaign’s unprecedented effort to overturn Biden’s victory. Across more than 50 cases, at least 88 judges — including 39 appointed or nominated by Republicans — have turned down Trump’s legal challenges in procedural rulings or decisions on their merits. Continue reading.

Cruz Threatens To Hold Up Biden Nominees Until Trump Concedes

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) plans to obstruct every one of President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet confirmations unless Donald Trump concedes.

Trump, of course, has vowed never to do so.

“As long as there’s litigation ongoing, and the election result is disputed, I do not think you will see the Senate act to confirm any nominee,” Cruz said in an Axios interview on Wednesday. Continue reading.