Trump’s conspiracy wingnuts take flight
On Thursday, a legal team representing Donald Trump’s campaign claimed the president’s election victory was stolen by a sweeping conspiracy involving, among other things, voting software that switched millions of votes to Joe Biden. Rudy Giuliani and others in the group spun a fevered and confusing tale that featured Venezuelans, an international web of intrigue and corruption on the most monumental scale imaginable. By their telling, nobody is safe from suspicion.
“We have no idea how many Republican or Democratic candidates in any state across the country paid to have the system rigged to work for them,” Sidney Powell, a Trump campaign lawyer, said while alleging “a massive, well-funded, coordinated effort to deprive we, the people of the United States of our most fundamental right.”
The irresponsibility and paranoia in that statement would make Joseph McCarthy proud. If what Powell claims is true, the corruption would be so grand that it wouldn’t really matter who won this or any election. American democracy would be done.
Anyone with a sense of shame who was making an allegation that damning and devastating would feel obligated to provide immediate proof of the claim. But Giuliani and the others declined to do so. Evidence is coming, they promised, offering only innuendo. We shall see.
Notably, the Trump campaign has not claimed a massive conspiracy in courts, where there would be legal consequences for
lying. Lawsuits filed by the Trump team have made much less significant allegations, generally involving vote totals that would not overturn the election, and those lawsuits are floundering.
There are gaping holes in the wild theories pushed Thursday. If Dominion Voting Systems supposedly switched votes in states where its technology is used, why didn’t the discrepancy show up in Georgia’s recount of paper ballots? How did Trump manage to win in Florida and Ohio?
And if, as Giuliani claimed, anti-trump fraud was rampant in places such as Detroit and Philadelphia, why did the president outperform other recent Republican nominees in those cities?
Questions, so many questions.
I’m not saying that the 2020 election lacked smaller instances of fraud, or that ballot corruption isn’t part of American history. Heck, I’m writing this from Albany County, where the infamous Democratic machine was hardly averse to putting its fat thumb on the scale.
But Team Trump is alleging fraud on a level the world has not seen. They claim Trump won in a landslide but had millions and millions of votes stolen by Communist money and George Soros and Hugo Chavez and supporters of Antifa. Powell even compared this moment to 1775, a year of armed conflict against tyranny.
The wingnut absurdity of it all could be laughed away if only the claims weren’t being made by lawyers for the president
of the United States as part of an orchestrated campaign to contest and perhaps even overturn an election. This couldn’t be more serious.
The long-shot bid to keep the president in office won’t work. Trump lost the election, and he will leave office in January. If there is good news in Thursday’s alarming show, it is that more Republicans are now speaking out against what they’re witnessing.
“We believe in the integrity of our election system,” said Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who called Powell’s claims “offensive” and “absolutely outrageous.” Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska noted that “wild press conferences erode public trust.”
Polls say that most Republicans now believe Trump was robbed, and
millions of Americans will never accept that the 2020 election was fair. Faith in American institutions and democracy itself will continue to fall.
Why care about this country, if the rot is so deep? Why fly the flag or join the military or bother to vote? According to Trump’s team, the country is nothing but a big fat lie.
What Trump and his lawyers are doing is beyond cynical and deeply unpatriotic. Unless they prove their claims, this should be remembered as one of the nation’s greatest infamies — an unforgivable sin.
Trump, as we know, has long had a taste for conspiracies, including the one about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and only incorrigible optimists thought he would leave office gracefully and graciously after losing. Others thought he would burn down the house as he sulked out the door.
The president is proving his detractors right, once again.
But Democrats get no gold stars. Too many, including Hillary Clinton, spouted irresponsible rhetoric with claims that Trump is an illegitimate president puppeteered by Vladimir Putin. In one 2018 poll, nearly 70 percent of Democrats believed Russia tampered with vote tallies to get Trump elected — another claim lacking evidence.
We can assume the presidential election in 2024 will also be sullied by conspiracy theories and claims that undermine faith in the republic. Around and down we go.
When did we become a nation of such sore losers?