2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[N.E. Brigand]

Stephanie Grisham, the White House Press Secretary from July 2019 to April 2020, has a memoir coming out soon. It's titled I'll Take Your Questions Now.

She never took any questions: there were no press briefings during her nine months on the job.

- - - - - - - - - -
Subsequent to her stint as Press Secretary, Grisham was Chief of Staff and Press Secretary for First Lady Melania Trump.

In her new book, Grisham says that on January 6, as the insurrection raged, she texted Melania this question: "Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?"

Mrs. Trump responded simply, "No."

I guess it may be to Grisham's credit that she resigned that evening, but I don't really care. Do u?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Only if you are making a fashion statement.

[Sunsilver]

And that's about all Melania does care about!

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN has obtained a copy of Peril, the forthcoming book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa about the 2020 election, the end of Donald Trump's presidency, and the start of Joe Biden's presidency.

Woodward and Costa write that General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was so shaken by the events of January 6th that he "single-handedly took top-secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons." Milley felt that Trump "had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality." Fearing that Trump would go "rogue," Milley told senior military officials only to take any actions involving nuclear weapons if he, Milley, were involved. Milley also made sure that communications were open to China's top military staff, apparently to be ready to de-escalate if Trump should try to launch a war to distract the American public from his post-election shenanigans. And Gina Haspel, the Director of the CIA, warned Milley after the election that because of President Trump's refusal to concede his obvious loss, "We are on the way to a right-wing coup. The whole thing is insanity. He is acting out like a six-year-old with a tantrum." Milley, who like Haspel was appointed by Trump, is clearly the source for much of this reporting. The book also reports that Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told Milley that the President was "in a very dark place right now."

Another focus of CNN's reporting today on the Woodward/Costa book concerns Steve Bannon's involvement in the events of January 6th. A week earlier, Bannon "convinced Trump to come back to the White House from Mar-a-Lago to prepare for the events of January 6," saying, 'You've got to return to Washington and make a dramatic return today ... You've got to call Pence off the [expletive] ski slopes and get him back here today." Bannon told Trump that "this is a crisis" and "the moment for reckoning." Bannon also predicted that, "People are going to go, 'What the [expletive] is going on here? ... We're going to bury Biden on January 6th, [expletive] bury him." (If Trump hadn't pardoned Bannon on Jan. 20 for the fraud charges on which he was indicted, the government might have more ability to pressure Bannon about exactly what his role in the insurrection was.)

Also apparently it was former Vice President Dan Quayle who convinced Vice President Mike Pence that he couldn't overturn the election results. There's something mildly amusing to me about that: in Nov.-Dec. 2016, after Trump won the election, there was a lot of reporting about the comings and goings at Trump Tower in New York. I remember one person who came to visit Trump was Quayle, but no one recognized him.

And the book quotes Senator Lindsay Graham as saying about the possibility of Trump running for President in 2024 that "if he wants to run, then he's going to have to deal with his personality problems ... we've got a very damaged team captain." On the other hand, Graham told Trump that if he ran and won, "it would be the biggest comeback in American history." But here's what Trump's sometime campaign manager Brad Parscale says:

"He had an army. An army for Trump. He wants that back I don't think he sees it as a comeback. He sees it as vengeance."

[N.E. Brigand]

So basically Milley is Beregond.

[N.E. Brigand]

And Donald Trump has issued a statement that basically proves Milley was right.

Or as Pippin said, "And as for orders, I think you have a madman to deal with, not a lord."

[Alatar]

Trump. The gift that keeps on giving.

[Túrin Turambar]

When I started this thread, I assumed it would run for a few months and quickly get superseded by (presumably) the first Biden Administration thread. I didn't expect it to be active ten months later on pager 118.

[RoseMorninStar]

When I started this thread, I assumed it would run for a few months and quickly get superseded by (presumably) the first Biden Administration thread. I didn't expect it to be active ten months later on pager 118.

[Dave_LF]

The thread has 2020 right there in the title. You should have known better than to hold to any kind of reasonable expectations.

[Inanna]

True Dat.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

When I first saw this headline, I thought it was something that was coming out in one of the new books that had happened in January or last December. But it isn't it happened just a few days ago. Think about that.

Trump wrote to Georgia's secretary of state asking him to consider 'decertifying' the 2020 election result

[Inanna]

Let’s not.

[RoseMorninStar]

What some see as confidence others view as delusion. There are some who live by the motto of believing what you want to believe & it will come true. While that sounds all warm, fuzzy, and positive, it certainly has a dark side.

[N.E. Brigand]

There have been two major stories this week about the 2020 election:

1. The December memo in which one of Donald Trump's lawyers, John Eastman, a well-respected conservative, laid out plans for Trump to overturn the election. It all hinged on Mike Pence declaring that certain states' electors were in dispute and thus that either Donald Trump had won by virtue of having the majority of the remaining states votes or that there was no winner, which would kick the decision to the House, where Republicans control the majority of state delegations.

2. News that the Trump campaign had an internal memo, drafted within two weeks of the election, that determined there was no fraud involving Dominion Voting Systems' machines. Should we expect Dominion to use this fact to bankrupt Rudy Giuliani and others who really have it coming?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I have a hard-time accepting the words "John Eastman" and "well-respected" in the same sentence. Maybe some conservative Trumpists respect him, but I don't think he is very well respected in the legal community, and he was forced to leave his job at Chapman University as result of his conduct.

I'm not sure that the Trump campaign internal memo significantly changes the equation of the defamation suits filed by Dominion and others. It was already pretty well known and established that the Trump campaign knew that voting machine claims were bogus.

[N.E. Brigand]

Five months ago, the Republican legislature in Arizona authorized a so-called "audit" of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, conducted by a firm with no election audit experience called Cyber Ninjas, which is owned by a Q-Anon conspiracy theorist. Because of tampering by the Cyber Ninjas, Maricopa County is going to have to purchase new voting equipment before the next election.

This audit was supposed to last three weeks. The results are finally going to be announced Friday afternoon. Some reporters have seen what is supposed to be a near-final draft. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow indicated that while she had seen the draft, she wasn't going to comment on it because it very well might change by the time it's released. But some Arizona outlets are reporting on it.

Per the draft, Joe Biden indeed won a majority of Maricopa County's 2.1 million votes, as the official count and earlier official recounts established. In fact, the Cyber Ninjas apparently report that Biden's lead over Donald Trump was undercounted by 360 votes.

It will be indeed hilarious if that's their final determination after all the nonsense that Republicans have claimed about Chinese interference and bamboo fibers and what have you. Although it sounds like they are still claiming malfeasance of some sort by Maricopa officials.

[elengil]

NPR talked about that this morning, that while they indeed "agreed" that Biden won the county, apparently they have a host of irregularities and problems they'd like to document to inspire future voting laws, so don't get too excited that they didn't technically get a significantly different final count. It's also apparently inspiring several other states to do this themselves.




edit: I am trying to link to the actual article but it keeps wanting to imbed the audio? Ah here we go:

The Controversial Election Review In Arizona Confirms Biden's Win

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's kinda cool that it lets you imbed the audio.

[N.E. Brigand]

I would add that there's no reason we should trust these results, because there's no way to be sure this was ever a real audit in the first place.

(And even while conceding that Arizona's count was correct, the auditors are apparently still trying to undermine confidence in U.S. elections by claiming that there are other systemic problems. The goal is to further the notion that election results are uncertain, which will make it easier for the next demagogue to overturn results he doesn't like.)