rightwingwatch--2020-09-30--The Propaganda War Against Voting by Mail

ON THE FIRST Tuesday in April , as the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic was becoming all too real , Americans got a scary glimpse of what Election Day in November might look like if the virus were still spreading .
We also got a big , loud , ugly preview of the 2020 voting wars .
The state of Wisconsin had no business holding an election on April 7 .
Sixteen other states had bumped their primary dates back , hoping to give election officials time to adjust to the drastic new conditions and allow more voters to cast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tony Evers had issued a statewide stay-at-home order .
In Milwaukee alone , at least 51 people had already died from the new coronavirus .
And so many poll workers were refusing to show up that the city , home to Wisconsin ’ s largest concentration of voters of color , would be hard-pressed to open even a handful of polling places , never mind the usual 180 .
“ We are over our heads in chaos , ” Neil Albrecht , Milwaukee ’ s election chief , told The Guardian a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start .
Evers , a Democrat , tried to push the election date to May 23 and send mail ballots to all registered Wisconsinites .
But he waited too late .
By the time Evers called the state legislature into emergency session the week before the polls were to open , asking legislators to approve the delay and green-light an all-mail ballot , President Donald Trump and his right-wing amen chorus had begun to paint voting by mail not as a public-health necessity during a pandemic , but instead as a Democratic plot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ perhaps the worst of all the scams perpetrated through the COVID nightmare , ” as Trump fan Laura Ingraham put it to viewers of her Fox News Channel show .
In addition to the Democratic presidential primary that was to take place on that day , there was also an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court .
“ A lot of people cheat with mail-in voting , ” the president said on April 4 .
“ In Wisconsin what happened is I , through social media , put out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservative judge , who ’ s an excellent brilliant judge , he ’ s a justice .
And I hear what happened is his poll numbers went through the roof , and because of that , I think they delayed the election.
” So Wisconsin Republicans forced the show to go on .
The Republican leaders of the state Assembly and Senate both gaveled in their special sessions , then gaveled them out within seconds .
When the governor responded by issuing an executive order to delay the primary , the majority-Republican state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the election .
Voting went smoothly enough in the state ’ s smaller counties and towns , where white Republicans predominate and polling places had no lines .
But in the cities , it was an unholy mess .
Lines were so long in Green Bay that some people couldn ’ t vote till after midnight .
In Milwaukee , the scene was downright eerie ; some poll workers wore makeshift hazmat suits fashioned from plastic bags .
National Guard troops , hastily called in to serve as poll workers , dashed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , wiping things down between voters .
Local firefighters passed out hand sanitizer to the thousands who waited for hours in lines that stretched for blocks , far past the trail of orange traffic cones that had been set up to keep folks six feet apart .
Outside Washington High School , one waiting voter , Jennifer Taft , summed it all up perfectly , holding up a hand-lettered sign reading : “ THIS IS RIDICULOUS.
” “ I ’ m disgusted , ” Taft told a local reporter .
“ I requested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and never got it .
I have a father dying from lung disease , and I have to risk my life and his just to exercise my right to vote.
” Statewide , overall turnout was higher than expected .
Even in that compressed time period , 1.1 million of Wisconsin ’ s 3.3 million voters had sent in absentee ballots—five times the number of voters who did so in the 2016 primary .
And when the votes were all tallied six days later , the Democratic Supreme Court challenger had won easily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s theory that Evers wanted to delay the election to prevent a GOP victory .
But the Republicans ’ efforts to sew confusion and long lines in the cities had worked in certain ways : In Milwaukee , which saw historically low Black turnout in 2016 after a strict new Voter ID law went into effect , the primary vote was half what it had been four years earlier .
“ It was voter suppression on steroids , ” said Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez .
“ They tried to steal the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t gone smoothly , either : Nearly 12,000 voters who ’ d requested absentee ballots , like Jennifer Taft , never got them .
Three tubs full of absentee ballots that never reached voters were found in a mail center outside Milwaukee .
And 23,000 absentee ballots sent in by voters—more than Trump ’ s margin of victory in the state in 2016—had been disqualified for technical problems .
Here as elsewhere , Republican lawmakers had made the process as complicated and time-consuming as possible to keep mail voting down , including a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Voters ’ signatures had to match the signatures on file with the state ; as in other states , it ’ s left to election volunteers and staffers , not handwriting experts , to decide whether the signatures match .
Thousands of votes were tossed on this subjective basis .
( In June , after the delayed New York primary , 30,000 votes from Brooklyn , one-quarter of the total , would be tossed out for similar reasons . )
The threat of robust turnout figures posed by mail-in voting had fully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it had given them a fresh new story to tell about what they claimed was the looming threat of mass left-wing “ voter fraud.
” The same day Wisconsin ’ s primary results were announced , an apparently new group called the Honest Elections Project aired an Orwellian TV and digital ad across the country—a six-figure buy—casting what happened in Wisconsin as Democrats ’ “ brazen attempt to manipulate the election system for partisan advantage by exploiting the coronavirus pandemic.
” It was , the narrator intoned , a sign of election-rigging to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wisconsin election : Record absentee voting .
Five times more than 2016 .
Democrats didn ’ t think they could win so they tried lawsuits , changing the rules , even canceling the election .
They create chaos .
It ’ s wrong.
” The Honest Elections Project turned out to be a legal alias for the Judicial Education Project , a powerful dark-money PAC funded by the Donors Trust , a nonprofit donor-advised fund often referred to as the “ dark money ATM ” of the right , with such heavy-hitting benefactors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Betsy ) DeVos family .
It was the brainchild of Leonard Leo , a Trump confidant who was instrumental in the choice and confirmations of the president ’ s Supreme Court nominees , and it would soon begin filing lawsuits seeking to block the expansion of remote voting , and other pandemic-inspired election reforms—using the same lead attorney , longtime Washington litigator William Consovoy , as the Trump campaign .
At least three other lavishly funded far-right groups—Judicial Watch , the Public Interest Legal Foundation , and True the Vote—are also combining legal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and disable , remote voting for November .
The Republican National Committee issued a statement this spring promising to devote at least $ 20 million to such lawsuits as well .
The messages they ’ re all promoting are identical to Trump ’ s rhetoric about the dangers of mail-in balloting and the Democrats ’ purportedly cynical promotion of it to allegedly rig the election .
Their combined resources and firepower adds up to the biggest coordinated effort to suppress votes in history .
Until this year , battles over voting rules @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and right-wing legal firms not quite acceptable to the mainstream , cheered on by talk-radio shouters and extremist websites like The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart .
“ You used to have these small-time , right-wing operations , ” Mark Elias , a top Democratic litigator who ’ s working on several ongoing lawsuits , told The Washington Post in June .
“ Because Donald Trump has normalized all these crackpot theories about voter fraud , they ’ ve all now joined forces under the banner of the legitimate Republican establishment.
” All they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same old “ fair ” and “ normal ” elections that Trump keeps calling for .
But the president , characteristically , had already given away the game before the Wisconsin primary lit the right wing on fire .
On “ Fox & Friends ” during the week before that primary from hell , he ’ d warned the friendly hosts what would happen if voting by mail were allowed to metastasize : “ You ’ d never have a Republican elected in this country again.
” THE CRUSADE TO suppress votes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ existed , and long before the pandemic led to a popular clamor for more voting by mail .
Three weeks after his razor-thin victory in the Electoral College , still irked at hearing about Hillary Clinton ’ s edge in the popular vote , President-elect Trump issued a tweetstorm citing right-wing conspiracy theories .
His chief claim , often to be repeated : “ I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.
” On stage at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Committee convention three months later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Watch , backed up Trump ’ s claims .
“ The left would have you believe that we have about 43 million aliens in this country , both lawful and unlawfully present , ” he said .
“ And none of them vote !
” The activists in the audience cheered and chuckled .
“ You know , under the Obama administration , they opposed Voter ID ; they opposed the idea of even asking someone whether they were a citizen before they register to vote , ” Fitton went on to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to that , other than maybe wanting to steal elections when necessary ?
” Cue applause .
Fitton also seconded Trump ’ s call for a “ federal investigation into voter fraud , ” promising that it would be “ the most significant civil rights investigation in a generation , ” because , he said , “ We ’ re on the side of civil rights .
We ’ re on the side of the civil rights of Americans who potentially are having their votes stolen from them by the thousands , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Getting the findings to back up those assertions would be a breeze , he promised .
“ It ’ s easy to figure out where there ’ s voter fraud , ” Fitton said , “ and obviously that ’ s why the leftist voters are screaming , because they ’ re afraid their gig is up.
” Not quite , as it transpired .
That “ investigation ” was launched in May 2017 , when Trump made appointments to his newly concocted Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity , which included top @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kansas secretary of state and anti-immigration zealot , and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation .
But it didn ’ t prove so easy to find hard proof of the massive fraud they ’ d long been claiming .
After eight months of trying , the commissioners dug up only scattered cases drawn from media reports , and the president disbanded the effort .
But voter-suppression is now an industry unto itself , and Judicial Watch and its peers didn ’ t skip a beat .
Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letters to state and local election officials across the country , threatening lawsuits if they didn ’ t undertake massive , aggressive “ purges ” of their voter rolls .
“ Your jurisdiction is in apparent violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act , ” the letters claimed .
The NVRA , known as the “ Motor Voter Act , ” was passed in 1993 to “ expand voting opportunities ” in various ways , including offering registration at driver ’ s license offices .
It also required local elections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maintenance ” of their registration rolls , striking those who ’ d become ineligible—by dying , going to prison , or moving out of state .
Under previous administrations , the Justice Department monitored these purges and sometimes stepped in when they became overzealous and were clearly targeting voters of color .
“ The rationale of removing voters from the rolls to protect against fraud is nonsensical , ” Stacey Abrams , who founded the voting-rights group Fair Fight after narrowly losing the Georgia governor ’ s race in 2018 , told Mother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.
” The letters contained legal threats , but their primary purpose was to stoke publicity about voter fraud—and to raise the profiles of Fitton and J. Christian Adams , a former Department of Justice official who heads PILF and served on the ill-fated Election Integrity Commission .
Adams is best known as the DOJ attorney who promoted a 2008 “ voter intimidation ” case against two members of a group that dubbed itself the New Black Panthers .
On Election Day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a predominantly white polling place in Philadelphia , one of them holding a nightstick .
When Obama ’ s Justice Department declined to press charges , Adams loudly resigned and wrote a book called “ Injustice : Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.
” In lawsuits and legal threats targeting jurisdictions with large numbers of non-white voters , Adams first launched suits via the American Civil Rights Union ( a right-wing group that fancies itself to be the analog to the American Civil Liberties Union ) , and then with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few big victories out of their threats and lawsuits , in 2018 and again last year .
In 2018 , the Supreme Court upheld a Judicial Watch settlement agreement with Ohio and allowed a massive voter purge—a decision that opened the floodgates for more of the same , permitting states to strike voters who haven ’ t voted in recent elections .
As 2020 began , counties in California and Kentucky were busy removing close to 2 million voters ; ditto , Allegheny County , one of the largest Pennsylvania counties carried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three other large Clinton-voting Pennsylvania counties Judicial Watch dragged into court this year , the group claimed an almost comically high number of “ ineligible ” voters—800,000 in all , which would amount to more than 65 percent of all registered voters in the counties .
“ We 100-percent dispute the claims , ” Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar , who was also sued , told state senators .
Most of this year ’ s election lawsuits are related to COVID-19—or , more precisely , they target attempts by states and municipalities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic .
The number of these cases is staggering : More than 200 were still percolating through the courts in mid-August .
Many have been brought by the Trump campaign , the Republican National Committee , Judicial Watch , PILF , and the Honest Elections Project , all of whom have the same agenda : Keep voting restrictions in place .
Three more states have switched to all-mail elections this year : California , Nevada , and Vermont .
When lawmakers in Nevada , where Trump lost by just 27,000 votes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ special session on the first Sunday of August , Trump called it “ an illegal late-night coup ” on Twitter , with the promise , “ See you in court !
” Two days later , still fuming , he posted a tweet falsely stating that voting by mail would mean a “ Rigged Election.
” It became the first tweet flagged by Twitter as untrue .
The same day , the Republican National Committee , the Trump campaign , and Nevada Republican Party all filed suit against Nevada .
In most states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried to ease restrictions that can make absentee voting difficult or confusing : early deadlines for requesting ballots , Election Day deadlines for having them returned or postmarked , requirements that witnesses or notaries sign the ballots , strictly limited forms of acceptable ID .
In some cases , the question is whether vulnerability to COVID-19 counts as an “ excuse ” for needing a mail ballot .
( Most states already allow no-excuse absentee voting , but a few—like emerging battleground Texas—do not . )
Justin Levitt , a Loyola University law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has not detected a pattern in the decisions .
But as he ’ s noted , it ’ s already a win for right-wing organizations and the Republicans to keep elections officials tied up in courts—and election rules in a state of suspended uncertainty as states try , with chronically inadequate funding , to manage an election during a pandemic .
“ My usual election-cycle comment is that we ’ re trying to find enough duct tape to cover the holes in the bucket , ” Levitt said recently .
“ This time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bucket out of duct tape.
” The uncertainty created by the lawsuits , combined with the disinformation about voting that will be plastered all over social media this fall , creates an indirect but powerful form of voter suppression in itself .
“ Voter suppression is a combination of things , ” says Georgia state Rep. and voting-rights advocate Renitta Shannon .
“ It ’ s a chipping away of people either not being able to vote , or thinking it will be a major hassle .
When people have a question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be counted , that [ becomes ] a reason not to vote.
” ON JUNE 5 , Tom Fitton and J. Christian Adams were both invited to testify at a U.S. House hearing on “ Protecting the Right to Vote During the COVID-19 Crisis.
” It was another sign of how formerly fringe right-wing conspiracies had become thoroughly mainstreamed in Trump ’ s GOP .
And it provided another platform to spread the falsehood that Democrats were using the pandemic to make real their fraudulent dreams .
“ It is now about five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testified , “ and the pandemic ’ s infection curve has flattened .
Insisting now on all-mail-ballot elections seems less like a response to a health crisis and more like a partisan application of the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel : ‘ Never let a good crisis go to waste.
’ ” Fitton ’ s coronavirus predictions would soon be disproved , but the notion of Democrats using mail ballots to commit grand theft in 2020— “ using COVID to defraud the American people , ” as Trump expressed it on the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ central deceit of the right ’ s propaganda campaign .
“ The Democrats have cooked this thing up , ” Rush Limbaugh bellowed in August , “ because they don ’ t feel confident that they can win in a traditionally fair and normal election.
” In many places , the relative unfamiliarity of mail voting is a boon to the fear-mongering .
And with folks on the right having been treated to years ’ worth of “ voter fraud ” talk , they ’ d been conditioned to take it seriously .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” says Tomas Lopez , executive director of the progressive group Democracy North Carolina , “ they ’ re talking about race , of course .
They ’ re lamenting the fact that those people get a vote.
” Across platforms—Fox News , talk radio , social media , presidential briefings—the narrative being served up about mail voting has been remarkably consistent in all its main plot points .
It ’ s almost as if Judicial Watch teamed with the Trump campaign and sent out a bullet-point memo , which kicks off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proceeds , from there , to the following talking points : • • Even more “ illegals ” get to vote .
“ Here ’ s a shocking things for your audience to consider , ” senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller , architect of the immigration policy that caged children at the U.S.-Mexico border , said in August on “ Fox & Friends.
” “ Nobody who mails in a ballot has their identity confirmed ; nobody checks to see if they ’ re even a U.S. citizen .
Think about that .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail in a ballot , and nobody even verifies if they ’ re a citizen of the United States of America.
” ( In reality , every state verifies the identity of the person requesting the mail-in ballot . )
This summer , Judicial Watch bought at least 263 ads on Facebook ( cost : $ 210,000 ) to drive home the same spurious claim delivered by Miller on Fox News .
According to a tally from Media Matters for America , 144 of the ads , which were full of disinformation about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ illegal aliens are voting , ” while 119 got more specific , claiming that “ 25 % of noncitizens are registered to vote.
” • • Ballots Are On the Loose .
On May 1 , Trump retweeted Mollie Hemingway , a writer for The Federalist , a right-wing publication , who had some “ news ” that sounded startling : “ Nearly one in five of all absentee and mail-in-ballots between 2012 and 2018 remain unaccounted for , according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission , ” she wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new and scholarly looking report by PILF—J .
Christian Adams ’ organization—which claimed that 28 million absentee ballots had “ gone missing ” in recent election cycles .
Those ballots represent a golden opportunity for mass-scale fraud , Adams said in a statement accompanying the PILF report— “ 28 million opportunties for someone to cheat.
” The “ missing ballots ” meme spread like wildfire .
But as voting-rights advocates ( and logical thinkers ) pointed out , the ballots aren ’ t just floating around , waiting for noncitizens and Democrats to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; they simply hadn ’ t been returned by the voters who got them .
Twelve million of the “ loose ” ballots , as they ’ re also called , had been sent by election officials in Colorado , Oregon , and Washington state , where everyone who registers automatically receives one .
About 30 percent of voters in those states typically don ’ t return their ballots in a given election .
“ Where are they now ?
” said Paul Gronke , a Reed College professor who runs the Early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ missing ” ballots .
“ Most likely , in landfills.
” • • Democrats Are Harvesting Those Loose Ballots .
Expect to hear several earfuls about “ ballot harvesting ” between now and November .
It ’ s the hip , scary-sounding new catchphrase for voter-fraudsters , though the practice it describes is a routine feature of absentee voting in more than half the states : Basically , it just means that a third party can collect someone ’ s vote in its sealed envelope and hand-deliver it to an election office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who live at great distances from polling places without transportation , or who are sick or shut in , to cast a vote .
In March , Trump ’ s own ballot in the Florida primary was “ harvested ” —he gave it to an ( unknown ) third party , who delivered it directly to an elections office in Palm Beach .
Nonetheless , as he tweeted on April 14 , we must “ GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING , IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD.
” Democratic workers sometimes organize “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to peddle fantastical visions of thugs pounding on doors and demanding people ’ s blank ballots for harvesting .
The proof ?
Well , in Paterson , N.J. , this spring , a postal employee noticed something odd in a local post office five days before an all-mail primary : 347 completed ballots bundled together .
They were part of a scheme for which four perpetrators , including one city council member , have all been charged with fraud .
Amid the controversy , Paterson ’ s election board disqualified 19 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up from Gateway Pundit , a conspiracy theory website , to the West Wing , served as evidence of the fraudulent potential of “ harvesting.
” “ Look at Patterson [ sic ] , N.J. , ” Trump tweeted .
“ 20 % of vote was corrupted !
” In fact , election officials said that most of the uncounted ballots were tossed out for the usual technical reasons—mainly for signatures that didn ’ t appear to match those on file .
The only example of large-scale ballot harvesting occurred in a North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It was organized by a paid GOP operative who ’ s facing both state and federal charges .
“ THIS IS GOING TO BE the greatest election disaster in history , ” Trump promised reporters in the middle of yet another rant against vote-by-mail in August .
He failed to mention how hard he and his right-wing allies were fighting to make his apocalyptic predictions about the election come true—or how much his prospects for victory may hinge on it .
The right ’ s doomsaying about chaos and fraud at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In August , a Pew poll found that nearly half of registered U.S. voters expect to “ have difficulties casting a ballot ” this year .
That might not sound surprising—but it ’ s a sea change from 2018 , when 85 percent expected voting to be “ easy.
” When it comes to mail voting in particular , however , it ’ s only Republicans who are moved by the propaganda .
When Pew asked Trump supporters how they planned to vote , 80 percent said they ’ d do it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would vote by mail .
By contrast , most Biden supporters—58 percent—said they ’ d be voting remotely .
Given those results , it ’ s no surprise that , in the 2020 battleground states , Democrats are outpacing Republicans in absentee ballot requests .
Far more , in fact .
Four years ago in Florida , Democrats requested 6,000 more absentee ballots than Republicans ; by the end of August this year , ballot requests by Democrats had surpassed those from Republicans by 600,000 .
In North Carolina , where absentee voting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had asked for ballots compared to 50,000 Republicans .
“ Everybody ’ s up , ” said Michael Bitzer , a politics professor at Catawba College .
“ It ’ s just that Democrats and unaffiliated are through the roof , and Republicans are not even on the second floor.
” This disparity , which is consistent in other battleground states , has saner Republican officials and activists deeply worried .
What if the anti-mail campaign ends up backfiring , and suppressing their votes ?
And with the virus likely to still be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in particular—actually take the risk to show up in person to vote ?
“ What the president is doing when he keeps saying that this mail-in balloting thing is fraudulent , he ’ s scaring our own voters from using a legit way to cast your ballot , ” Rohn Bishop , chair of the Fond du Lac County GOP in Wisconsin , told USA Today .
“ We ’ re kind of hurting ourselves.
” When he tries to talk up absentee voting to fellow Republicans , Bishop said , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s “ ignoring voter fraud.
” It ’ s not easy to argue when the Republican president keeps calling vote-by-mail “ the greatest scam in history.
” The weird thing , said Bishop and other Republican state leaders , is that while the president continues to slam mail voting on a daily basis , the Trump campaign and RNC have told them to promote it .
“ I ’ m out there pushing it at the request of the campaign , because they asked me [ to ] do that , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican Party in Pennsylvania , which Trump carried by less than 1 percent in 2016—and where Democrats have made 68 percent of all mail-ballot requests , while Republicans requested just 24 percent .
“ And then the president is publicly opposed to it , ” Tabas added .
“ Let ’ s put it this way ; it ’ s made my job more challenging.
” The Pennsylvania GOP website urges Republicans to “ Vote Safe : By mail .
From home.
” GOP voters in California also heard that “ safe , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this spring ’ s primary—from two of Trump ’ s family members , no less .
Both daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Donald Jr. recorded robocalls in April urging mail votes for a Republican congressional candidate in a special election .
“ Nancy Pelosi and liberal Democrats are counting on you to sit on the sidelines this election , but you can prove them wrong , ” Lara Trump said in one call .
“ You can safely and securely vote for Mike Garcia by returning your mail-in ballot by May 12.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans for Prosperity , is flexing its considerable muscle to counter the president ’ s message and urge right-wing voters to take advantage of either early or absentee voting this fall .
Tim Phillips , president of the “ grasstops ” group , which underwrote the Tea Party movement , told Politico this spring that AFP “ is absolutely going to up the percentage of dollars that go into absentee and early voting.
” The group , which raked in $ 83 million in donations in 2018 , has plenty to spend .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ dozens of competitive congressional districts .
But Judicial Watch , PILF , the Honest Elections Project , and allied groups like True the Vote—which is recruiting ex-Navy SEALs to serve as GOP poll-watchers on Nov. 3—are delivering a contrary message : It ’ s perfectly safe to vote in person .
“ Don ’ t let the left scare you from voting on Election Day , ” Tom Fitton said on a Judicial Watch podcast on July 31 .
The same message continues to blast out on conservative media .
“ If people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ six feet , ” Fox host Jeanine Pirro said this summer , “ why can ’ t they go to the voting booth and distance six feet ?
” Is there a coherent strategy here , somehow ?
Do the clashing messages make any strategic sense ?
Perhaps not .
But some political observers suspect that Trump is setting up a way to delegitimize the results in November .
If more Republicans do turn out in person , their votes will be among those tallied first—creating a chance that Trump may lead on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the total vote , or less , is counted by then .
In that event , Jamelle Bouie wrote this summer in his New York Times column , “ There ’ s no mystery about what Donald Trump intends to do… .
First , he ’ ll claim victory .
Then , having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt , he ’ ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots .
He ’ ll have a team of lawyers challenging courts and ballots across the country.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as in 2016 , Trump has refused to say he ’ ll accept the results—unless , that is , they show him winning .
“ You don ’ t know until you see , ” he said this summer on Fox News .
“ It depends .
I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election , I really do.
” In November 2018 , when the Republican candidates for governor and senator in Florida held leads on election night that began to dissipate as the vote-counting continued , Trump telegraphed what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Florida election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere , and many ballots are missing or forged , ” he tweeted .
“ An honest vote count is no longer possible—ballots massively infected .
Must go with Election Night !
” Attorney General William Barr has indicated that the Department of Justice would have Trump ’ s back if he tries to shut down the count .
“ I think the people who want to experiment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … are playing with fire and are grossly irresponsible , ” Barr told Fox News ’ Mark Levin in August .
Sounding more like a Judicial Watch attorney than the attorney general of the United States , Barr called it “ scary ” that “ most of those mailings go to a lot of addresses where the people no longer live .
They ’ re misdirected .
And I think they will create a situation—they could easily create a situation where there ’ s going to be a contested election.
” That is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nightmare visions of Florida 2000 but on a national scale—and in a year that ’ s already been full of unrest .
Realistically , though , it ’ s also a far-fetched strategy born of desperation .
And there ’ s a much rosier scenario that is just as plausible as Bouie ’ s , if not more so .
Say this election proves to be less apocalyptic than Trump and the right are hoping—and say Trump is clearly a loser on election night .
The president ’ s defeat , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ begin to unravel the elaborate system of barriers to voting that Republicans have been erecting over the past decade .
If Democrats retake a majority in the U.S. Senate , the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act will surely be one of the first measures to pass , restoring protections and federal oversight to elections .
And if Republicans lose control of state houses they captured ( which they are poised to do in several battleground states ) , Democratic majorities can begin to reverse the race-based voting restrictions that the GOP has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Tea Party insurrection lifted them to unprecedented power in Congress and the states .
“ What we ’ ve had is the 21st century equivalent of the Mississippi Plan of 1890 , ” says Carol Anderson , the Emory University historian and best-selling author of One Person , One Vote .
That “ plan ” was the template for other states to “ redeem ” white supremacy after Reconstruction by disenfranchising Black men all over again , through tactics like poll taxes , literacy tests , and violent intimidation .
The 2010s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s been legislative evil genius , ” Anderson says .
“ And so Jim Crow.
” Anderson is a serious historian , so she ’ ll make no predictions .
But there is at least a fair chance that the latest manifestation of the Republicans ’ long and fraudulent voter-fraud campaign—the demonizing of remote-voting during a pandemic—will backfire on them in a lasting way .
The hollering won ’ t die down , of course ; Trump himself will make sure of that .
The voter-suppression industry—the Judicial Watches , the PILFs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Chief Justice John Roberts won ’ t suddenly start deciding in favor of voting rights .
But the more Americans grow accustomed to voting by mail , and the more they keep demanding that it be made easier and more reliable , the harder their votes will be to suppress or toss out .
Trump is right , after all , about one thing : Wherever remote voting becomes routine , turnout soars .
And we all know who loses then .

A Right Wing Watch Investigation
ON THE FIRST Tuesday in April, as the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic was becoming all too real, Americans got a scary glimpse of what Election Day in November might look like if the virus were still spreading. We also got a big, loud, ugly preview of the 2020 voting wars.
The state of Wisconsin had no business holding an election on April 7. Sixteen other states had bumped their primary dates back, hoping to give election officials time to adjust to the drastic new conditions and allow more voters to cast their ballots safely by mail. Governor Tony Evers had issued a statewide stay-at-home order. In Milwaukee alone, at least 51 people had already died from the new coronavirus. And so many poll workers were refusing to show up that the city, home to Wisconsin’s largest concentration of voters of color, would be hard-pressed to open even a handful of polling places, never mind the usual 180. “We are over our heads in chaos,” Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee’s election chief, told The Guardian a few days before the voting was slated to start.
Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee election chief. We are over our heads in chaos.
Evers, a Democrat, tried to push the election date to May 23 and send mail ballots to all registered Wisconsinites. But he waited too late. By the time Evers called the state legislature into emergency session the week before the polls were to open, asking legislators to approve the delay and green-light an all-mail ballot, President Donald Trump and his right-wing amen chorus had begun to paint voting by mail not as a public-health necessity during a pandemic, but instead as a Democratic plot to “rig” the 2020 elections—“perhaps the worst of all the scams perpetrated through the COVID nightmare,” as Trump fan Laura Ingraham put it to viewers of her Fox News Channel show.
In addition to the Democratic presidential primary that was to take place on that day, there was also an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“A lot of people cheat with mail-in voting,” the president said on April 4. “In Wisconsin what happened is I, through social media, put out a very strong endorsement of a Republican conservative judge, who’s an excellent brilliant judge, he’s a justice. And I hear what happened is his poll numbers went through the roof, and because of that, I think they delayed the election.”
So Wisconsin Republicans forced the show to go on. The Republican leaders of the state Assembly and Senate both gaveled in their special sessions, then gaveled them out within seconds. When the governor responded by issuing an executive order to delay the primary, the majority-Republican state Supreme Court stayed it on the night before the election.
Voting went smoothly enough in the state’s smaller counties and towns, where white Republicans predominate and polling places had no lines. But in the cities, it was an unholy mess. Lines were so long in Green Bay that some people couldn’t vote till after midnight. In Milwaukee, the scene was downright eerie; some poll workers wore makeshift hazmat suits fashioned from plastic bags. National Guard troops, hastily called in to serve as poll workers, dashed around with plastic bottles of disinfectant spray, wiping things down between voters. Local firefighters passed out hand sanitizer to the thousands who waited for hours in lines that stretched for blocks, far past the trail of orange traffic cones that had been set up to keep folks six feet apart. Outside Washington High School, one waiting voter, Jennifer Taft, summed it all up perfectly, holding up a hand-lettered sign reading: “THIS IS RIDICULOUS.”
“I’m disgusted,” Taft told a local reporter. “I requested an absentee ballot almost three weeks ago and never got it. I have a father dying from lung disease, and I have to risk my life and his just to exercise my right to vote.”
Statewide, overall turnout was higher than expected. Even in that compressed time period, 1.1 million of Wisconsin’s 3.3 million voters had sent in absentee ballots—five times the number of voters who did so in the 2016 primary. And when the votes were all tallied six days later, the Democratic Supreme Court challenger had won easily, giving the lie to Trump’s theory that Evers wanted to delay the election to prevent a GOP victory.
But the Republicans’ efforts to sew confusion and long lines in the cities had worked in certain ways: In Milwaukee, which saw historically low Black turnout in 2016 after a strict new Voter ID law went into effect, the primary vote was half what it had been four years earlier. “It was voter suppression on steroids,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez. “They tried to steal the election.”
Jennifer Taft, Milwaukee voter I have to risk my life just to exercise my right to vote.
The mail balloting hadn’t gone smoothly, either: Nearly 12,000 voters who’d requested absentee ballots, like Jennifer Taft, never got them. Three tubs full of absentee ballots that never reached voters were found in a mail center outside Milwaukee. And 23,000 absentee ballots sent in by voters—more than Trump’s margin of victory in the state in 2016—had been disqualified for technical problems. Here as elsewhere, Republican lawmakers had made the process as complicated and time-consuming as possible to keep mail voting down, including a requirement that a witness sign every ballot. Voters’ signatures had to match the signatures on file with the state; as in other states, it’s left to election volunteers and staffers, not handwriting experts, to decide whether the signatures match. Thousands of votes were tossed on this subjective basis. (In June, after the delayed New York primary, 30,000 votes from Brooklyn, one-quarter of the total, would be tossed out for similar reasons.)
The threat of robust turnout figures posed by mail-in voting had fully stirred the right-wing propaganda machine by now—and it had given them a fresh new story to tell about what they claimed was the looming threat of mass left-wing “voter fraud.” The same day Wisconsin’s primary results were announced, an apparently new group called the Honest Elections Project aired an Orwellian TV and digital ad across the country—a six-figure buy—casting what happened in Wisconsin as Democrats’ “brazen attempt to manipulate the election system for partisan advantage by exploiting the coronavirus pandemic.” It was, the narrator intoned, a sign of election-rigging to come: “The facts about the Wisconsin election: Record absentee voting. Five times more than 2016. Democrats didn’t think they could win so they tried lawsuits, changing the rules, even canceling the election. They create chaos. It’s wrong.”
The Honest Elections Project turned out to be a legal alias for the Judicial Education Project, a powerful dark-money PAC funded by the Donors Trust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund often referred to as the “dark money ATM” of the right, with such heavy-hitting benefactors as billionaire Charles Koch and the (Betsy) DeVos family. It was the brainchild of Leonard Leo, a Trump confidant who was instrumental in the choice and confirmations of the president’s Supreme Court nominees, and it would soon begin filing lawsuits seeking to block the expansion of remote voting, and other pandemic-inspired election reforms—using the same lead attorney, longtime Washington litigator William Consovoy, as the Trump campaign.
At least three other lavishly funded far-right groups—Judicial Watch, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and True the Vote—are also combining legal challenges with propaganda efforts designed to discredit, and disable, remote voting for November. The Republican National Committee issued a statement this spring promising to devote at least $20 million to such lawsuits as well. The messages they’re all promoting are identical to Trump’s rhetoric about the dangers of mail-in balloting and the Democrats’ purportedly cynical promotion of it to allegedly rig the election. Their combined resources and firepower adds up to the biggest coordinated effort to suppress votes in history. Until this year, battles over voting rules were mostly waged by Republican state lawmakers and right-wing legal firms not quite acceptable to the mainstream, cheered on by talk-radio shouters and extremist websites like The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart.
“You used to have these small-time, right-wing operations,” Mark Elias, a top Democratic litigator who’s working on several ongoing lawsuits, told The Washington Post in June. “Because Donald Trump has normalized all these crackpot theories about voter fraud, they’ve all now joined forces under the banner of the legitimate Republican establishment.”
All they want, they say, are the same old “fair” and “normal” elections that Trump keeps calling for. But the president, characteristically, had already given away the game before the Wisconsin primary lit the right wing on fire. On “Fox & Friends” during the week before that primary from hell, he’d warned the friendly hosts what would happen if voting by mail were allowed to metastasize: “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
THE CRUSADE TO suppress votes in the 2020 election began long before COVID-19 existed, and long before the pandemic led to a popular clamor for more voting by mail. Three weeks after his razor-thin victory in the Electoral College, still irked at hearing about Hillary Clinton’s edge in the popular vote, President-elect Trump issued a tweetstorm citing right-wing conspiracy theories. His chief claim, often to be repeated: “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
On stage at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Committee convention three months later, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, backed up Trump’s claims. “The left would have you believe that we have about 43 million aliens in this country, both lawful and unlawfully present,” he said. “And none of them vote!” The activists in the audience cheered and chuckled. “You know, under the Obama administration, they opposed Voter ID; they opposed the idea of even asking someone whether they were a citizen before they register to vote,” Fitton went on to say. “Why would you be opposed to that, other than maybe wanting to steal elections when necessary?” Cue applause.
Fitton also seconded Trump’s call for a “federal investigation into voter fraud,” promising that it would be “the most significant civil rights investigation in a generation,” because, he said, “We’re on the side of civil rights. We’re on the side of the civil rights of Americans who potentially are having their votes stolen from them by the thousands, if not millions, by illegal votes.” Getting the findings to back up those assertions would be a breeze, he promised. “It’s easy to figure out where there’s voter fraud,” Fitton said, “and obviously that’s why the leftist voters are screaming, because they’re afraid their gig is up.”
Not quite, as it transpired. That “investigation” was launched in May 2017, when Trump made appointments to his newly concocted Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which included top vote-suppression specialists Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state and anti-immigration zealot, and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation. But it didn’t prove so easy to find hard proof of the massive fraud they’d long been claiming. After eight months of trying, the commissioners dug up only scattered cases drawn from media reports, and the president disbanded the effort.
Stacey Abrams, Fair Fight founder This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.
But voter-suppression is now an industry unto itself, and Judicial Watch and its peers didn’t skip a beat. Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Judicial Watch and PILF sent 248 letters to state and local election officials across the country, threatening lawsuits if they didn’t undertake massive, aggressive “purges” of their voter rolls. “Your jurisdiction is in apparent violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act,” the letters claimed. The NVRA, known as the “Motor Voter Act,” was passed in 1993 to “expand voting opportunities” in various ways, including offering registration at driver’s license offices. It also required local elections offices to undertake “uniform, non-discriminatory maintenance” of their registration rolls, striking those who’d become ineligible—by dying, going to prison, or moving out of state.
Under previous administrations, the Justice Department monitored these purges and sometimes stepped in when they became overzealous and were clearly targeting voters of color. “The rationale of removing voters from the rolls to protect against fraud is nonsensical,” Stacey Abrams, who founded the voting-rights group Fair Fight after narrowly losing the Georgia governor’s race in 2018, told Mother Jones earlier this year. “This is a pretext for blocking voices they do not want to hear.”
The letters contained legal threats, but their primary purpose was to stoke publicity about voter fraud—and to raise the profiles of Fitton and J. Christian Adams, a former Department of Justice official who heads PILF and served on the ill-fated Election Integrity Commission. Adams is best known as the DOJ attorney who promoted a 2008 “voter intimidation” case against two members of a group that dubbed itself the New Black Panthers. On Election Day 2008, the two stationed themselves outside a predominantly white polling place in Philadelphia, one of them holding a nightstick. When Obama’s Justice Department declined to press charges, Adams loudly resigned and wrote a book called “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.” In lawsuits and legal threats targeting jurisdictions with large numbers of non-white voters, Adams first launched suits via the American Civil Rights Union (a right-wing group that fancies itself to be the analog to the American Civil Liberties Union), and then with PILF.
Judicial Watch and PILF got a few big victories out of their threats and lawsuits, in 2018 and again last year. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a Judicial Watch settlement agreement with Ohio and allowed a massive voter purge—a decision that opened the floodgates for more of the same, permitting states to strike voters who haven’t voted in recent elections. As 2020 began, counties in California and Kentucky were busy removing close to 2 million voters; ditto, Allegheny County, one of the largest Pennsylvania counties carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. In three other large Clinton-voting Pennsylvania counties Judicial Watch dragged into court this year, the group claimed an almost comically high number of “ineligible” voters—800,000 in all, which would amount to more than 65 percent of all registered voters in the counties. “We 100-percent dispute the claims,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, who was also sued, told state senators.
Most of this year’s election lawsuits are related to COVID-19—or, more precisely, they target attempts by states and municipalities to make voting easier and safer during the pandemic. The number of these cases is staggering: More than 200 were still percolating through the courts in mid-August. Many have been brought by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, Judicial Watch, PILF, and the Honest Elections Project, all of whom have the same agenda: Keep voting restrictions in place. Three more states have switched to all-mail elections this year: California, Nevada, and Vermont. When lawmakers in Nevada, where Trump lost by just 27,000 votes in 2016, approved all-mail voting in a special session on the first Sunday of August, Trump called it “an illegal late-night coup” on Twitter, with the promise, “See you in court!” Two days later, still fuming, he posted a tweet falsely stating that voting by mail would mean a “Rigged Election.” It became the first tweet flagged by Twitter as untrue. The same day, the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign, and Nevada Republican Party all filed suit against Nevada.
In most states, election officials and lawmakers have simply tried to ease restrictions that can make absentee voting difficult or confusing: early deadlines for requesting ballots, Election Day deadlines for having them returned or postmarked, requirements that witnesses or notaries sign the ballots, strictly limited forms of acceptable ID. In some cases, the question is whether vulnerability to COVID-19 counts as an “excuse” for needing a mail ballot. (Most states already allow no-excuse absentee voting, but a few—like emerging battleground Texas—do not.)
Justin Levitt, a Loyola University law professor who tracks all these cases, has not detected a pattern in the decisions. But as he’s noted, it’s already a win for right-wing organizations and the Republicans to keep elections officials tied up in courts—and election rules in a state of suspended uncertainty as states try, with chronically inadequate funding, to manage an election during a pandemic. “My usual election-cycle comment is that we’re trying to find enough duct tape to cover the holes in the bucket,” Levitt said recently. “This time, we’re trying to make the bucket out of duct tape.”
The uncertainty created by the lawsuits, combined with the disinformation about voting that will be plastered all over social media this fall, creates an indirect but powerful form of voter suppression in itself. “Voter suppression is a combination of things,” says Georgia state Rep. and voting-rights advocate Renitta Shannon. “It’s a chipping away of people either not being able to vote, or thinking it will be a major hassle. When people have a question about whether their vote is going to be counted, that [becomes] a reason not to vote.”
ON JUNE 5, Tom Fitton and J. Christian Adams were both invited to testify at a U.S. House hearing on “Protecting the Right to Vote During the COVID-19 Crisis.” It was another sign of how formerly fringe right-wing conspiracies had become thoroughly mainstreamed in Trump’s GOP. And it provided another platform to spread the falsehood that Democrats were using the pandemic to make real their fraudulent dreams. “It is now about five months until Election Day,” Fitton testified, “and the pandemic’s infection curve has flattened. Insisting now on all-mail-ballot elections seems less like a response to a health crisis and more like a partisan application of the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’”
Fitton’s coronavirus predictions would soon be disproved, but the notion of Democrats using mail ballots to commit grand theft in 2020—“using COVID to defraud the American people,” as Trump expressed it on the first night of the Republican National Convention—remains the central deceit of the right’s propaganda campaign. “The Democrats have cooked this thing up,” Rush Limbaugh bellowed in August, “because they don’t feel confident that they can win in a traditionally fair and normal election.”
In many places, the relative unfamiliarity of mail voting is a boon to the fear-mongering. And with folks on the right having been treated to years’ worth of “voter fraud” talk, they’d been conditioned to take it seriously. “When they talk about voter fraud,” says Tomas Lopez, executive director of the progressive group Democracy North Carolina, “they’re talking about race, of course. They’re lamenting the fact that those people get a vote.”
Across platforms—Fox News, talk radio, social media, presidential briefings—the narrative being served up about mail voting has been remarkably consistent in all its main plot points. It’s almost as if Judicial Watch teamed with the Trump campaign and sent out a bullet-point memo, which kicks off with “stealing and rigging” and proceeds, from there, to the following talking points:
Even more “illegals” get to vote. “Here’s a shocking things for your audience to consider,” senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, architect of the immigration policy that caged children at the U.S.-Mexico border, said in August on “Fox & Friends.” “Nobody who mails in a ballot has their identity confirmed; nobody checks to see if they’re even a U.S. citizen. Think about that. Any foreign national—talk about foreign election interference—can mail in a ballot, and nobody even verifies if they’re a citizen of the United States of America.” (In reality, every state verifies the identity of the person requesting the mail-in ballot.)
This summer, Judicial Watch bought at least 263 ads on Facebook (cost: $210,000) to drive home the same spurious claim delivered by Miller on Fox News. According to a tally from Media Matters for America, 144 of the ads, which were full of disinformation about “voter fraud,” claimed that “illegal aliens are voting,” while 119 got more specific, claiming that “25% of noncitizens are registered to vote.”
Ballots Are On the Loose. On May 1, Trump retweeted Mollie Hemingway, a writer for The Federalist, a right-wing publication, who had some “news” that sounded startling: “Nearly one in five of all absentee and mail-in-ballots between 2012 and 2018 remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission,” she wrote. Hemingway drew her figures from a new and scholarly looking report by PILF—J. Christian Adams’ organization—which claimed that 28 million absentee ballots had “gone missing” in recent election cycles. Those ballots represent a golden opportunity for mass-scale fraud, Adams said in a statement accompanying the PILF report—“28 million opportunties for someone to cheat.”
The “missing ballots” meme spread like wildfire. But as voting-rights advocates (and logical thinkers) pointed out, the ballots aren’t just floating around, waiting for noncitizens and Democrats to scoop them up and send them in; they simply hadn’t been returned by the voters who got them. Twelve million of the “loose” ballots, as they’re also called, had been sent by election officials in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state, where everyone who registers automatically receives one. About 30 percent of voters in those states typically don’t return their ballots in a given election. “Where are they now?” said Paul Gronke, a Reed College professor who runs the Early Voting Information Center, of the so-called “missing” ballots. “Most likely, in landfills.”
Democrats Are Harvesting Those Loose Ballots. Expect to hear several earfuls about “ballot harvesting” between now and November. It’s the hip, scary-sounding new catchphrase for voter-fraudsters, though the practice it describes is a routine feature of absentee voting in more than half the states: Basically, it just means that a third party can collect someone’s vote in its sealed envelope and hand-deliver it to an election office. The laws are meant to help people who live at great distances from polling places without transportation, or who are sick or shut in, to cast a vote. In March, Trump’s own ballot in the Florida primary was “harvested”—he gave it to an (unknown) third party, who delivered it directly to an elections office in Palm Beach. Nonetheless, as he tweeted on April 14, we must “GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD.”
Democratic workers sometimes organize “community collections,” leading right-wing pundits to peddle fantastical visions of thugs pounding on doors and demanding people’s blank ballots for harvesting. The proof? Well, in Paterson, N.J., this spring, a postal employee noticed something odd in a local post office five days before an all-mail primary: 347 completed ballots bundled together. They were part of a scheme for which four perpetrators, including one city council member, have all been charged with fraud. Amid the controversy, Paterson’s election board disqualified 19 percent of the ballots in the primary—which, trickling up from Gateway Pundit, a conspiracy theory website, to the West Wing, served as evidence of the fraudulent potential of “harvesting.” “Look at Patterson[sic], N.J.,” Trump tweeted. “20% of vote was corrupted!” In fact, election officials said that most of the uncounted ballots were tossed out for the usual technical reasons—mainly for signatures that didn’t appear to match those on file. The only example of large-scale ballot harvesting occurred in a North Carolina congressional race in the 2018 midterms. It was organized by a paid GOP operative who’s facing both state and federal charges.
“THIS IS GOING TO BE the greatest election disaster in history,” Trump promised reporters in the middle of yet another rant against vote-by-mail in August. He failed to mention how hard he and his right-wing allies were fighting to make his apocalyptic predictions about the election come true—or how much his prospects for victory may hinge on it.
The right’s doomsaying about chaos and fraud at the polls have definitely penetrated the national consciousness. In August, a Pew poll found that nearly half of registered U.S. voters expect to “have difficulties casting a ballot” this year. That might not sound surprising—but it’s a sea change from 2018, when 85 percent expected voting to be “easy.”
When it comes to mail voting in particular, however, it’s only Republicans who are moved by the propaganda. When Pew asked Trump supporters how they planned to vote, 80 percent said they’d do it in person, while just 17 percent would vote by mail. By contrast, most Biden supporters—58 percent—said they’d be voting remotely.
Given those results, it’s no surprise that, in the 2020 battleground states, Democrats are outpacing Republicans in absentee ballot requests. Far more, in fact. Four years ago in Florida, Democrats requested 6,000 more absentee ballots than Republicans; by the end of August this year, ballot requests by Democrats had surpassed those from Republicans by 600,000. In North Carolina, where absentee voting has always been sparse, 177,000 Democrats had asked for ballots compared to 50,000 Republicans. “Everybody’s up,” said Michael Bitzer, a politics professor at Catawba College. “It’s just that Democrats and unaffiliated are through the roof, and Republicans are not even on the second floor.”
This disparity, which is consistent in other battleground states, has saner Republican officials and activists deeply worried. What if the anti-mail campaign ends up backfiring, and suppressing their votes? And with the virus likely to still be raging come November, will GOP voters—seniors, in particular—actually take the risk to show up in person to vote? “What the president is doing when he keeps saying that this mail-in balloting thing is fraudulent, he’s scaring our own voters from using a legit way to cast your ballot,” Rohn Bishop, chair of the Fond du Lac County GOP in Wisconsin, told USA Today. “We’re kind of hurting ourselves.” When he tries to talk up absentee voting to fellow Republicans, Bishop said, he gets a lot of flak that he’s “ignoring voter fraud.” It’s not easy to argue when the Republican president keeps calling vote-by-mail “the greatest scam in history.”
The weird thing, said Bishop and other Republican state leaders, is that while the president continues to slam mail voting on a daily basis, the Trump campaign and RNC have told them to promote it. “I’m out there pushing it at the request of the campaign, because they asked me [to] do that,” said Lawrence Tabas, chair of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, which Trump carried by less than 1 percent in 2016—and where Democrats have made 68 percent of all mail-ballot requests, while Republicans requested just 24 percent. “And then the president is publicly opposed to it,” Tabas added. “Let’s put it this way; it’s made my job more challenging.” The Pennsylvania GOP website urges Republicans to “Vote Safe: By mail. From home.”
GOP voters in California also heard that “safe, from home” message before they voted in this spring’s primary—from two of Trump’s family members, no less. Both daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Donald Jr. recorded robocalls in April urging mail votes for a Republican congressional candidate in a special election. “Nancy Pelosi and liberal Democrats are counting on you to sit on the sidelines this election, but you can prove them wrong,” Lara Trump said in one call. “You can safely and securely vote for Mike Garcia by returning your mail-in ballot by May 12.”
Both Lara Trump and Donald Jr. recorded robocalls in April urging mail votes for a Republican congressional candidate in a special election.
One major group on the right, Americans for Prosperity, is flexing its considerable muscle to counter the president’s message and urge right-wing voters to take advantage of either early or absentee voting this fall. Tim Phillips, president of the “grasstops” group, which underwrote the Tea Party movement, told Politico this spring that AFP “is absolutely going to up the percentage of dollars that go into absentee and early voting.” The group, which raked in $83 million in donations in 2018, has plenty to spend. It plans to target conservative voters in dozens of competitive congressional districts.
But Judicial Watch, PILF, the Honest Elections Project, and allied groups like True the Vote—which is recruiting ex-Navy SEALs to serve as GOP poll-watchers on Nov. 3—are delivering a contrary message: It’s perfectly safe to vote in person. “Don’t let the left scare you from voting on Election Day,” Tom Fitton said on a Judicial Watch podcast on July 31. The same message continues to blast out on conservative media. “If people can go to Home Depot and distance six feet,” Fox host Jeanine Pirro said this summer, “why can’t they go to the voting booth and distance six feet?”
Is there a coherent strategy here, somehow? Do the clashing messages make any strategic sense? Perhaps not. But some political observers suspect that Trump is setting up a way to delegitimize the results in November. If more Republicans do turn out in person, their votes will be among those tallied first—creating a chance that Trump may lead on election night, even if only half of the total vote, or less, is counted by then. In that event, Jamelle Bouie wrote this summer in his New York Times column, “There’s no mystery about what Donald Trump intends to do… . First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have a team of lawyers challenging courts and ballots across the country.”
It’s certainly plausible. Just as in 2016, Trump has refused to say he’ll accept the results—unless, that is, they show him winning. “You don’t know until you see,” he said this summer on Fox News. “It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do.”
In November 2018, when the Republican candidates for governor and senator in Florida held leads on election night that began to dissipate as the vote-counting continued, Trump telegraphed what he might say this November: “The Florida election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” he tweeted. “An honest vote count is no longer possible—ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Attorney General William Barr has indicated that the Department of Justice would have Trump’s back if he tries to shut down the count. “I think the people who want to experiment with different ways of voting right now … are playing with fire and are grossly irresponsible,” Barr told Fox News’ Mark Levin in August. Sounding more like a Judicial Watch attorney than the attorney general of the United States, Barr called it “scary” that “most of those mailings go to a lot of addresses where the people no longer live. They’re misdirected. And I think they will create a situation—they could easily create a situation where there’s going to be a contested election.”
That is chilling to hear. It stirs up nightmare visions of Florida 2000 but on a national scale—and in a year that’s already been full of unrest. Realistically, though, it’s also a far-fetched strategy born of desperation. And there’s a much rosier scenario that is just as plausible as Bouie’s, if not more so.
Say this election proves to be less apocalyptic than Trump and the right are hoping—and say Trump is clearly a loser on election night. The president’s defeat, and the pandemic-inspired rise of mail voting, could begin to unravel the elaborate system of barriers to voting that Republicans have been erecting over the past decade. If Democrats retake a majority in the U.S. Senate, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act will surely be one of the first measures to pass, restoring protections and federal oversight to elections. And if Republicans lose control of state houses they captured (which they are poised to do in several battleground states), Democratic majorities can begin to reverse the race-based voting restrictions that the GOP has been cooking up with relentless creativity since the Tea Party insurrection lifted them to unprecedented power in Congress and the states.
“What we’ve had is the 21st century equivalent of the Mississippi Plan of 1890,” says Carol Anderson, the Emory University historian and best-selling author of One Person, One Vote. That “plan” was the template for other states to “redeem” white supremacy after Reconstruction by disenfranchising Black men all over again, through tactics like poll taxes, literacy tests, and violent intimidation. The 2010s were eerily similar. “It’s been legislative evil genius,” Anderson says. “And so Jim Crow.”
Anderson is a serious historian, so she’ll make no predictions. But there is at least a fair chance that the latest manifestation of the Republicans’ long and fraudulent voter-fraud campaign—the demonizing of remote-voting during a pandemic—will backfire on them in a lasting way. The hollering won’t die down, of course; Trump himself will make sure of that. The voter-suppression industry—the Judicial Watches, the PILFs, the Honest Elections Projects—won’t disappear. Chief Justice John Roberts won’t suddenly start deciding in favor of voting rights. But the more Americans grow accustomed to voting by mail, and the more they keep demanding that it be made easier and more reliable, the harder their votes will be to suppress or toss out. Trump is right, after all, about one thing: Wherever remote voting becomes routine, turnout soars. And we all know who loses then.


rightwingwatch--2020-09-30--Jon Hamill Claims Trump Administration Considering Jim Bakker’s Home for Pregnant Women as National

Jon Hamill Claims Trump Administration Considering Jim Bakker’s Home for Pregnant Women as National ‘Prototype’

Jon and Jolene Hamill of Lamplighter Ministries appeared on “ The Jim Bakker Show ” Tuesday , where Jon reported that he was in touch with a “ government leader ” in the Trump administration about using the Bakkers ’ home for pregnant women as a national “ prototype , ” presumably for when legal abortion is outlawed after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and the subsequent overturning of Roe v. Wade .
Jon Hamill , who previously worked for Cindy Jacobs and Mike Bickle but now focuses on ministering in the halls of power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bakker ’ s show to promote his new book , written with his wife , “ White House Watchmen : New Era Prayer Strategies to Shape the Future of Our Nation.
” During the program , which was filmed in the wake of the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died , Jon said that he had just been speaking with leaders in the Trump administration about how to prepare to care “ for the babies that will be coming our way ” in the nation “ as we see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hamill said Lori ’ s House , a program started by Bakker ’ s Morningside Ministry to offer a “ safe , supportive home for pregnant women in difficult situations , ” could serve as a “ prototype ” for a national program .
“ It ’ s extraordinary to see history unfold before our very eyes , ” he said .
“ I was just on the phone with a government leader .
Jim and Lori , this is so important—your Lori ’ s House is a prototype for what is needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this shift from abortion to life , we ’ re going to have to have prototypes .
The leaders right now in the Trump administration are looking for prototypes for caring for the babies that will be coming our way .
And the big question for the body of Christ , especially , is will you open your arms and your hearts to be a father and a mother to these children ?
”

Jon and Jolene Hamill of Lamplighter Ministries appeared on “The Jim Bakker Show” Tuesday, where Jon reported that he was in touch with a “government leader” in the Trump administration about using the Bakkers’ home for pregnant women as a national “prototype,” presumably for when legal abortion is outlawed after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and the subsequent overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Jon Hamill, who previously worked for Cindy Jacobs and Mike Bickle but now focuses on ministering in the halls of power in Washington, D.C., appeared on Bakker’s show to promote his new book, written with his wife, “White House Watchmen: New Era Prayer Strategies to Shape the Future of Our Nation.” During the program, which was filmed in the wake of the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, Jon said that he had just been speaking with leaders in the Trump administration about how to prepare to care “for the babies that will be coming our way” in the nation “as we see this shift from abortion to life.”
Hamill said Lori’s House, a program started by Bakker’s Morningside Ministry to offer a “safe, supportive home for pregnant women in difficult situations,” could serve as a “prototype” for a national program.
“It’s extraordinary to see history unfold before our very eyes,” he said. “I was just on the phone with a government leader. Jim and Lori, this is so important—your Lori’s House is a prototype for what is needed in this hour because as we see this shift from abortion to life, we’re going to have to have prototypes. The leaders right now in the Trump administration are looking for prototypes for caring for the babies that will be coming our way. And the big question for the body of Christ, especially, is will you open your arms and your hearts to be a father and a mother to these children?”


rightwingwatch--2020-09-30--Jentezen Franklin Wants Conservative Christians to Get Mad, Claims Religious Freedom Is at Stake in

Jentezen Franklin Wants Conservative Christians to Get Mad, Claims Religious Freedom Is at Stake in Election

Jentezen Franklin , an Atlanta-area megachurch pastor and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump , sent supporters an email Wednesday morning to pass along what he called “ a message burning in my spirit.
” Franklin appears at Trump campaign events and uses his media platforms to push the religious right ’ s fear-mongering claims that religious liberty in America will not survive if Trump is defeated , and on Wednesday , he urged conservative Christians to get mad about it .
Wednesday ’ s email links to a two-minute video Franklin posted on his blog Tuesday under the heading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can change the course of history.
” The video appears to be clipped from a sermon entitled “ Pray , Fast , Vote.
” Franklin tells his listeners to get angry : We are in a state of siege in our country , and it ’ s time to do something about it .
We must get mad enough and outraged enough , not at people , but at what is happening to our nation , at what is happening to our society , our cities , our nation—that we unite , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and we pull it in .
“ The church is the only answer , ” said Franklin , adding , “ We can not be silent anymore.
” He continued : We can not be quiet anymore .
We can not sit on the sidelines and let another election come around , and the body of Christ just sit there and watch what ’ s happening to our religious liberty , and our freedom .
And I ’ m telling you , we are watching our nation , with its hands on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ever we needed to pray , and if ever we needed to not vote Democrat or Republican , but vote who is nearest to what this book [ the Bible ] says … And you can sit back and say , “ Well , I don ’ t like either one of them.
” They ’ re both flawed , but just figure , who is pro-life because the Bible is pro-life ?
Who is pro-marriage between a man and a woman , because the Bible is ?
Who is religious , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how we vote , according to God ’ s word , not accord—my highest allegiance is to the King of Kings and the Lord of lords .
And his word has not changed .
Culture has , America has , but this book has not .
And when you stand before God , he ’ s gon na judge you according to this book .
This is not a game , this is the Bible .
And it ’ s the truth .
The hands of America are on the threshold of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the conservative Christian site The Stream , “ Nov .
3 , 2020 represents the election of a lifetime , as well as a critical moment to speak up .
If you don ’ t , it ’ s only a matter of time until ‘ speaking up ’ becomes a thing of the past .
If I were you , I ’ d vote like the First Amendment itself was on the ballot.
” Franklin appeared at an Evangelicals for Trump event in July , where he focused his remarks on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Speak now or forever hold your peace .
You won ’ t have another chance .
You won ’ t have freedom of religion .
You won ’ t have freedom of speech .
”

Jentezen Franklin, an Atlanta-area megachurch pastor and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, sent supporters an email Wednesday morning to pass along what he called “a message burning in my spirit.” Franklin appears at Trump campaign events and uses his media platforms to push the religious right’s fear-mongering claims that religious liberty in America will not survive if Trump is defeated, and on Wednesday, he urged conservative Christians to get mad about it.
Wednesday’s email links to a two-minute video Franklin posted on his blog Tuesday under the heading, “United and anointed, we can change the course of history.” The video appears to be clipped from a sermon entitled “Pray, Fast, Vote.” Franklin tells his listeners to get angry:
We are in a state of siege in our country, and it’s time to do something about it. We must get mad enough and outraged enough, not at people, but at what is happening to our nation, at what is happening to our society, our cities, our nation—that we unite, and we take the hands of America, and we pull it in.
“The church is the only answer,” said Franklin, adding, “We cannot be silent anymore.” He continued:
We cannot be quiet anymore. We cannot sit on the sidelines and let another election come around, and the body of Christ just sit there and watch what’s happening to our religious liberty, and our freedom. And I’m telling you, we are watching our nation, with its hands on the threshold of the church, and if ever we needed to pray, and if ever we needed to not vote Democrat or Republican, but vote who is nearest to what this book [the Bible] says … And you can sit back and say, “Well, I don’t like either one of them.” They’re both flawed, but just figure, who is pro-life because the Bible is pro-life? Who is pro-marriage between a man and a woman, because the Bible is? Who is religious, who is for religious freedom? This is how we vote, according to God’s word, not accord—my highest allegiance is to the King of Kings and the Lord of lords. And his word has not changed. Culture has, America has, but this book has not. And when you stand before God, he’s gonna judge you according to this book. This is not a game, this is the Bible. And it’s the truth. The hands of America are on the threshold of the church.
In September, Franklin wrote at the conservative Christian site The Stream, “Nov. 3, 2020 represents the election of a lifetime, as well as a critical moment to speak up. If you don’t, it’s only a matter of time until ‘speaking up’ becomes a thing of the past. If I were you, I’d vote like the First Amendment itself was on the ballot.”
Franklin appeared at an Evangelicals for Trump event in July, where he focused his remarks on the Supreme Court and warned conservative Christians, “Speak now or forever hold your peace. You won’t have another chance. You won’t have freedom of religion. You won’t have freedom of speech.”


rightwingwatch--2020-09-30--What You Need to Know About the Proud Boys, the Hate Group Trump Told to ‘Stand Back and Stand By’

The question should ’ ve been an easy one .
At the first debate between the major-party presidential candidates Tuesday night , Fox News host Chris Wallace asked President Donald Trump whether he would denounce white supremacists ; instead of offering an unequivocal “ No , ” Trump told the Proud Boys hate group to “ stand back and stand by.
” The Proud Boys , an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center , has a long history of violence , hateful rhetoric , and coziness with GOP stars and operatives , most notably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convicted felon Roger Stone .
The group , founded by Canadian media personality Gavin McInnes and currently led by Enrique Tarrio , held a Sept .
26 rally in Portland , Oregon , prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency .
Although the rally attracted far fewer attendees than anticipated , the event was spun by Tarrio with expressions of pride in having not incited violence—an effort to make their group more palatable .
The group is , of course , better known for its members ’ attendance at the 2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Charlottesville , Virginia , in which counterprotester Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist .
At Tuesday ’ s debate , which devolved into chaos with Trump interrupting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at every turn , Wallace turned to a question about race , policing , and riots , and challenged the president to condemn white supremacist and militia groups .
“ You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out antifa and other extremist groups , ” Wallace said .
“ Are you willing to condemn white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to stand down and not to add to the violence in these cities as we saw in Kenosha and in Portland ?
” “ Give me a name , ” Trump said , to which Biden called out “ Proud Boys.
” “ Proud Boys , stand back and stand by , but I ’ ll tell you what , somebody ’ s got ta do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem .
This is a left-wing problem , ” Trump said .
Different subgroups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ socialism , antifa ( short-hand for anti-fascist demonstrators ) , baseless warnings of a “ rigged ” election and either called for violence or hinted at it—from radical right-wing commentator Josh Bernstein calling for Ilhan Omar to be executed for alleged ballot harvesting ( for which there ’ s no verifiable evidence ) , to right-wing pastor Rick Joyner calling on military veterans to head up Christian militias to fight against the “ tyranny of Marxism.
” So perhaps it shouldn ’ t be surprising that the president who said that there were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” of a 2017 white supremacist melee would call on a hate group to “ stand by ” and wait to be called on in the same debate he fear-mongered about anti-fascist activists , ballot harvesting , and unfounded claims of mail carriers selling ballots and dumping them into a river .
On the social media platform Telegram , the hate group took Trump ’ s comments as marching orders .
“ Trump basically said to go fuck them up !
this makes me so happy , ” wrote Joe Biggs , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA…well sir !
we ’ re ready !
” Before the end of the night , the self-described “ western chauvinist ” group had shared an image with the president ’ s words as a slogan around their logo .
The Proud Boys are well-known for showing up at events for left-wing causes , where they often attempt to escalate and incite violence .
And though the group claims no connection to the racist “ alt-right , ” Proud Boys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2018 after its members assaulted people who protested a McInnes speech to the New York Metropolitan Republican Club ) , seems to have an affinity for Nazis .
On McInnes ’ web broadcast program CRTV , he has hosted countless white supremacists and bigots in favorable contexts .
In 2018 , he told listeners to his web broadcast show that he believed it should be considered a hate crime if a person is called a “ Nazi ” while they are being hit .
Earlier that year , Right Wing Watch ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , McInnes said , “ I want violence .
I want punching in the face .
I ’ m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough [ protesters ] .
” As Holt reported then , “ The qualifier for the highest rank of Proud Boy—known as the ‘ Fourth Degree ’ —necessitates entering a physical conflict for their cause .
Members of the Proud Boys have joked about wanting to shoot and kill ‘ antifa.
’ ” Now the group is emboldened by the incumbent president , who refuses to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he will respect the Constitution ’ s prescription for a peaceful transfer of power .

Analysis
The question should’ve been an easy one. At the first debate between the major-party presidential candidates Tuesday night, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked President Donald Trump whether he would denounce white supremacists; instead of offering an unequivocal “No,” Trump told the Proud Boys hate group to “stand back and stand by.”
The Proud Boys, an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has a long history of violence, hateful rhetoric, and coziness with GOP stars and operatives, most notably Trump confidant, Republican fixer, and convicted felon Roger Stone. The group, founded by Canadian media personality Gavin McInnes and currently led by Enrique Tarrio, held a Sept. 26 rally in Portland, Oregon, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency. Although the rally attracted far fewer attendees than anticipated, the event was spun by Tarrio with expressions of pride in having not incited violence—an effort to make their group more palatable. The group is, of course, better known for its members’ attendance at the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which counterprotester Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist.
At Tuesday’s debate, which devolved into chaos with Trump interrupting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at every turn, Wallace turned to a question about race, policing, and riots, and challenged the president to condemn white supremacist and militia groups.
“You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out antifa and other extremist groups,” Wallace said. “Are you willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and say they need to stand down and not to add to the violence in these cities as we saw in Kenosha and in Portland?”
“Give me a name,” Trump said, to which Biden called out “Proud Boys.”
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, somebody’s gotta do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem,” Trump said.
Different subgroups of the extreme right have fear-mongered about socialism, antifa (short-hand for anti-fascist demonstrators), baseless warnings of a “rigged” election and either called for violence or hinted at it—from radical right-wing commentator Josh Bernstein calling for Ilhan Omar to be executed for alleged ballot harvesting (for which there’s no verifiable evidence), to right-wing pastor Rick Joyner calling on military veterans to head up Christian militias to fight against the “tyranny of Marxism.”
So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the president who said that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a 2017 white supremacist melee would call on a hate group to “stand by” and wait to be called on in the same debate he fear-mongered about anti-fascist activists, ballot harvesting, and unfounded claims of mail carriers selling ballots and dumping them into a river.
On the social media platform Telegram, the hate group took Trump’s comments as marching orders.
“Standing by sir,” Tarrio wrote.
“Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy,” wrote Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader. “President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA…well sir! we’re ready!”
Before the end of the night, the self-described “western chauvinist” group had shared an image with the president’s words as a slogan around their logo.
The Proud Boys are well-known for showing up at events for left-wing causes, where they often attempt to escalate and incite violence.
And though the group claims no connection to the racist “alt-right,” Proud Boys founder McInnes (who abandoned the group in 2018 after its members assaulted people who protested a McInnes speech to the New York Metropolitan Republican Club), seems to have an affinity for Nazis. On McInnes’ web broadcast program CRTV, he has hosted countless white supremacists and bigots in favorable contexts.
In 2018, he told listeners to his web broadcast show that he believed it should be considered a hate crime if a person is called a “Nazi” while they are being hit. Earlier that year, Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt reported that in 2016, McInnes said, “I want violence. I want punching in the face. I’m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough [protesters].”
As Holt reported then, “The qualifier for the highest rank of Proud Boy—known as the ‘Fourth Degree’—necessitates entering a physical conflict for their cause. Members of the Proud Boys have joked about wanting to shoot and kill ‘antifa.’”
Now the group is emboldened by the incumbent president, who refuses to say whether, should he lose the election, he will respect the Constitution’s prescription for a peaceful transfer of power.


rightwingwatch--2020-10-01--Right Wing Round-Up: Save The Children

Right Wing Round-Up: Save The Children

ALL donations 3X-MATCHED by 12/31 to save our democracy !
Every day , the reporters and researchers of Right Wing @ @ @ @ @ and deeds of right-wing leaders and the far-right players who fueled Trump 's rise to @ @ @ @ @ him there .
Our work is read daily and used by major media outlets , @ @ @ @ @ citizens like you .
And we do it all without ads ; as a project @ @ @ @ @ Way , we rely on your donations to keep us raking the mud .
Right @ @ @ @ @ key PFAW constituency , and we depend on your support during the year-end giving season @ @ @ @ @ content flowing .
Please show your support today and your year-end donation will be TRIPLE @ @ @ @ @ our dedicated donors .

For over the past 15 years, Right Wing Watch has monitored, exposed, and disrupted right-wing extremists across the country.
As their influence continues to grow, our work becomes even more important – as does your support.
Please make a donation now to keep this critical work going and help support our end of month fundraising goal.


rightwingwatch--2020-10-01--Right Wing Bonus Tracks: An Innocent Men’s Fraternity


rightwingwatch--2020-10-01--Dave Daubenmire Suggests Joe Biden Is ‘Not Even a Human Being’

Radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire joined right-wing conspiracy theorist Sheila Zilinsky on her podcast Thursday , where he suggested that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is “ not even a human being.
” Daubenmire , who has said in the past that the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff are either demon-possessed or actual demons in human form , appeared on Zilinsky ’ s podcast to offer his insights into Tuesday night ’ s presidential debate .
Daubenmire kicked things off declaring that Biden is “ soulless ” and possibly not even a human .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a human being , ” Daubenmire said .
“ It ’ s like there ’ s nothing inside there.
” “ You look deeply into the eyes of Joe last night , and , boy , I just [ don ’ t know ] , ” he added .
“ One of the listeners to my own show said today—and Sheila , you can go back and look at this—there ’ s no aura around Joe Biden .
He ’ s just kind of there , you know ?
So , you have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speaking through that guy ?
Because he ’ s there , he ’ s looking in the camera , he ’ s saying stuff , but he ’ s basically emotionless .
There ’ s something supernatural , Sheila , that ’ s happening in the governmental realm that I don ’ t think the average person—certainly even the average Christian—has any concept of what it is.
” “ I think a lot of people have noticed this over the years , ” Zilinsky agreed .
“ Are they so full of demons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cloning ?
Is it some kind of beast-tech that the vaccines warp everybody into ?
I mean , there ’ s a lot of nefarious things going on concurrently , isn ’ t there ?
”

Radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire joined right-wing conspiracy theorist Sheila Zilinsky on her podcast Thursday, where he suggested that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is “not even a human being.”
Daubenmire, who has said in the past that the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff are either demon-possessed or actual demons in human form, appeared on Zilinsky’s podcast to offer his insights into Tuesday night’s presidential debate. Daubenmire kicked things off declaring that Biden is “soulless” and possibly not even a human.
“It’s like he’s not even a human being,” Daubenmire said. “It’s like there’s nothing inside there.”
“You look deeply into the eyes of Joe last night, and, boy, I just [don’t know],” he added. “One of the listeners to my own show said today—and Sheila, you can go back and look at this—there’s no aura around Joe Biden. He’s just kind of there, you know? So, you have to ask yourself what or who is speaking through that guy? Because he’s there, he’s looking in the camera, he’s saying stuff, but he’s basically emotionless. There’s something supernatural, Sheila, that’s happening in the governmental realm that I don’t think the average person—certainly even the average Christian—has any concept of what it is.”
“I think a lot of people have noticed this over the years,” Zilinsky agreed. “Are they so full of demons, or is it some kind of cloning? Is it some kind of beast-tech that the vaccines warp everybody into? I mean, there’s a lot of nefarious things going on concurrently, isn’t there?”
“There is, Sheila,” Daubenmire responded.


rightwingwatch--2020-10-01--Brenden Dilley Hails Trump’s ‘Brilliant’ Strategy to Turn the First Presidential Debate Into a ‘Shit

Brenden Dilley Hails Trump’s ‘Brilliant’ Strategy to Turn the First Presidential Debate Into a ‘Shit Show’

MAGA “ life coach , ” Trump-cultist , and proudly amoral right-wing broadcaster Brenden Dilley offered up his expert analysis of the first presidential debate during his livestream program Wednesday , insisting that President Donald Trump intentionally turned the debate into a “ shit show ” in order to show that Joe Biden does not possess the proper temperament to be president .
In Dilley ’ s reasoning , the current president of the United States intentionally turning a debate into a disastrous “ mudslinging contest ” to prove that his challenger is unfit to be president is hailed was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was brilliant because it worked , ” Dilley said .
“ POTUS got Joe Biden to call him a clown , to call him a racist , he kept telling President Trump , ‘ Shut up.
’ This is exactly what he was aiming for , to rattle Joe ’ s cage and show America that he doesn ’ t have the temperament to be president of the United States.
” “ When you think about who won the debate , I want you to ask yourself a simple question : Who made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked .
“ Who came out of the gate trying to get this thing into a mudslinging contest ?
If your answer is President Donald J. Trump , then you have to assume that this was his debate strategy.
” “ This was his debate strategy : Get these two fuckos into the mud with me , ” Dilley said , referring to Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace .
“ He worked tirelessly in the first 15 minutes to get them to do it , and they both took the bait .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If you thought last night went in Biden ’ s favor because he was more level-headed , you literally don ’ t know what the fuck you ’ re talking about.
” “ President Trump wanted it to be a mudslinging contest , ” he continued .
“ If you finished the night going , ‘ God , that was a disaster , ’ it ’ s perfect !
That means Trump got them to do exactly what he wanted them to do .
”

MAGA “life coach,” Trump-cultist, and proudly amoral right-wing broadcaster Brenden Dilley offered up his expert analysis of the first presidential debate during his livestream program Wednesday, insisting that President Donald Trump intentionally turned the debate into a “shit show” in order to show that Joe Biden does not possess the proper temperament to be president.
In Dilley’s reasoning, the current president of the United States intentionally turning a debate into a disastrous “mudslinging contest” to prove that his challenger is unfit to be president is hailed was a staggeringly ingenious strategy.
“It was brilliant because it worked,” Dilley said. “POTUS got Joe Biden to call him a clown, to call him a racist, he kept telling President Trump, ‘Shut up.’ This is exactly what he was aiming for, to rattle Joe’s cage and show America that he doesn’t have the temperament to be president of the United States.”
“When you think about who won the debate, I want you to ask yourself a simple question: Who made it a shit show?” Dilley asked. “Who came out of the gate trying to get this thing into a mudslinging contest? If your answer is President Donald J. Trump, then you have to assume that this was his debate strategy.”
“This was his debate strategy: Get these two fuckos into the mud with me,” Dilley said, referring to Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace. “He worked tirelessly in the first 15 minutes to get them to do it, and they both took the bait. They got into the mud with Trump. If you thought last night went in Biden’s favor because he was more level-headed, you literally don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“President Trump wanted it to be a mudslinging contest,” he continued. “If you finished the night going, ‘God, that was a disaster,’ it’s perfect! That means Trump got them to do exactly what he wanted them to do.”


rightwingwatch--2020-10-02--Right Wing Round-Up: 17 Is the Magic Number


rightwingwatch--2020-10-02--Right Wing Bonus Tracks: We Are All Going to Die