(Dobbs) Subjugating Patriotism to PowerWe used to have confidence in free elections. But then Donald Trump became our president.
The only thing Donald Trump gave us last night in his ballyhooed speech about election integrity was a nothing-sandwich. He built it up big, telling reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office that his speech was going to reveal “really big news.” It didn’t. “News” is supposed to be, well, something new. Instead he gave us the same old stuff, wrapped in a regal setting. Undocumented stuff, unsubstantiated stuff, unproven stuff. Once again, there is no smoking gun. He exaggerated the scope of what his own agencies have found about the integrity of the 2020 election— about foreign interference, about the credibility of everything from voting machines to mail-in ballots. He offered blockbuster allegations that everyone already knows about. What he didn’t do was offer anything to seriously support all his tiresome and concocted claims of a rigged election. And sometimes he flat-out lied. But I don’t have to tell you that. It’s Donald Trump. Actually, he did give us something else too: a preview of his plan to undermine confidence in the upcoming November midterms if his side loses. Referring to a host of allegations that have long since been discredited— including most predictably his demented obsession that he won in 2020— he told a sparsely populated television audience, “Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue.” His solution: to erode that trust even more. “We will be working closely to mitigate any harm and taking swift action,” he said, “to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so it can never be bought or hacked and we can never watch it get stolen again.” It wasn’t stolen the first time. Let us never forget, some 60 court rulings in Trump-supported lawsuits in the wake of 2020 threw all their arguments about a rigged election out as specious. Multiple recounts in contested states confirmed it. He spent a good piece of his speech on foreign influence in 2020, particularly, he said, from China. But what former officials from the U.S. intelligence community have concluded is only that China did try to influence voters, not that it hacked its way into our election apparatus and changed the outcome. And even on the matter of influence, how do we know, given the kind of bond wannabe strongman Trump forged with actual strongman Xi, they didn’t try to turn the tide for Trump? If there’s any parallel, intelligence conclusions about Russia’s efforts to influence the election were that they, and President Putin himself, were trying to help Trump win. That’s why he’s always been so angry about “Russia Russia Russia.” He also spent time on Venezuela. One of the documents released online in conjunction with his speech said the Venezuelans in 2020 had “some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems.” But this is a typical Trumpian case of what’s left unsaid: no one has shown that they actually did it. Anyway, nothing to worry about from Venezuela anymore. It is now all but an American colony. Then there’s homegrown manipulation of voting machines. That has been a longtime claim from the president. Unfortunately for someone on the White House staff, they evidently didn’t get the memo. Perhaps to Trump’s embarrassment, if he’s capable of embarrassment, another report put up on the White House website said, “We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results.” Oops. On the same theme, a report was released from the Office of National Intelligence which concluded that in Puerto Rico, which votes in presidential elections, voting machines were vulnerable to hacking. Another case though of what’s left unsaid: they didn’t conclude that they’d actually been hacked. Is that something to worry about, in Puerto Rico or anywhere else? Election experts and state officials from both political parties have said it loud and clear: there are too many protections, too many firewalls, too much scrutiny, too much backup for it to happen on any scale that could affect an outcome. It’s also logical to ask: even if some foreign powers tried to alter the outcome in 2020, did they? Or with a deficit of seven million popular votes and 74 electoral college votes to Joe Biden, did Trump just lose? What I think this disingenuous and dangerous man is doing is preparing to say to us, if November doesn’t go well, “I told you so.” But come November, just sowing doubt won’t be enough. So with the inestimable tools of government at his command as president, he’s already doing everything possible to cheat. To make it harder to vote in areas where Democrats dominate. That’s the goal of his arguably existential “SAVE” Act. He has cut federal agencies whose purpose has long been to ensure election security and help states ensure honest outcomes. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Election Assistance Commission, the Foreign Malign Influence Center. He never mentioned those cuts in his speech last night.Share Donald Trump might be the sorest loser in American history. He’s even the sorest winner. After all, he did win his way back to the Oval Office. But he’s a desperate man looking at the chance of a shellacking in November and all the threats that poses to him and he’s trying to hang on, not giving a damn what he has to destroy to do it. Not voter confidence in elections, not the world’s confidence in American democracy. Let’s not sugarcoat where this could lead. Either despite his best efforts, November will be a free and fair election in which, if Democrats come out ahead, he then will seek to undermine confidence and create chaos like this nation has not known in a long time. Or, he will cheat so hard and manipulate so much that the results, although ill-gotten gain, will show the Republicans winning. That could be worse than mere chaos. It’s beyond the pale but not beyond the imagination that that could lead to some form of civil war This is all to soothe the power-hungry ego of one man, and the power-obsessed people around him who have subjugated their patriotism to their power.Leave a comment Trump’s press secretary Caroline Leavitt said yesterday in anticipation of his speech that we should have the “safest and most secure elections.” Yes we should, but the way Trump is trying to line it up, they will only be safe and secure for him. They won’t be free. It’s more important than anything that we also have confidence in free elections. We used to. But then Donald Trump became our president. |