Trump Plans To Steal The 2020 Election
The People must be aware of all Trump's tactics, so they can resist effectively.
This November, many millions of people will risk their lives in a deadly pandemic, waiting in hours-long voting lines, in order to oust Donald Trump from the White House.
But he will not leave.
He won’t be “democratically” elected. No, for the second time, Trump will steal an election.
This is what he was impeached for earlier this year: trying to "solicit foreign interference" from Ukraine to help his 2020 re-election bid.
It’s not “playing into Trump or Putin’s narrative” to say the election process can be manipulated by bad actors. It’s just the truth that Trump is hoping any uncertainty during the vote can be used to declare himself winner.
Forewarned is forearmed:
What the People are up against:
Experts have warned for years that the voting machines are vulnerable to hacking, and government reports confirm that all 50 states had voting machines hacked in 2016. In recent years, Republicans in Congress have voted against Election Security bills, again and again.
Then there’s voter suppression. In 2016, voter turnout was at a 20-year low. (When just 8 years before, the election of Barack Obama shattered all previous records.)
So what is voter suppression?
"Changing locations, constantly having different rules—states where, for some reason, they vote on a Thursday in some elections a Tuesday on other elections—voter suppression can mean any change that creates confusion around the voting process."
Especially in complicated races, misinformation and disinformation are also a tactic of voter suppression.
Here’s a blatant example:
And,
The population of Harris County, Texas is 4.7 million.
Shelby County v. Holder
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped State election officials from making rules that would make it hard to vote for young people and especially people of color.
Now officials set up voter ID laws, closed down thousands of polling places, purged voting rolls arbitrarily. Many millions of people just cannot vote because of unfair rules. Or if they choose to go out and vote, minority communities know they will have hours longer wait times than whites or Republican strongholds.
We are already seeing it play out this election:
There's also evidence that Republicans may ignore the advantage that Shelby v Holder gives them, flouting election law entirely:
The unsecure voting machines and voter suppression are just some of the cracks in the election process.
And Trump himself (with Congress complicity) has fractured others, most notably:
The United States Postal Service
The new Trump appointed USPS head spent this past summer removing mail boxes from communities across the US, deactivating sorting machines and purging dozens of post office officials. Even before this, decades of underfunding from Congress and lack of Covid relief means that there are mail delivery delays that will make it difficult to count absentee ballots.
Republicans officials have seized on the chaos at the USPS to cast doubt on the results of the election already, trying to use legal means to get absentee ballots thrown out entirely.
Pennsylvania Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to block a lower court opinion that allowed absentee ballots to be counted up to three days after the election, arguing that the extension "could destroy the American public's confidence in the electoral system as a whole."
The shift in deadline could have sweeping consequences for voters in a crucial battleground state where authorities are anticipating historic levels of voting by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Indeed, due to the pandemic, Americans have already voted early in unprecedented numbers, one million of them in fact (in September).
The high volume of ballots that will go through USPS means that the slow-paced counting could mean this scenario: Trump wins election day ballot votes, then the drip-drip of Democratic absentee ballots changes the results to a Biden win overall - days later.
From the quote above, we know Republicans call this “[destruction of] the American public's confidence in the electoral system as a whole.“
They are just taking cues from their leader:
In response to a demand to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, Trump says:
“The [absentee] ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and […] there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation of power.”
Trump calling for the removal of ballots is an assault on the right to vote. It’s an assault on Democracy.
So, you would hope newspapers across the county would have been all over the story to alert the People to the danger we are all are in.
No, the news media in America buried the story:
Look at a newspaper’s front page and you’ll see the stories its leaders believe are the most important. The New York Times story on Trump’s remarks ran on A15, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reports on A4, and the Los Angeles Times covered it on A6. Moreover, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune did not mention the story in their Thursday print editions at all.
This is Trump’s biggest advantage, the media’s continued downplaying of his authoritarian proclamations:
(Here’s more.)
You would never guess that Trump gave a shout out to the alt-right militia “The Proud Boys”, telling them, “stand back and stand by”.
While the Washington Post framed it as “Trump refuses to condemn white supremacists”, the rest of us heard the message — the incitement to violence — loud and clear.
Chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, responded to Trump’s remarks by posting, “That’s my president!” Numerous effusive posts followed. “Standing by sir,” he wrote. Another message soon followed: “So Proud of my guys right now.”
Trump went on to say:
I’m urging my supporters to go in to the polls and watch very carefully, because that’s what has to happen. I am urging them to do it.
This is voter intimidation.
Anyone who goes out to vote has to now contend with the coronavirus as well as potential assault.
Yet none of the news media outlets above thought that was worth the headline.
But why should the media be honest about the danger American Democracy is when Trump is making them so much money?
In general, the news media has been consistently euphamizing Trump’s words. Why wouldn’t they, when its news moguls like Jeff Zucker who helped put him into power? (There’s audio from 2016. And a few days ago: CNN had Putin’s chief propagandist on to opine about an election Putin is actively sabotaging.)
Indeed, it seems legitimizing dictators is what the “Free Press” just does:
“Wins sixth term by landslide”? How about:
Alexander Lukashenko, dictator of Belarus and Putin ally , is currently living out Trump’s wish for election night: declaring himself the winner and using his violent security forces to arrest (and terrorize) those that protest.
Republicans, have no desire to stop Trump’s intimidation tactics, since they can use them to make their own demands. The most recent being the placement of a new Justice on the Supreme Court: one that would tip the scales for their ideology for a generation or more. (Not to mention choose the winner of the 2020 election.)
Trump’s Supreme Court is already tainted by Neil Gorsuch’s stealing of Merrick Garland’s seat, Andrew Kennedy’s mysterious resignation and Brett Kavanaugh’s disappearing debt, yet they want a Bush v Gore redux.
This would further delegitimize the Supreme Court as partisans in the eyes of the nation, since even before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the Courts have ruled in favor of Republican efforts to stymie voting during the pandemic multiple times.
So, who will stop Trump?
Not the news media which is in bed with Trump and has white-washed contested elections in the past.
Not Republicans who look forward to crushing Democracy.
Not the Supreme Court.
What about the Democrats in Congress? Well…
What about the military that has purged Trump’s enemies in the recent past, at his urging? Nope.
What about the cops? Hm…
What about the Justice Dept. and Attorney General Bill Barr?
A.G. Barr has been accused by 1600 former DOJ employees of using his position to help Trump win the election. He flew across the world to find evidence to discredit the investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia at Trump’s urging, and the compromised DOJ released actual Russian misinformation on the the eve of the first 2020 debates.
All that leaves us with is:
The People
Yes, the odds are overwhelming:
- There’s the potential cyber attacks on key infrastructure that have been predicted by U.S Intelligence and those that have already happened in recent months.
- There’s the hacking of voter’s minds with floods of misinformation via social media, particularly Facebook and the Right Wing media eco-system.
- There’s the Virus,
- The Violence,
- The Venality
Every individual has to look at the above hurdles and weigh them up against living and dying in a Mafia State.
One that cages babies, has forced sterilizations at concentration camps, and extra judicial killings. Not to mention, ignores a deadly pandemic so it kills over 200,000 people, while they profit from it.
Then you have to VOTE.
Yes, the personal risk of heading to the polls is great, but the risk to our collective future is even greater. (Check your registration frequently.)
Those looking to defeat Trump must mobilize voters in mass numbers.
A landslide is the best proof to Trump that he has been rejected, and the corporate media won’t be able to spin such a result.
When Trump still contests the election (yes he will), the People must take to the streets.
Just like the people of South Korea did in 2016-2017: Millions marched for months in order to oust their corrupt President. And it worked.
In 2014, Putin’s puppet in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was also ousted by unrelenting people’s protests.
In Hong Kong protests have been ongoing despite China's brutality.
The people of Israel are marching, as well.
In Belarus, people have been protesting, even in the face of grenades, kidnapping and torture, and bullet fire.
It won’t be pretty.
And it would be remiss of me not to mention the people’s protests that have not yielded long-term democracy for the people: the Arab Spring. Protests alone cannot fix broken and hallowed out institutions, lack of community trust can lead to breakdown/Civil War. There's also the worry of the infiltration of Resistance groups by Double Agents.
Syrian dictator Assad insisted that protestors were armed to justify his brutal crackdown, most evidence suggests they were peaceful and any violence emanated from the regime’s agent provocateurs, the Shabiha militias.
It’s important that the People see each other as their strength, and that comes with local/offline community building. Knowing who is actually your community will weed out double agents who want to discredit the Resistance.
Organizers across the country are trying to build empathetic communities that are committed to fighting for human rights. Consider participating in some capacity.
Trump has a plan to stay in power: Demonizing absentee ballots and sabotaging the USPS, voter suppression and intimidation.
So it is up the People to have a plan in place in case Trump declares himself the winner.
The Media WILL go along with Trump’s narrative.
Think of the past supposed “saviors of Democracy”: The Democratic House sweep at the mid-term elections, the FBI, Mueller, Michael Cohen’s “defection”…
None of them panned out. None curbed Trump in any way.
And what about Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis? Will the media remind the People of Trump’s lies about the virus, prompting a wave of anti-Trump sentiment?
It’s more likely that, (similarly to the UK and Boris Johnson), the media will be sympathetic to Trump, burying criticism in an effort to foster “civility” and “patriotism.”
So, it’s up to the People.
The work isn't done on Election Day nor Inauguration Day 2021.
The work to root out corruption from every Institution that allowed a Conman to become President is everyday-from-now-on work.
Stay safe, everyone.