Tag: Trump election fraud lies

Many of my fellow politicians won’t tell voters the truth. The result was Jan. 6.

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Telling the public only what it wants to hear is no way to keep democracy going

In the fall of 2013, in the middle of what was at the time the second-longest government shutdown in American history, Republican leaders in Congress kept asking each other one question: “How did we end up here?” That is also the question I have had in recent weeks, especially as I witnessed the violent attack on our Capitol and our democracy on Jan. 6.

The answer is the same in both cases: an unwillingness to speak truth to power. In businesses, employees speak truth to power when they deliver unwelcome facts to their bosses. In government, appointed officials do that when they tell elected leaders something they don’t want to hear. But in a democracy, the people are the ultimate source of power. Our elected officials work for us, and they fail us when they decline to tell us truths that we, the people, don’t want to hear. Even worse, they fail us when they set up false expectations we desperately want to believe.

Back in 2013, the expectation was that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives could force the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass — and compel President Barack Obama to sign — a repeal of his signature health-care initiative. This false narrative started with a few outside groups like Heritage Action and Tea Party Express arguing that the barrier to repealing Obamacare wasn’t the president; it was elected Republicans who were unwilling to fight hard enough. These groups purposely  ramped up expectations, overpromising, even knowing that the end result would under-deliver. Continue reading.

Here’s What Happens to a Conspiracy-Driven Party

The modern GOP isn’t the first party to embrace huge conspiracies. But the lessons should be sobering.

The rise of QAnon beliefs in Republican politics has been treated with a degree of shock: How could a fringe Internet conspiracy theory have worked its way into the heart of a major political party? The ideas behind the QAnon movement are lurid, about pedophilia and Satan worship and a coming violent “storm,” but the impact is real: Many of the pro-Trump Capitol insurrectionists were QAnon supporters, as is at least one elected Republican in Congress. 

As tempting as it to take the rise of conspiracy theories as a singular mark of a partisan internet-fueled age, however, there’s nothing particularly modern or unique about what is happening now. To the contrary. Conspiracy theories as they say, are as American as apple pie — as are their entanglement with nativist politics.

Those currents have usually flowed beneath the surface, but for a time in the middle of the 19th century, they broke out into the open, powering a major political movement that dominated state governments, ensconced itself in the House of Representatives and became a credible force in presidential elections. The American Party, popularly referred to as the “Know Nothings,” may not have seized the White House, but its story bears an uncanny resemblance to what’s happening within today’s Republican Party. Continue reading.

White Nationalist Facing Election Indictment — And Carlson Defends Him With Lies

On January 27, the Department of Justice announced that it had filed charges against Douglass Mackey, alias “Ricky Vaughn,” regarding allegations that he had interfered with the 2016 election. Mackey, a white nationalist who was eventually banned from Twitter, allegedly conspired to use social media to spread false information about voting in 2016 – specifically, claiming that people could text in their votes. Parts of the misinformation campaign appeared to target Black and Latino people. The complaint alleges that “at least 4,900” telephone numbers did just that.

Fox host Tucker Carlson ignored what Mackey’s actual charges claim and instead shouted that Mackey had merely “hurt [the] feelings” of liberals. Carlson said that Mackey’s arrest was proof that the First Amendment is “effectively suspended,” and he declared that “we are clearly living under some form of martial law at the moment.”

Carlson was flatly pushing lies. He either didn’t read the one-page Department of Justice press release explaining the charges of voter disinformation or decided to just flat-out lie given that his own network argues no reasonable viewer takes him seriously anyway. Mackey’s posts solicited people to text a specific number to vote, and there is evidence a large number of them did. There are no “meme” or “LOLz” exceptions for breaking the law. Continue reading.

The Financial Minefield Awaiting an Ex-President Trump

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Baseless election fraud claims and the Capitol riot have compounded already-looming threats to his bottom line. And the cash lifelines he once relied on are gone.

Not long after he strides across the White House grounds Wednesday morning for the last time as president, Donald J. Trump will step into a financial minefield that appears to be unlike anything he has faced since his earlier brushes with collapse.

The tax records that he has long fought to keep hidden, revealed in a New York Times investigation last September, detailed his financial challenges:

Many of his resorts were losing millions of dollars a year even before the pandemic struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, which he personally guaranteed, must be repaid within a few years. He has burned through much of his cash and easy-to-sell assets. And a decade-old I.R.S. audit threatens to cost him more than $100 million to resolve. Continue reading.

Trump’s embarrassing Four-Pinocchio claim about Florida and Ohio

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“No candidate has ever won both Florida and Ohio and lost. I won them both, by a lot! #SupremeCourt”

— President Trump, in a tweet, Dec. 9, 2020

“President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history—Republican or Democrat—has ever lost the election after winning both States.”

— Trump attorney John C. Eastman, in a filing to the Supreme Court, Dec. 9, 2020

This is false. Is anyone surprised?

The president has never shown a command of U.S. history and has been lying, misleading and peddling baseless conspiracy theories like a sludge pipe since losing the Nov. 3 presidential election to Joe Biden, who earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

This falsehood appears both on Twitter and in a Trump filing to the Supreme Court. It’s a good example of how hollow and easily disprovable Trump’s claims are as he seeks to delegitimize and overturn the election results. It takes seconds to fact-check this false claim — for those who bother with the truth, anyway. Continue reading.

Trump’s assertion that only two European nations allow mail-in voting

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No other advanced country conducts elections this way. Many European countries have instituted major restrictions on mail-in voting specifically because they recognize the nearly unlimited potential for fraud. Out of 42 European nations, all but two prohibit absentee ballots entirely for people who reside inside the country, or else they require those who need absentee ballots to show a very, very powerful ID.”

— President Trump, during a speech full of falsehoods about the presidential election, Dec. 2

The president’s 46-minute rant on the presidential election was filled with dozens of falsehoods, most of which we have previously checked. But he included one new claim that caught our interest. In contrast to many of the statements Trump makes, this one is not entirely made up from whole cloth.

Let’s take a look.

The Facts

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but it appears that Trump’s assertion is based on a detailed report issued in August by John R. Lott, who is normally known for his pro-gun research. The 140-page report examines the voting rules in 43 European countries, as well as the rules for developed members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).