The Latest Lie:
The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2021
New York Times, January 5, 2021:
Three weeks ago, the Electoral College formally cast its votes for president, affirming Mr. Biden's victory. But under the Constitution, there is one more step before the result is final: the certification by Congress of the electoral votes, to be conducted by the president of the Senate. That's the vice president.
"The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted," according to the 12th Amendment. . . . "The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the president," the amendment goes on, unless there is a tie or nobody has secured a majority, in which case the House decides. . . .
If at least one member of the House and Senate raise an objection about a state's results, it must be considered, immediately halting the joint session so members can return to their respective chambers and debate the challenge for up to two hours. Then a vote — decided by a simple majority — is held to determine whether to throw out that state's results. . . .
Republicans plan to force such a vote, perhaps many. Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama has said he will move to contest the results from as many as six states, and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri plans to back at least one of those. . . . Given that Mr. Trump and his supporters have contested the results in several states that Mr. Biden won — including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — there could be as much as 12 hours of debate on Wednesday, and a half-dozen votes.
Mr. Pence would have to announce the failure of each one. . . .
"I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you," Mr. Trump said at a rally in Georgia on Monday night . . . "Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him as much."
(1) Trump has never liked Pence (he is incapable of even pretending to care about another human being).
(2) Pence is utterly powerless over what happens and Trump has positioned Pence where he will be excoriated by the MAGA-Dolts for failing to steal the election. As he has for his entire adult life, Trump will have someone else take the blame for his own epic failures.
"Everyone loved my phone call" -- Trump on his widely criticized phone call with the Georgia secretary of state in which he tried to bully him into helping him steal the election pic.twitter.com/ZpCoSIi1KO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 5, 2021
Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, January 4, 2021:
This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat. . . .
[T]he "sedition caucus" includes at least 140 members of the House—that is, some two-thirds of the House GOP membership—and at least 10 members of the Senate. Their challenge comes after weeks of insistence that the 2020 election was rigged, plagued by fraud, and even subverted by foreign powers. The president and his minions have filed, and lost, scores of lawsuits that ranged from minor disputes over process to childlike, error-filled briefs full of bizarre assertions.
Instead of threatening to gavel these objections into irrelevance . . . Vice President Mike Pence "welcomes" these challenges. Pence's career is finished, but he could have stood for the Constitution he claims to love and which he swore to defend. However, cowardice is contagious, and no mask was thick enough to protect Pence from the pathogen of fear.
Perhaps the sedition caucus didn't mean to go this far. Its members began by arguing that we all just needed to humor President Trump, to give him time to process the loss, and to treat the president of the United States as a toddler who was going home empty-handed. He wouldn't be a dead-ender, they assured us, because that would be too humiliating. The Republican Party would never immolate itself for a proven loser.
But for Trump, there is no such thing as too much humiliation. The only shame in Trump world lies in admitting defeat. And so Trump doubled down, as anyone who had watched him for more than 10 minutes knew he would. And then he tripled, quadrupled, quintupled down. And just as they have done for the past four years, elected Republicans tried to convince themselves that if they supported this outrage, it would be the last time they would be required to surrender their dignity; that this betrayal of the Constitution would be the last treachery demanded of them. . . .
It is possible that the sedition caucus knew that all these challenges would fail. . . .This is irrelevant: Engaging in sedition for insincere reasons does not make it less hideous. Arguing that you betrayed the Constitution only as theater is no defense. . . .
It would almost be a relief to know that these Republicans really believe what they're trying to sell, that they are genuine fanatics and ideologues who have at least paid us the respect of pitting their sincere beliefs against our own.
But we are, in the main, dealing with people who are far worse than true believers. The Republican Party is infested with craven opportunists, the kind of people who will try to tell us later that they were "just asking questions," that they were "defending the process," and of course, that they were merely representing "the will of the people." . . .
People of goodwill across the United States want some sort of road map to oppose this cold-blooded attack on the Constitution, but none exists. . . .
The members of the public and the institutions of American life should shroud these seditionists in silence and opprobrium in perpetuity: no television interviews, no sinecures at universities or think tanks, no rehabilitating book tours, no jokey late-night appearances, no self-serving op-eds.
The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy. At least real traitors believe in something. These people instead believe only in their own fortunes . . . and so they cannot—and must not—be trusted ever again with political power.
MAGA Nihilism Is on the Ballot in GeorgiaWe believe in nothing . . . except God–King Trump.[Monday] evening, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue will put the final seditious exclamation point on a re-election campaign in which they promised to be whatever the MAGA hordes demanded they be. No more. No less.Just as God demanded wives submit to their husbands with joy, Loeffler and Perdue have pledged to giddily submit to the whims of Trump and his most crazed fans. They will do so tonight on a MAGA altar, just 24 hours after a tape revealed that Donald Trump was actively plotting to steal the election in their state . . . [B]eing complicit in the president's coup was not a challenge to be overcome, it is the central purpose of their entire political project. . . .
The message they want voters to get before Tuesday's runoff election is that they will be stooges for MAGA—and their message is being heard loud and clear. . . .
[Loeffler's] campaign is not premised on giving answers to things like whether she supports funding the military or whether she would be willing to defund the military so Nazis aren't suspended from Facebook for a few days. She is running to be Parler-poster-in-chief, not legislator. . . . Her campaign is premised on the unalterable fact that Kelly Loeffler will stand with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time, every time.
Meanwhile, on Monday David Perdue was asked about the president's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressures him to do whatever it takes to find enough votes to steal the election for Trump. . . . Perdue said it was "disgusting" that the phone call was leaked.
There was nothing Trump could have said on that call that would have resulted in Perdue answering any other way. Trump could have insulted his wife's looks and said his father was a murderer. He could have confessed to serial sexual assault. He could have admitted to a blackmail scheme of raping & killing children. . . . David Perdue would have found a way to simp for Trump . . .
David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler . . . believe in nothing but whatever Trump and his supporters tell them to believe.
Craig Timberg and Drew Harwell, Washington Post, January 5, 2021:
Far-right online forums are seething with references to potential violence and urging supporters of President Trump to bring guns to Wednesday's protests in Washington — in violation of local laws — as Congress meets to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
Many of the posts appear to be direct responses to Trump's demands that his supporters pack the nation's capital in support of his bogus claims that November's national vote for Biden resulted from election fraud. . . .
Talk of guns and potential violence is rife on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, the conservative social media site Parler and on thedonald.win, an online forum that previously operated on Reddit before the company banned it in June after years of racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and calls for violence. . . .
Discussion in the thread followed about how most effectively to sneak guns into Washington, laced with occasional references to using them. D.C. has some of the nation's strictest gun laws: Openly carrying guns is banned, concealed-carry licenses from other states aren't recognized, and all firearms in the District must be registered with local police.
Of carrying guns in D.C., one poster in the thread wrote, "Yes, it's illegal, but this is war and we're clearly in a post-legal phase of our society." Wrote another: "LIVE AS A FREE AMERICAN AND BRING YOUR ARMS!"
No comments:
Post a Comment