In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part three)

 

Part three.

 

“Stop the Steal,” a call to arms coined 2016, became increasingly bandied about in September 2020. It became the rallying cry of Trump’s a huge following, who had various levels of organization, resources, and connection to him personally.

 

September 7^th, Conservative Activist Ali Alexander became prominent figure when he created a digital infrastructure for the “Stop the Steal” effort. He announced a database for Trump supporters so they could dispatch themselves to ballot counting locations and State Officials’ offices if their “physical presence is needed.” This grew out of charges, for which there was no substantiation, that Republican-leaning, anti-corruption, “Poll Watchers” were not being given proper access to voting sites. These Poll Watchers had, in the past, been accused of intimidating private citizens whom the Watchers accused of extremely rare crime of in-person voter fraud; now the Watchers were claiming that they, themselves, were being intimidated.

 

 

“In the coming days, we will launch an effort concentrating on the swing states, and we will map out where the votes are being counted and the secretary of states. We will map all of this out for everyone publicly and we will collect cell phone numbers so that way if you are within 100-mile radius of a bad secretary of state or someone who’s counting votes after the deadline or if there’s a federal court hearing, we will alert you of where to go.”

 

“Someone who’s counting votes after the deadlines…” is an especially important phrase, because mail-in and absentee ballots were to be more important in 2020 that any time since WWII, and probably longer. Previously, mail-ins were generally associated with active Military Personnel or those home-bound by disabilities, but the CV19 pandemic had created a situation where the election would almost certainly be decided by the radically increased numbers of them.  In the months leading up to the election many states easing their rules regarding such ballots and became more generous regarding deadlines, in reaction to a real and actual Public Health crisis. Many of these adaptations emerged starting in early April because in-person voting during a Primary Season that was competing with a deadly Pandemic proved problematic in state-after-state.

 

Very soon, Alexander would have an enormous internet following.

 

Trump had been attacking the increasing use of mail-in ballots since at least the first week of April. "Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they're cheaters. They go and collect them. They're fraudulent in many cases."

 

Though the amount this election would hinge on mail-ins was seemingly unprecedented, regarding the fraud issue, if one looked all the way back to the Civil War, the proven instances of fraud are insignificant. In the past, Trump himself had voted by mail.

 

By late June, AG Barr, pressured by Trump, began questioning the security mail-in ballots. Amid charges that he was, again, allowing the DoJ to be politicized by Trump, he was asked in an interview, “Did you have the evidence to raise that specific concern?"

 

He responded, "No. It's obvious."

 

 

By midsummer, with Trump was consistently behind in polling against Biden, Trump banged at the gong about mail-in-ballot fraud even harder, though still he had no evidence to support his claims. Trump told friendly Journalists at FOX News that "mail-in voting is going to rig the election."

 

Just a few days later, another Journalist, Chris Wallace, asked follow-up questions to this remarkable statement, "Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?"

 

"I have to see."

 

"Can you give a direct answer: Will you accept the election?"

 

"I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no."

 

That would be a wholly unthinkable statement from any sitting POTUS during the previous two-and-one-half centuries. Trump would double-down on it soon after Alexander started his internet campaign.

September 23^rd , Trump’s on-line supporters increasingly demonstrating their unwillingness to accept the possibility of him losing and he, himself, rejecting that the whole idea of this nation hinges on the Peaceful Transfer of Power (a cornerstone of our Democracy since at least, 1783, and only seriously challenged during the bloodbath of the Civil War of the 1860s) Trump was challenged again: Would he commit to the Peaceful Transition of Power if he lost the election?

 

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”

 

The same day, but separately, Trump stated that the Election results would wind up at the Supreme Court of the United States, and argued that it was a reason to fast-track the appointment of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. “This scam that the Democrats are pulling, it’s a scam, the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court and I think having a 4–4 situation is not a good situation.”

 

In 2016 POTUS Barack Obama was denied an Election Year Appointment to SCOTUS because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell manipulated the process. In 2020, Barrett’s fast-tracking required McConnel reverse every argument he offered in 2016 to block Obama’s appointee just so he could get Trump’s appointee with even less time before the election (at the time she faced her hearings, some people were already mailing in ballots). Barrett’s appointment turned the Conservative Majority into a Super Majority in the SCOTUS and will likely shape Federal law for the next twenty-years or more.

 

Trump offered no proof of the scam he was alleging, but then, again, he never does.

 

September 24^th , The Gateway Pundit a RWN blog, famous for its love of misinformation, published several inflammatory articles regarding “Stop the Steal.” Publisher Jim Hoft claimed that North Carolina’s acceptance of mail-in ballots up to Nov. 12 was “only boot camp for what’s coming … If you are not willing to fight the Communists you will be ruled by the Communists … Obviously, Democrats will win the 2020 election if they ARE ALLOWED to steal the vote in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina.”

 

There were perverse over-laps: Trump supporters, RWN anti-government Militias engaged in criminal behavior, Gun-Rights extremists, and those protesting stronger Public Health rules regarding the CV19 Pandemic, seemed more and more to be the same people. Back in May, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, faced a terrifying Insurrection when heavily-armed men stormed the State Capital and shut down the government through their Terrorist intimidation. Their beef? Lockdown rules enacted by the Governor intended to save lives during the hellish Pandemic.

 

Trump, already publicly critical of Whitmer (on April 17th, he’d tweeted, "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!"), explicitly sided with the Terrorists, tweeting on May 1st, “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire. These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”

 

October 7^th , about a week after Trump asked the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”  the DoJ announced indictments against members of the Wolverine Watchman Militia Group who were plotting to kidnap, and likely murder, Whitmer. The group had emerged after several of the men had met each other during the May anti-lockdown protests. There were initially six charged: Two pled guilty. The four who went to trial argued entrapment, an affirmative defense that admits guilt, but claims that Law Enforcement essentially forced the Defendant into committing a crime he/she would not otherwise do (in this case, the allegedly offending Law Enforcement Official was an Undercover embedded In the Conspiracy), it’s a common defense in Terrorist cases that are supported by video and audio evidence, but it is almost never successful. This time it was, two were acquitted, and two received hung juries. A federal judge has ordered a new trial for those last two.

 

Whitmer immediately linked the threats against her to Trump’s behavior. Trump’s response was predictable:

 

"My Justice Department and Federal Law Enforcement announced today that they foiled a dangerous plot against the Governor of Michigan. Rather than say thank you, she calls me a White Supremacist—while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities.

"I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence. Defending ALL Americans, even those who oppose and attack me, is what I will always do as your President! Governor Whitmer—open up your state, open up your schools, and open up your churches!"

 

At this time, one of the most important on-line provocateurs was QAnon, a huge, but loosely defined, Conspiracy Masturbating collective that had emerged in 2017. They were defiantly Right-wing, but not really Conservative, instead their ideology was Trump-worship, because they saw him as standing bravely and alone against a world-wide Conspiracy of Satan-worshipping Cannibalistic Child-Sex-Traffickers that dominated the Democratic Party and the Hollywood elites. Of course, they could offer no evidence even existed. It was almost identical to the “Pizza-gate” lunacy that had been popular the year before QAnon emerged, and had more-than-passing similarities to prior, murderous, explosions of mass-hysteria like the Vanishing Children of Paris of 1750 and the Salem Witch Trails of 1692-3. But QAnon were savvy in the use of the high-tech tools of Social Media and would prove, unlike the other examples I sited, National Force that had to be reconned with.

 

QAnon was especially important in disseminating anti-Clinton Conspiracy Masturbation after the 2019 suicide of politically well-connected, half-billionaire, Child Sex Trafficker, Jeffery Epstein, ignoring that when he died, Epstein was in the custody of Trump’s DoJ, not Clinton’s, and no Clinton was running for office at the time. Trump, always Conspiracy-hungry, mimicked these QAnon absurdities.

 

On October 15, 2020, Trump was finally, publicly, challenged to disavow QAnon. He didn’t.

 

Journalist Savanah Guthrie, "Can you just once and for all state that this is not true and disavow QAnon in its entirety?"

 

"I know nothing about QAnon, I know very little." 

 

"I just told you.”

 

"You told me, but what you told me doesn't necessarily make it fact, I hate to say that. I know nothing about it, I do know they are very much against pedophilia, they fight it very hard. But I know nothing about it." 

 

"They believe it is a satanic cult run by the deep state."

 

Trump switched to talking about, "antifa and the radical left."

 

Guthrie pressed, "Republican Senator Ben Sasse said, 'QAnon is nuts and real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories.' … Why not just say it's not true?"

 

"He may be right, I just don't know about QAnon,"

 

"You do know."  

 

"What I do hear about [QAnon] is that they're very strong against pedophila, and I agree with that.”

 

Online, QAnon celebrated. “This was the biggest pitch for QANON I’ve ever seen.”

 

That same week, the Right-wing press were circulating misleading stories that Trump voters were being targeted for violence of the streets. Almost all these stories collapsed under the most basic scrutiny, and in most cases, QAnon message boards proved to be the stories original sources, but then were promulgated by important Republican Activists like Mike Schlapp; he had been a member of a previous Presidential Administration, had strong ties to Trump, and his wife, Mercedes, was then-working in the White House under Trump. Right-leaning Extremist Groups lapped-up these stories, and the Election was less than a month away.

 

Four days before the Election, on Halloween, one of the day’s biggest news stories was RWN Election-related violence. On a Texas highway, vehicles with pro-Trump logos surrounded a moving bus with the Biden logo and filled with his campaign workers. The Trumpsters tried to run the Biden workers off the road. They were unsuccessful, no one was injured, and it only speculation what the level to which the violence it could’ve escalated to had the Trumpsters managed to get their hands on the “Satan-worshipping Cannibalistic Child-Sex-Traffickers.” The incident was considered serious enough that Biden’s campaign canceled an event out of fear of Terrorist violence.

 

Trump, as always, declared his undying love for the Terrorists. The Trump supporters who engaged in the road-rage had videoed their criminality, then uploaded it Social Media. Trump shared the video on his Twitter, writing, “I LOVE TEXAS!”

 

The day before the Election, Trump continued to make baseless claims about Poll Watchers being denied access to polling places. Pennsylvania was a special target of his ire, and there was violence in the streets from the moment the polls opened the next morning. That violence was not just restricted to Pennsylvania though, and even though there were not yet fatalities, it still had been at least fifty-years since the USA had seen such Election-Day violence.

 

As we now know, the violence of that day was just the beginning.