In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part nineteen)

 

Part nineteen.

 

 

 

Biden’s win the year before wasn’t narrow, but it wasn’t a land-slide either, not like Obama’s 2008 win over far better Republican, Federal Senator John McCain. McCain was a Trump opponent, perhaps the most vocal within the Republican Party until his death in 2018, and Trump’s enmity towards McCain was so spitefully personal, and demonstrating he was so low of character, it is not a surprise that Biden won McCain’s home-state of Colorado, a Conservative-lean place, but also one where McCain was much-admired. What was surprising is that Biden’s win in Colorado was quite narrow, and the post-Election Stop the Steal Campaign there was among the fiercest in the nation.

 

That’s a key element of the Trump phenomena, his core base can’t be moved. It was often observed that if any of the last three leading Democratic Candidates for POTUS, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Biden, or any of the other Republicans in the same time-frame, encouraged vigilante violence, aligned him with violent radicals, had four kids from three different baby-mommas, was caught cheating on all three of those women, got caught paying hush-money to Porn Stars and Playboy Bunnies, showed public contempt for the Constitution and/or disrespected Veterans and War Heroes like Trump did McCain, his political careers would be over -- but not with Trump, because as his minions proudly say, he’s not really a politician …

 

Really, he’s a Cult leader.

 

Back in 2016 he bragged, “I could stand in the middle of 5^th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Then, in 2018, a man named Todd Brassner died in an accidental fire in his luxury apartment building, Trump Tower, on 5^th Ave. and it turned out that his luxury apartment didn’t have fire suppressant sprinklers, because they were not required by law, because Trump fought hard to make sure his buildings weren’t retro-fitted to be incompliance with newer laws. Many drew the connection between the boast and his greed-driven, anti-safety, advocacy, but Trump’s national polls numbers were unaffected.

 

Trump’s national popularity was finally hurt by the CV19 pandemic in 2020, but the States where his popularity remained the strongest tended to be the ones most opposed to taking strong Public Health measures to cope with the crisis; though in the beginning of the crisis, major coastal Cities were hit first and hardest, as the disease spread throughout the County, it became most entrenched in the areas that were most pro-Trump. This was not a coincidence, misinformation is a shared culture, and the Big Lie was most popular where Conspiracy Masturbation regarding CV19 and vaccines were most popular. By October 2020, the Reddest (most Republican) tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the Bluest (most Democrat) tenth. By then, Trump’s political rallies were being referred to as “Super Spreader Events” and linked to at least 30,000 cases of the deadly disease. In November 2020, former POTUS Candidate and Trump-ally, Herman Cain, died of CV19 shortly after attending one of these events, but still, nothing changed. By May 2021 the trend was even more prominent, the higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.

 

When Trump deliberately incited a deadly attempted Coup in January 2021, it looked like he’d finally face his reckoning, but the Republicans in Congress (mostly) held true to him, even during the February Senate Impeachment trial, which took place after he stepped down. Even among the Republicans who’d condemned him the week of the Insurrection, like Graham and McConnel, the sudden appearance of having a spine proved short-lived. In March, more than 50% of polled Republicans said the prosecution of the 1/6 Traitors and Terrorists was very important, but by September, that number had dropped to about 25%.

 

Trump recognized this of course, and was actively inviting Candidates to seek his endorsement for Local, State, and Federal Office. The most important criteria for Trump’s blessing was the showing of public support of the Big Lie. If enough of these Candidates win, the Trump-Cult would be semi-permanently entrenched in the USA’s Political Landscape, and that might not even require wins in the General Election, enough primary wins would acerate the Republican-shift away from the values of the party of Lincoln. That shift was a pre-Trump trend, it probably goes back the rise of Barry Goldwater in 1963, but became most highly visible during the 2010 mid-term elections, often called the “Tea Party Revolution,” during the Obama administration. For years now, the Republicans had been slowly transforming into something more akin the Confederate-leaning Democratic Party of the 1850s thought the 1950s, the era of Fire Breathers, the Insurrectionist Traitors, the supporters of Segregation and Jim Crow, the people who encouraged a situation where a Citizen of this Nation would have different fundamental Rights in Texas vs Vermont. Trump was especially interested in finding Candidates to unseat the Republican Incumbents who had voted for his two Impeachments in 2021. His goal was revenge though mutation.

 

By September, the 2020 POTUS Election had been over for eleven months, and both the failed attempted Coup and Biden’s Inauguration were eight months in the past. In the Blue States where Biden won by a wide-margins had mostly moved on. But the Red States that Trump carried were digging in, focused their preservation-of-power and crippling Biden’s ambitions in the 2022 mid-term election, by passing more and more restrictive voting laws. And it was worse still in the Battleground States, where the Democrats and Republicans struggled with near-equal power and Biden’s win was narrow; in those States, 2020 wasn’t over yet. Looking that these places from parts of this Country thousands of miles away from them, one could easily believe the Battle Ground States were really Deep Red, even though Biden’s win in those places belied that, even though the Republican majority in the Legislators was narrow, even though some had Democratic Governors. They looked Redder than they were because the Republicans in those places were screaming like Chicken Little that the sky had already fallen, but somehow, they could prop it up again. Three Battleground States engaged in futile Election Reviews/Audits, Arizona and Georgia, and Wisconsin, plus there were potent movements to do the same in several others, most notably Michigan and Pennsylvania.

 

And Texas. Absurdly, Texas, where Trump won by a very comfortable majority, the Trump Cult was demanding an expensive, partisan, Audit because … well … just because.

 

September 2^nd was a bad day for Traitor and Terrorist Douglas Jensen, who liked to call himself the “Poster Boy” for the 1/6 attempted Coup. He was already charged with felonies, and out on bail. Then he violated the terms of his bail, specifically Judge Timothy J. Kelly’s order to stay off the Internet, and now he was going to jail again.

 

Jensen’s claim to fame was leading a mob chasing Capitol Police Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman through the Capitol, oblivious until he watched the TV the next day that Goodman had out-smarted them. At the time, Jenson was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with “Q” and an eagle. He believed he had been granted the authority to arrest members of Congress and Vice President Pence by his Lord and Master, Trump.

 

He had been jailed from January 8^th to July 13^th. He finally made bail, but then, on August 11^th, he was caught by a Court Supervision Officer in his garage steaming stories from a RWN propaganda site on a WiFi-enabled iPhone. Jensen later admitted that he had also spent two days watching Big Lie Influencer Lindell’s Cyber Symposium.

 

Jensen’s Defense Lawyer, Christopher M. Davis, tried to argue it was “Orwellian” to jail a man for watching the news, but was forced to concede that Jensen had violated the Judge’s clear orders. “We know why we’re here … Mr. Jensen knows he shouldn’t have done this … I do liken this to an addiction. Why else would anyone incarcerated in D.C. jail for six months and just released do this? … I don’t have a good answer for this. I don’t think he does either.”

 

Jensen had followed QAnon from near the dawn of the movement, and his early adherence suggests he was already attached to extremist Social Media before-hand. Jensen soon was spending most of his waking, nonworking, hours on QAnon sites, envisioning himself as a “digital soldier” and a “religious” adherent. When Jensen earned his bail, he said he realized he’d been deceived by a “pack of lies,” but here he was again. Attorney Davis seemed exhausted in the futile defense, saying that Jensen was, “in therapy, but what that is going to do, I don’t know … It just doesn’t add up. This is an intelligent man. I know this — he is not a bumbling idiot, in any sense of the word. He understands.”

 

Given his statements before the Court, and the fact that most of his 1/6 antics were video-taped, it seems odd Jensen pled “not guilty,” but then, he does face a potential 20-years in jail unless he can negotiate a favorable plea deal.

 

The FBI threat assessment of QAnon adherents is that the movement will “likely will continue to act as a catalyst for some to begin accepting the legitimacy of violent action,” and that the fantasy it engenders is moving the followers, “towards engaging in real-world violence.”

 

At this juncture, the actual, never satisfactorily identified, person who is the “Q” of QAnon, had been silent for months, since the attempted Coup he/she/it helped inspire. Q’s followers waited for the next message as if they were standing at the foot of Mt. Arafat, and just as impatient as the Biblical Isrealites.

 

September 3^rd, another issue emerged regarding the Arizona Audit. Originally, the Republican-controlled Senate promised the tax-payer would only foot $150,000 of the bill, creating a situation where the majority of the funding came from Dark Money sources, in violation of a law that same Senate had passed just that same week blocking non-profits from funding training and get-out-the-vote efforts in low-income and minority districts. Then it was revealed that Team Trump had set up an escrow account to help fund the Audit, making the conflict of interest that much more obvious. Now the tax-payer learned that they were footing almost three-times more than they were told they were going to, because of legal fees and security costs.

 

Also, the Goddamned thing wasn’t over yet.

 

September 14^th, in California, Governor Gavin Newsom survived a recall Election.

 

Newsome was facing recall because of his handling of the CV19 pandemic, a combination of self-inflicted wounds and resentment over the proper acts he took. The self-inflicted wounds was his getting caught flaunting the rules he imposed on others. The proper acts were strong Public Health rules that were born of a Science-based policies which he backed-up with enforcement (well, enforcement on other people at least), listening to the Teachers Union when regarding when it was proper time to reopen schools, and being able to demonstrate that the fatality rate in California was much lower than densely populated of the pro-Trump States, like Florida.

 

As the recall evolved, it became increasingly clear that Newsome’s proper acts were more at issue than his hypocrisies, because those trying hardest to unseat him were mostly the Trump Cult and CV19 Conspiracy Masturbaters.

 

California is a Blue State, but one with a powerful Republican Party. It is also, since the 1990s, the State has been addicted to Recall Elections. Though early in this trend the targeting of Candidates had a bi-partisan character, since 2000 four out of five of the Recalls targeted Democrats, and two of those succeeded. Always the same pressure-groups were behind the attempt to overturned Democratic wins, and notable among them, was the NRA. As demonstrated in Michigan the year before, and throughout the country since, the NRA membership was chock full of Trump Cultists and CV19 Conspiracy Masturbaters.

 

The recall was wholly unnecessary, as Newsome faced re-Election the next year anyway. Further, it was likely un-Constitutional, because the way the ballots were written, it was possible that the Governor could be someone who received less than 51% of the vote – a not improbable circumstances because there were about fifty Candidates (Recall Elections tend to call the loons out of the woodwork).

 

One of the loons was Gubernatorial Candidate Larry Elder, a Trump-Cultist, notorious Misogynist, twice targeted in sexual harassment complaints, anti-Homosexual, a Climate-change denier, and called by Journalist Erika Smith, “The Black face of White Supremacy.” His only qualification for running for higher office seemed to be his hosting of an inflammatory talk-radio show.

 

True to his Trump-Cultism, Elder claimed Election Fraud, did so without proof, and did so before the votes were even counted.

 

Federal Senator Alex Padilla was enraged by the groundless accusations, “Even before the election is over, the GOP is already reverting to their 2020 playbook created by Donald Trump: the Big Lie. This dangerous charade is incompatible with democracy.”

 

Padilla was a Democrat, but some Republicans had lost patience with this nonsense as well; former Chair of the California Republican Party, Ron Nehring, tweeted “Voter fraud? Where’s the evidence? … This pattern of whining any election we don’t win must be fraudulent is both bad politics, and bad policy.”

 

Newsome’s win was predictable, but remarkable at the same time. He carried 61% of the vote in seemingly historically crowded field; Newsome clearly had significant support from usually Republican voters. Seeing the breath of Newsome’s majority, Elder conceded and shut up. Trump, on the other hand, insisted it was “totally rigged.”

 

Trump and Elder’s ploy of groundlessly challenging Election results, creating a situation where we were engaging in endless, expensive, shameless partisan, Election challenges, that didn’t serve any reform purpose, only to make the voter increasingly cynical of Democracy itself, was becoming almost a sacramental right among some Republicans. So was the Trump and Elder ploy of claiming Fraud even before the votes were counted, or even cast. While all this was going on, in Nevada, Trump-endorsed Adam Laxalt starting claiming Fraud in the Federal Senate race, but the first vote in that race won’t be cast until the following year.

 

September 17^th, Maricopa County and the Arizona State Senate finally settled their legal battles. Maricopa wouldn’t have to hand over routers of Splunk logs to Cyber Ninjas, but they would have to pay a Special Master, former Federal Representative John Shadegg, for his role in assuring all the Senate’s questioned are answered, and he will have access to the routers and logs. Maricopa also agreed to drop their law suit against the Senate demanding they pay for the replacement of all the voting machines that Cyber Ninjas potentially compromised.

 

The long-delayed findings from the Arizona Audit were to be released in only seven days.

 

September 20^th, Maricopa County Supervisors were shocked to learn that one of their own had betrayed them.

 

The Supervisors had endured harassment and threats of violence from the Trump-Cult, and public pillaring and threats of arrest by their fellow Republicans in the Senate, for eleven months now. With them, every step-of-the-way, was one-of-their-own, Supervisor Steve Chucri. They knew he wasn’t as certain as they were about this battle, but didn’t understand how uncertain until today.

 

Maricopa had hand-counted in November 2020 and Audited its own findings in February 2021, but the Senate hadn’t been satisfied, pushing since January to do their own Audit, which they contracted out to Cyber Ninjas in March. Chucri, unlike the other Supervisors, initially supported the State Audit and was the lone vote in against suing the Senate to stop the subpoenaing of ballots and voting machines.

 

During this time, though he worked in seeming common-cause with the rest of the Board, as soon as he was out of their earshot, he trashed their characters and integrity before the members of We the People AZ Alliance, a local Trump-Cultist organization founded by Shelby Busch. In January through March, Churci expressed surprise that his colleagues' opposition to the State Audit, “You know what I think it was? [Chairman] Gates got scared because he barely won, and [Supervisor] Jack [Sellers] got scared because he only won by 200 votes, and if there was an audit and a recount, which is pretty bullshit by the way, what would happen in those two races? And that is way too self-serving.” He accused them of just "want[ing] to suck up and kiss up for your vote." He stated [Vice Chairman] Clint Hickman agreed with Churci but "didn't have the guts" to stand up to the others. Chucri also expressed regret that he didn’t push for expanding the county's hand-count Audit before Certifying the vote.

 

He indicated there was a fraud, although he offered no evidence. "I think it was done through dead people voting … I think it was multifaceted. I think there is a lot of cleanup here."

 

Churci’s unprofessional ranting against the rest of the Supervisors seemed to have come to an end during March when Senate President Fann hired Cyber Ninjas, and he realized they were right about what a fiasco the State Audit would become. But, by then, it was too late. Busch had directed her minions to secretly record their meetings with Churi, and those recordings lay in wait, like a time-bomb planted beneath his bed.

 

Busch went to the press and, consistent with her Conspiracy Masturbating nature, chose to make her revelations to the Gateway Pundit in steady of a more honest and respectable news agency. The Pundit ran the story on this date, and two days later Churci resigned in disgrace.

 

Churci issued an apology, "The comments I made were during a very turbulent time… My colleagues have every right to be both angry and disappointed with me. I should not have made such statements and offer my colleagues heartfelt apologies.” He lamented that "the political landscape changed for the worst this year ... The environment is wrought with toxicity — and all civility and decorum no longer seem to have a place … The fixation with the 2020 election results and aftermath have gotten out of control." He called the Supervisors he’d insulted, "good, honorable and ethical men."

 

He was explicit, “There was no cover-up, the election was not stolen. Biden won."

 

His colleagues were stunned and confused. Sellers said he hadn’t spoken to Churci since the story came out, didn’t think any of the other Supervisors did either, and was surprised by the resignation. "Never at any time did I hear Steve tell me that he couldn’t go along with us, or wasn’t supporting us."

 

Gates, who also stated he’d not spoken to Chucri since the revelations said, "We are professionals. He is a professional... We have many years of working together successfully." Gates echoed Chucri’s statements that the toxicity was out-of-control, "it would cause good people to want to leave and not serve out their term."

 

Gallardo, who, since January was the lone Democrat on the five-member Board, was disappointed, “The Steve Chucri I knew and worked with for six years was not the Steve Chucri I heard on those tapes.”

 

County Recorder Richer said Chucri is a good man. “I wish him well in whatever he decides."

 

Not everyone was so generous. Former County Recorder Adrian Fontes, who’d lost re-election in 2020 to Richer, and had stood strong with his fellow Supervisors until he was required to step-down in January, said Chucri had always been obstructionist. “That guy stood in the way of every single thing we did,” and that Chucri wasn’t concerned over reform, only partisanship, “Because I’m a Democrat." Chucri choose to “to throw his colleagues under the bus and stab me in the back … He’s two-faced … Good riddance, as far as I am concerned.”

 

In the recordings, Chucri called Fontes a "scumbag."

 

Fontes is now running for Arizona Secretary of State.

 

Busch, for her part in this, justified both the secret recordings and publicly humiliated a man who confided in her group by saying that Chucri got caught talking out of both sides of his mouth. “The people deserve elected officials who stand up for what they believe in … His actions did not meet his words.” The recordings showed Chucri would say whatever he thought the people wanted to hear with no real commitment. “If I had one question for Steve Chucri, it would be, ‘Who are you lying to? The board or the people?’” Busch also said she didn’t expect that Chucri would resign, “It is sad that it has to come to this.”

 

Gallardo had harsher words for We the People and Busch than Churci; he said Churci was the only Supervisor who was willing to work with them. “We’re not dealing with rational people. They will do whatever they can to move their mission forward, and that is the Big Lie.”

 

Three days after the Gateway Pundit ran the story, and one day after Churci’s resignation, the Arizona Audit results were made public.