We live in crazy times, that’s for sure. A lot of people have lost their mind in 2020: there must be something in the water.
I read an interesting piece in Slate Magazine yesterday regarding some wacky goings-on with regard to gamblers who made huge bets on the 2020 Presidential election. According to gaming experts, the amount of money wagered on this past election dwarfed the action on the Super Bowl…by “severalfold”. The biggest surprise: offshore gaming establishments took in tens of millions of dollars from Trump supporters, including large amounts that were wagered after Election Day.
This means that those wannabe “wise guys”, or just plain stupid MAGA diehards, actually believed that President Trump would eventually prevail with all of his lame lawsuits and pressure applied to State officials and members of the judiciary to overturn the will of the people and just hand a second term to the Prez.
Of course, President Trump had claimed that the election was “rigged” during the campaign, publicly alleged and Tweeted all manner of “facts” proving his point, and then announced that the only way that he could lose was if he was cheated. And so, when the results were announced, our President predictably wailed and screamed that the election would be over when he said it was over.
Not only were the diehard gamblers taken for an expensive ride, which was their own stupid fault, but many G.O.P. faithful are now convinced that massive skullduggery had to have been employed by those Democrat bastards.
Recent polls indicate that as many as 75 percent of Republicans believe that President Trump was the victim of massive vote fraud. Never mind that every State double-checked its results and certified them as correct, and several of them (including States where Trump insisted he was defrauded) conducted recounts that verified the results. Lawsuits launched by the Trump campaign produced zero facts backing claims of improprieties. State and Federal courts could find no legal basis to support the Trump claims.
Joe Biden got 81 million votes and Donald Trump got 74 million votes. Neither the President nor the G.O.P. nor Trump’s crack team of legal eagles have been able to produce any facts that account for the 7 million vote loss.
And yet, the G.O.P sideshow continues to this day, December 18, 2020, a month and a half after Election Day, and almost a week after the Electoral College determined that Joe Biden would be the next President of the United States.
Not only did 126 Republican Congressmen support the Texas suit to overturn the 2020 election, which the Supreme Court summarily dismissed for lack of evidence, but many G.O.P. Congressmen and Senators have still refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory.
It was only yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a partisan turd if there ever was one, finally acknowledged “President-elect Biden”.
Just like those sick gamblers who bet the farm on President Trump…even after Election Day, there are Republican officeholders who are so screwed up that they are advocating keeping Trump in power regardless of the cost to our Nation.
Their argument is that “My constituents are angry and feel cheated!”
Now how did that come about?
President Trump, his campaign team, and many Republican candidates in the 2020 election drilled into their supporters that the Democrats were going to lie, cheat, and steal in order to secure victory.
All manner of allegations filled the mainstream media, the Internet conspiracy blog sites, and social media about dead people voting, poll workers plugging in thumb drives into Election Headquarters computers, dump trucks full of Trump ballots being unloaded into landfills, and illegal aliens being allowed to vote…many times, in some cases…by election officials in Democratic-majority precincts.
Fox News provided six months of the 24/7 alarms about the election that was going to be “stolen”.
The Trump machine purposely manufactured an election legitimacy crisis, just in case it was needed.
And then, when Joe Biden won, the President said, “People think that I was cheated”. Actually, the reason that many Republican faithful feel outraged that way is because Trump conditioned them to expect election fraud.
Among cynical and scheming politicians this technique is labeled the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone.
So now we have a lot of angry Republican officeholders running around the country saying alarming things like “secession”, “take ‘em out and shoot them” (the cheatin’ Democrats), and “he should be drawn and quartered” (a Republican official who wouldn’t throw out legally cast ballots for Biden).
G.O.P officials feel entitled to make those statements because their constituents are outraged (“Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone).
Some deranged Republican electeds and Trump crazies are now publicly advocating a coup de etat.
A couple of days ago North Carolina state Senator Bob Steinburg (R) stated publicly that Trump should declare a national emergency and also invoke the Insurrection Act. The latter would allow the President to deploy military forces on U.S. soil. He further recommended that Trump suspend habeas corpus, which allows people to challenge unlawful imprisonment.
Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase (R), who is running for the Republican nomination for Virgina governor, recommended that the President “suspend the Constitution” and “have the military implement a national revote that reflects the true will of the people”.
There they go again: ex-Confederate States progeny wanting to destroy our democracy! Years ago they used to claim to be the Moral Majority. A better descriptor would be the “Immoral Minority”.
Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the F.B.I. in the Russiagate scandal and later pardoned by his co-conspirator (the President), weighed-into the fray by publicly calling for the imposition of martial law and the deployment of the military to “rerun an election” in those battleground states that Trump lost to Joe Biden. Why? Because there could have been voter fraud there, despite the fact that the states in question have certified the accuracy of the election.
Flynn’s ideas are some very disturbing talk from a guy who, not long ago, was a 3-star Army General and later one of the closest advisors to President Trump. I wonder how many other fascist nutcases reside in the U.S. military hierarchy? Does anyone recall George C. Scott in “Dr. Strangelove”?
(Yesterday, a news report cited an “inside source” that there was a heated discussion in the White House this past week among key staff of this very possibility with President Trump and Michael Flynn in attendance. The idea that the top tier of Republican leadership within the Administration is even discussing such things boggles the mind.)
The crazy times continue: Today the Business Insider broke a story about how Jared Kushner, Lara Trump, and Trump’s campaign CFO ran a shell corporation which diverted $600 million in campaign funds to unknown purposes via a cobweb of tax shelters and legal loopholes. This story might explain why Republican coffers ran dry in the last month of the campaign.
I don’t know if this story has “legs”, but Democratic Party officials, Congressional committees, and a lot of big Republican campaign donors will probably want to get to the bottom of this revelation, if there’s even a hint of truth in it.
Of course, this alleged grift would be in addition to the one that going on right now, in public view, where President Trump is soliciting funds ostensibly for his Election Defense Fund but which can be used for virtually any purpose, like lining Donald Trump’s pockets. This scam has reportedly raised $300 million in the past 45 days.
I have to give credit where credit is due: Trump knows how to separate idiots from their hard-earned money. Our President may be the greatest con man in U.S. history, apologies to Bernie Madoff.
There are millions of stupid and crazy people out there in America, and our soon-to-be-ex-President intends to fleece them while he has the opportunity.
As W.C. Fields said, “Never give a sucker an even break!”
