Reveal has an important episode dealing with the republican “stop the steal” campaign, [reveal] and other lies that went mainstream and blossomed.
I feel as though the episode would be better if they split the beginning off on its own and went deeper into that content; as they continue I feel like it trails off into the weeds a bit becoming, “people believe lies.” The beginning is the interesting bit – it’s when they talk about the evolution of the “stop the steal” campaign. One thing I learned from that episode is that the “stop the steal” campaign was fully geared-up before 2016 when Trump expected to lose to Hillary Clinton and was prepared to contest the vote. Remembering back, as Reveal takes us, Trump was saying that he would maybe not accept a loss in 2016 – his campaign was already preparing and floating the story of fraudulent voting machines and software vote-manipulation layers from Hugo Chavez and Leon Trotsky, etc. This was while the Trump campaign was trying to encourage Russian involvement in their propaganda campaign, which the FBI director was piously amplifying for them. But, I did not realize that “stop the steal” 2016 was a dry-run; they didn’t know they’d be looking at a losing election in 2020, but by the time 2020 rolled around, they were ready. It’s fascinating to me: all the key players were there, in place, in 2016 – Roger Stone and local republican “operatives” and poll-watchers. Again: 2016, not 2020. The complaints they were making in 2020 were written in 2016.
Reveal starts the episode hard:
I want you to picture a scene: hundreds of people standing on the granite steps of the capitol building.
(Chanting crowd, “stop the steal! stop the steal!)
But it’s the capitol building of Colorado in April, 2016.
And sure enough, Reveal is correct. According to the April 15 edition of Colorado Public Radio [cpr] Trump’s mobs and operatives were already running the script:
Trump however has not backed off his criticism of the Colorado process. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Thursday Trump again excoriated the state party for canceling the straw poll and holding “an ‘election’ without voters.”
“What we are seeing now is not a proper use of the rules, but a flagrant abuse of the rules,” Trump wrote. “Delegates are supposed to reflect the decisions of voters, but the system is being rigged by party operatives.”
We have been allowed to forget that series of events, unfortunately because (in large part) the media and the democrats went howling after the “Russian involvement” story – retrospectively a stupid red-herring (even though it was true) compared to the real story which is the Director of the FBI’s personal involvement in throwing as much shit at the Clinton campaign as he could come up with. And, retrospectively, it was pretty thin shit, and pretty obvious – but at the time it seemed somehow like typical campaigning because everyone expected Hillary to win. And, she did, of course, but the popular vote was nullified (AKA: “stolen”) by the electoral college.
[Yes, by the way, that statue is of a confederate soldier; it has since been pulled down]
stopthesteal.org was set up by the Trump campaign’s operatives, initially to complain about the republican party’s (failed) attempt to block Trump’s nomination. But the memes are the same.
From the start, “stop the steal” was a group of activists and a set of tactics. In Colorado it started at the caucus that Saturday, when Ted Cruz won all the state’s republican delegates. Donald Trump started complaining…
… and continues complaining to this day. Reading between the lines is the ugly reality that Trump never had any interest in pursuing a democratic process. His organization’s plan to gain political power was always that of German and Italian fascists in the 1930s: lie about the opposition, destroy faith in the electoral process, and prepare for a police-led coup if necessary. Trump was always an open book. I expect that when the history of this time is written, someone – probably from The New York Times will admit that they knew the republicans had no intention of taking a defeat fairly, and that is why people kept asking Trump if he’d accept a negative election result. He kept indicating fairly clearly that he would not. The great father of many lies was not even interested in lying about that. The media and the democrats kept harping on the Russia angle, ignoring the much more important and interesting story – they should have already been beginning investigations into electoral fraud (election campaigns paying to assemble armed crowds outside of government offices is not a legal way to spend money. All of the financial strings that are obvious today in the Jan 6 investigation were put in place in 2016; there was plenty of time to get inside the republican’s operations and pick the whole thing apart but, hey, Anthony Weiner!
Give it a listen.
Then, when it’s done, think back to all the times when Trump said that two terms probably wouldn’t be enough for him. Remember those? The asshole was planning on stealing the election and being president-for-life all along.
The Guardian also has an article about the April 15 protests by crisis actors: [guard]
I will note that there are still and never have been subpoenas of communications between James Comey and the Trump campaign. Why not? Surely, we are not so naive anymore, are we? Of course, Comey’d be a pretty sophisticated information manager – one does not survive to be FBI Director by being stupid enough to write things down.
“The asshole was planning on stealing the election and being president-for-life all along.”
I’m not sure the Angry Cheeto is intellectually capable of planning that sort of thing. But whether it was a premeditated scheme on the Cheeto’s part, or just the Cheeto letting his narcissistic hunger for adulation and refusal to acknowledge his own errors/wrongdoing fly free, you’re pretty much on the money about the danger posed by the Angry Cheeto.
Cheetolini
@cubist
That’s the part that scares me. The reason that America still has some semblance of democracy is not because the system of checks and balances prevented a coup or because people of conscience rallied and put a stop to it. America as we know it stands only because the coup organizers were so stupid and uncoordinated that they fucked up what could easily have been a sure thing.
That’s why Trump was never my main concern. The real problem is the guy in the back, taking notes. He’ll succeed where Trump failed. I don’t know who he is, but I suspect we’ll all find out in less than a decade.
I don’t know who he is
Steve Bannon
A minor nitpick but one worth remembering. The FBI writes down anything that might be incriminating, but only if someone else says it. That’s where we get those notes about conversations they were in, notes I think get a bit more credence than they deserve.
i agree with the general opinion that Trump was just a front man. i wonder who will appear for 2024?
According to this Newsweek story, special FBI commandos were deployed at the Capitol during the insurrection.
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-secret-commandos-shoot-kill-authority-were-capitol-1661330
Acting Atty Gen Rosen activated them on his own authority because of his concerns.
@ahcuah #7,
And whose side were they on?
And this is news how? Are memories really so short? That always struck me as the most chilling thing the fucker said in the entire campaign – “of COURSE I’ll accept the result…. if I win.”
Oh, ffs. Clinton lost, get over it. She knew the rules, she was in a position to SET the rules (which is more than Trump had been up to that point), and the rules suited her just fine, she signed up to them and played by them, and by them, she lost. If there’s one thing that infuriates me about anti-Trumpers, it’s the “but Hillary won the popular vote” whining. It doesn’t matter and never did.
Surely paying to assemble crowds outside government offices is exactly the sort of thing campaign money gets spent on? The fact that they’re specifically armed is, I’m afraid, just a side effect of your country’s fucked up attitude to allowing morons to tool around with military weaponry in public.
Given his age – and I don’t think even he is stupid or actually brain-damaged enough to think he can somehow cheat actual death and decreptitude – what I always took that to mean was that he’d serve two terms, and then there’d be a peaceful, orderly handover of power to someone else coincidentally also called “Trump”. He was planning a dynasty, not on dying in office.
sonofrojblake@#9:
And this is news how? Are memories really so short?
No, it’s historical back-fill. It’s not news, it’s more along the line of, “… in case you didn’t already know.”
Oh, ffs. Clinton lost, get over it.
My issue is not what happened with Clinton; it’s that the electoral college makes a mockery of the US’ claims to being a democracy by disenfranchising the entire public. I know there have been some changes to the system, but its design is to prevent the popular vote from being able to affect any election. That is, to put it mildly, a hell of a problem.
Surely paying to assemble crowds outside government offices is exactly the sort of thing campaign money gets spent on?
Well, the laws have been adjusted in order to make it so that political money can be spent in secret. I suppose it was a form of “astroturfing” at worst. Whether it’s legal or not, I do not approve of anonymized attempts to gain political influence, whether it’s paying for and leaking the Steele report, or paying for flash mobs. It’s distasteful.
Given his age – and I don’t think even he is stupid or actually brain-damaged enough to think he can somehow cheat actual death and decreptitude – what I always took that to mean was that he’d serve two terms, and then there’d be a peaceful, orderly handover of power to someone else coincidentally also called “Trump”. He was planning a dynasty, not on dying in office.
As Putin demonstrated, once you can be president-for-life you can control the rest of the process regardless of how it’s structured.
invivoMark@#8:
And whose side were they on?
That appears to be unknown. I saw that news tidbit, as well, and had a similar response. Were they just there to hold up the walls or something? They were exactly what would have suppressed the coup attempt, but they were nowhere to be seen.
It’s interesting that the journalists trumped that the commandos were “licensed to kill” (there is no such thing under any version of US law that I am aware of, and they weren’t being deployed to Syria, they were in the capitol) – so, what was the point of that? If they had loudly and visibly deployed some “licensed to kill” troops the day before, it might have made a difference. Perhaps they were there to seize Pence and Pelosi.
Clinton … knew the rules, she was in a position to SET the rules…
Seriously? How was Hillary Clinton in any position to change the US electoral system?
The originally-stated purpose of the Electoral College was to ensure that the people didn’t elect a completely unqualified boob. As such, the EC is pretty clearly one of the “checks and balances” that was supposed to ensure that the government didn’t degenerate into tyranny; on that basis, I can basically agree with the EC. Of course, the EC utterly failed in its alleged purpose when the Angry Cheeto got installed in the White House (and, arguably, on other, earlier, occasions), and there doesn’t now seem to be any way to make the EC fit for said purpose, so I would not object to razing the EC and sowing salt into the ground where once it stood.
My understanding of the electoral college was that it was an attempt to make it so that the election wasn’t simply decided by the most populous states, leaving the smaller states effectively without any say. Yay for federalism.
I don’t know. Was she, for instance, at any stage, married to the actual President, for say, eight years? Was she, for instance, Secretary of State for about four years at any point? Surely both of those count as at the very least positions of influence?
… the “stop the steal” campaign was fully geared-up before 2016 when Trump expected to lose …
This does conflict with the “Trump expected to lose and ran basically as a publicity stunt” scenario attested to by, e.g., Michael Cohen. Of course, Cohen, like anyone else associated with Trump, does not qualify as a reliable source, but I have seen an array of supporting accounts and – until this post – very little to contradict it. (The smoke-&-mirrors of “We wuz robbed” seems Trump standard operating procedure, so I can’t buy that as evidence of intent to win either.)
Raging Bee @ # 12: How was Hillary Clinton in any position to change the US electoral system?
One of her major promises on being sworn in as Senator was to introduce a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with a direct-vote system. She followed through on that as well as on most other Clinton promises, and paid an utterly apropos karmic/ironic price for same in 2016. The earlier and later positions enumerated by sonofrojblake @ # 14 offered less opportunity for such changes, but when the had her best shot, she let it evaporate.
“This does conflict with the “Trump expected to lose and ran basically as a publicity stunt” scenario attested to by, e.g., Michael Cohen”
I don’t actually see a conflict there. Trump could have expected to lose and then plan to claim a win anyhow as a vehicle to keep fleecing his flock from the much more comfortable premises he maintains in FL than that burdensome whitehouse with all its tedious briefings and decisions to be made. The ‘but really I actually won!’ lie has been quite lucrative, and a man with as sharp an eye for suckers as DJT might have forseen that back in 2016.
Say nothing else positive about the man, but he does know how to separate the gullible from their money.