thebulwark--2020-07-28--Electoral ‘Chaos’ in Pennsylvania?

Electoral ‘Chaos’ in Pennsylvania?

Quit asking President Trump if he will contest the 2020 election .
He already is .
On Sunday afternoon , President Trump returned to one of his favorite conspiracies , tweeting that “ the 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed to take place , & everyone knows it.
” Meanwhile , his lawyers are suing Pennsylvania—a swing state that Trump won by only 44,292 votes in 2016—over its mail-in system .
Last month , the Trump campaign launched a federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania and the election boards of all all its 67 counties .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ undermining ballot security through unmonitored by-mail voting ” and choosing “ a path that jeopardizes election security and will lead—and has already led—to the disenfranchisement of voters , questions about the accuracy of election results , and ultimately chaos heading into the upcoming November 3 , 2020 General Election.
” Specifically , the Trump campaign and the Republican co-plaintiffs are objecting to changes that Pennsylvania made , on a bipartisan basis , last year to allow all Pennsylvanians to vote remotely , via ballots that can be returned by mail or to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of those changes , the secretary of state issued guidance in January that said counties “ may provide for other secure ballot collection locations that the county deems appropriate to accommodate in-person return of voted mail-in and absentee ballots.
” The guidance also instructed parties to contact the Department for further guidance about how to use “ secure ballot collection receptacle [ s ] .
.
.
designed for this specific purpose.
” These are commonly known as “ drop boxes , ” which several other states also permit for ballot collection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But President Trump claims he sees something nefarious afoot .
The Republicans ’ complaint states , “ This is all a direct result of Defendants ’ hazardous , hurried , and illegal implementation of unmonitored mail-in voting which provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting , manipulate or destroy ballots , manufacture duplicitous votes , and sow chaos.
” If you didn ’ t catch it the first two times they mentioned it , the operative word is chaos .
Part of the “ chaos ” is real and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s decision to extend the deadline for mailed-in ballots to arrive at election offices in six counties , where a state of emergency was declared in response to civil unrest and protests over the death of George Floyd .
“ The Governor of the Commonwealth issued an Executive Order the day before the June 2 , 2020 Primary Election changing the rules of mail-in balloting , but only for some counties and not all , ” the suit reads .
If any governor tries to change election deadlines on such short notice when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall , you can pretty much bet that a partisan nuclear explosion will follow .
But what are we supposed to make of the Trump campaign ’ s arguments against mail-in ballots and drop boxes ?
What does it mean ?
“ These are attacks on the mechanism of voting that have worked for many years in other states , ” said Suzanne Almeida , former executive director of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and currently interim director of Common Cause Pennsylvania .
While the idea of ballot drop boxes might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t used them , they are growing in popularity .
In Denver , Colorado , one of the nation ’ s five vote-by-mail states , 80 percent of the people who returned their ballots in 2016 did so by depositing their vote into a secure ballot drop box .
The city posted a breakdown of the results , even ranking its “ Top Performing 24-Hour Drop Boxes.
” ( If you ’ re wondering , the most-used spot was the Denver Museum of Nature and Science . )
In Washington state , another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ located at various places , such as libraries , shopping centers , police departments , and schools .
As COVID-19 fears rose last spring , more states expanded absentee voting rules and sought ways to install drop boxes to avoid unnecessarily exposing poll workers and voters to the virus .
Wisconsin got particularly creative .
In March , the state elections commission issued a memo that mail slots at municipal facilities where residents submit tax or utility payments could be used to return ballots , as long as those slots were regularly monitored @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ book return slots at municipal libraries ” be used .
The adoption of drop boxes didn ’ t appear to be a Democrat or a Republican idea , either .
Georgia ’ s state election board approved the use of drop boxes for its June 9 primary , provided they were located on government property , monitored by video cameras , and securely fastened in a way to prevent ballot tampering , damage , or removal .
In Wayne County , Michigan , officials moved to install 60 drop boxes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last month .
In Ohio , state Democratic party chairman David Pepper tweeted out a video over the weekend showcasing one of the drop boxes used last spring and called for more .
“ It ’ s made voting very easy—and especially easy , you ’ d think , in a pandemic this November when many people are going to want to vote , but they are going to want to vote safely.
” If more such drop boxes were installed for the fall election , “ it means many more people could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
Still , despite the success of remote voting elsewhere , the RNC views what ’ s happening with Pennsylvania ’ s mail-in system and drop boxes with nothing but suspicion .
“ Democrat efforts to fundamentally and radically transform the way Americans vote are firmly based in political motives , ” RNC national press secretary Mandi Merritt told The Bulwark .
In the suit , Republicans also cite the need for poll watchers to observe the delivery of mail ballots .
They want the court to rule that any Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ location in the state , rather than be limited to their county of residence as required under current law .
“ The RNC and Trump campaign continue our fight to protect ballot security and reduce chances for fraud and administrative chaos in November by ensuring campaigns can fairly monitor the casting , collecting and counting of votes , ” Merritt said .
“ All voters , regardless of political stripes , deserve to have confidence in their elections system , and this lawsuit seeks to restore that integrity.
” Did you catch that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic party executive director Sinceré Harris said in a statement reacting to the suit last month that , “ It ’ s sad but predictable that once Pennsylvania Democrats blew Republicans out of the water in vote-by-mail sign-ups—to the tune of 1.28 million to 528,000—Trump and his enablers decided to scream and yell about it.
” To that end , the Pennsylvania Democratic party and a dozen elected Pennsylvania Democrats have filed a lawsuit of their own to counter many of President Trump ’ s claims .
Their suit lists some of Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ rigged election ” and states “ any uncertainty or other inconsistency , creates heightened space for mischievous havoc and genuine concern.
” It really shouldn ’ t be this hard , though .
“ Expanding voter access during a global pandemic should not be a partisan issue , ” said Trevor Potter , president at the Campaign Legal Commission , and a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission .
“ Having served as general counsel to GOP presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns in the past , I am puzzled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question the validity of absentee voting.
” Pennsylvania election watchers that The Bulwark spoke with think it would be far better for the state legislature to provide legal fixes to head off any protracted court battles ahead of the looming November 3 election .
One possible fix was proposed by Pennsylvania Democratic party chair Nancy Mills during a government reform meeting last week .
She recommended that every voter be allowed to drop off their mail-in ballot at their polling place , usually located closer to voters than a county elections office .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 21 days before the election in order to give poll workers more time to process ballots .
President Trump , who views mail-in voting as a significant threat to his re-election , is more focused on duking out these matters in court than in any legislative body .
“ My biggest risk is that we don ’ t win lawsuits , ” he told Politico last month .
“ We have many lawsuits going all over .
And if we don ’ t win those lawsuits .
.
.
I think it puts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a Republican election attorney and D.C.-based partner at the law firm Caplin & Drysdale , said he believes the Trump campaign “ has a legitimate gripe about the exclusion of poll watchers from drop box sites , but I think the security concerns the complaint expresses are dramatically and strategically overblown.
” “ The counties are taking precautions to make sure that no ‘ box stuffing ’ occurs , and I think it would be a mistake to view this as much more than the Trump campaign sowing the seeds for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through mail-in ballots , ” Sanderson said .
“ This isn ’ t so much about preventing voter fraud as it is about Trump preparing to lose .
“ With Election Day looming—November 3 is now fewer than 100 days away—U.S .
District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan has agreed to expedite the hearing of the Pennsylvania case .
Motions to dismiss were due last week and arguments are scheduled to start on September 22 .
Those who hope for a smooth election should hope for speedy and clear resolutions of this Pennsylvania case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state governments or the court .
Otherwise , you know what to expect .
Chaos .

Quit asking President Trump if he will contest the 2020 election. He already is.
On Sunday afternoon, President Trump returned to one of his favorite conspiracies, tweeting that “the 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed to take place, & everyone knows it.”
Meanwhile, his lawyers are suing Pennsylvania—a swing state that Trump won by only 44,292 votes in 2016—over its mail-in system. Last month, the Trump campaign launched a federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania and the election boards of all all its 67 counties. The suit claims that state election officials are “undermining ballot security through unmonitored by-mail voting” and choosing “a path that jeopardizes election security and will lead—and has already led—to the disenfranchisement of voters, questions about the accuracy of election results, and ultimately chaos heading into the upcoming November 3, 2020 General Election.”
Specifically, the Trump campaign and the Republican co-plaintiffs are objecting to changes that Pennsylvania made, on a bipartisan basis, last year to allow all Pennsylvanians to vote remotely, via ballots that can be returned by mail or to a county elections office. As a part of those changes, the secretary of state issued guidance in January that said counties “may provide for other secure ballot collection locations that the county deems appropriate to accommodate in-person return of voted mail-in and absentee ballots.” The guidance also instructed parties to contact the Department for further guidance about how to use “secure ballot collection receptacle[s] . . . designed for this specific purpose.” These are commonly known as “drop boxes,” which several other states also permit for ballot collection.
This should all be pretty straightforward. But President Trump claims he sees something nefarious afoot.
The Republicans’ complaint states, “This is all a direct result of Defendants’ hazardous, hurried, and illegal implementation of unmonitored mail-in voting which provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”
If you didn’t catch it the first two times they mentioned it, the operative word is chaos.
Part of the “chaos” is real and stemmed from Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s decision to extend the deadline for mailed-in ballots to arrive at election offices in six counties, where a state of emergency was declared in response to civil unrest and protests over the death of George Floyd. “The Governor of the Commonwealth issued an Executive Order the day before the June 2, 2020 Primary Election changing the rules of mail-in balloting, but only for some counties and not all,” the suit reads. If any governor tries to change election deadlines on such short notice when it comes to the presidential election this fall, you can pretty much bet that a partisan nuclear explosion will follow.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
But what are we supposed to make of the Trump campaign’s arguments against mail-in ballots and drop boxes? What does it mean?
“These are attacks on the mechanism of voting that have worked for many years in other states,” said Suzanne Almeida, former executive director of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and currently interim director of Common Cause Pennsylvania.
While the idea of ballot drop boxes might sound odd to those who haven’t used them, they are growing in popularity.
In Denver, Colorado, one of the nation’s five vote-by-mail states, 80 percent of the people who returned their ballots in 2016 did so by depositing their vote into a secure ballot drop box. The city posted a breakdown of the results, even ranking its “Top Performing 24-Hour Drop Boxes.” (If you’re wondering, the most-used spot was the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.) In Washington state, another universal vote-by-mail state, drop boxes are located at various places, such as libraries, shopping centers, police departments, and schools.
As COVID-19 fears rose last spring, more states expanded absentee voting rules and sought ways to install drop boxes to avoid unnecessarily exposing poll workers and voters to the virus.
Wisconsin got particularly creative. In March, the state elections commission issued a memo that mail slots at municipal facilities where residents submit tax or utility payments could be used to return ballots, as long as those slots were regularly monitored and collected daily. It even suggested that “book return slots at municipal libraries” be used.
The adoption of drop boxes didn’t appear to be a Democrat or a Republican idea, either.
Georgia’s state election board approved the use of drop boxes for its June 9 primary, provided they were located on government property, monitored by video cameras, and securely fastened in a way to prevent ballot tampering, damage, or removal. In Wayne County, Michigan, officials moved to install 60 drop boxes in libraries, firehouses, and community centers last month.
In Ohio, state Democratic party chairman David Pepper tweeted out a video over the weekend showcasing one of the drop boxes used last spring and called for more. “It’s made voting very easy—and especially easy, you’d think, in a pandemic this November when many people are going to want to vote, but they are going to want to vote safely.” If more such drop boxes were installed for the fall election, “it means many more people could vote through this easy system,” he said.
WATCH: One common sense solution to voting in a pandemic is to expand vote drop boxes, where people can drop off ballots directly (not in mail), throughout counties They're safe. They're easy. Fewer delays. No stamps Other states use them broadly. We should too RT if you agree pic.twitter.com/5h3SV99yds — David Pepper (@DavidPepper) July 24, 2020
Still, despite the success of remote voting elsewhere, the RNC views what’s happening with Pennsylvania’s mail-in system and drop boxes with nothing but suspicion.
“Democrat efforts to fundamentally and radically transform the way Americans vote are firmly based in political motives,” RNC national press secretary Mandi Merritt told The Bulwark.
In the suit, Republicans also cite the need for poll watchers to observe the delivery of mail ballots. They want the court to rule that any Pennsylvania voter can monitor the polls at any location in the state, rather than be limited to their county of residence as required under current law.
“The RNC and Trump campaign continue our fight to protect ballot security and reduce chances for fraud and administrative chaos in November by ensuring campaigns can fairly monitor the casting, collecting and counting of votes,” Merritt said. “All voters, regardless of political stripes, deserve to have confidence in their elections system, and this lawsuit seeks to restore that integrity.”
Did you catch that word again? “Chaos.”
Pennsylvania Democratic party executive director Sinceré Harris said in a statement reacting to the suit last month that, “It’s sad but predictable that once Pennsylvania Democrats blew Republicans out of the water in vote-by-mail sign-ups—to the tune of 1.28 million to 528,000—Trump and his enablers decided to scream and yell about it.”
To that end, the Pennsylvania Democratic party and a dozen elected Pennsylvania Democrats have filed a lawsuit of their own to counter many of President Trump’s claims. Their suit lists some of Trump’s tweets about ballot fraud and a “rigged election” and states “any uncertainty or other inconsistency, creates heightened space for mischievous havoc and genuine concern.”
It really shouldn’t be this hard, though.
“Expanding voter access during a global pandemic should not be a partisan issue,” said Trevor Potter, president at the Campaign Legal Center, and a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “Having served as general counsel to GOP presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns in the past, I am puzzled by the president’s attempts to question the validity of absentee voting.”
Pennsylvania election watchers that The Bulwark spoke with think it would be far better for the state legislature to provide legal fixes to head off any protracted court battles ahead of the looming November 3 election. One possible fix was proposed by Pennsylvania Democratic party chair Nancy Mills during a government reform meeting last week. She recommended that every voter be allowed to drop off their mail-in ballot at their polling place, usually located closer to voters than a county elections office. Mills is also proposing that canvassing begin 21 days before the election in order to give poll workers more time to process ballots.
President Trump, who views mail-in voting as a significant threat to his re-election, is more focused on duking out these matters in court than in any legislative body. “My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” he told Politico last month. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits . . . I think it puts the election at risk.”
Matthew Sanderson, a Republican election attorney and D.C.-based partner at the law firm Caplin & Drysdale, said he believes the Trump campaign “has a legitimate gripe about the exclusion of poll watchers from drop box sites, but I think the security concerns the complaint expresses are dramatically and strategically overblown.”
“The counties are taking precautions to make sure that no ‘box stuffing’ occurs, and I think it would be a mistake to view this as much more than the Trump campaign sowing the seeds for a post-election claim that the election was stolen through mail-in ballots,” Sanderson said. “This isn’t so much about preventing voter fraud as it is about Trump preparing to lose.”
With Election Day looming—November 3 is now fewer than 100 days away—U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan has agreed to expedite the hearing of the Pennsylvania case. Motions to dismiss were due last week and arguments are scheduled to start on September 22.
Those who hope for a smooth election should hope for speedy and clear resolutions of this Pennsylvania case and others that might come up—either through state governments or the court. Otherwise, you know what to expect. Chaos.


thebulwark--2020-07-28--Crises Can Define Presidencies

Crises Can Define Presidencies

Donald Trump loves to brag and he loves to complain .
For his bragging he is both comically famous—especially for his tendency to claim he is an expert on subjects he obviously knows little or nothing about—and creepily infamous .
As for his complaining , he spent the first three years of his presidency griping that he was the victim of various “ hoaxes ” and that no president “ has been treated so badly as I have.
” But this year , does he have something new to complain about—his political misfortune ?
Consider : Everything was going well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ triumphant and heading into his re-election battle in a time of peace and prosperity .
He had ended the previous year with killing the world ’ s most-wanted terrorist and began the new year with killing the Middle East ’ s god of mischief .
Then , suddenly—boom !
Everything went downhill : a global pandemic , massive unemployment and economic recession , protests , riots , murder hornets , nunchuck bears—it ’ s been a bad few months .
He ’ s been the unluckiest president in decades .
But has he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1961 , America ’ s young , inexperienced , and charming president , John F. Kennedy , met with the Soviet premier , Nikita Khrushchev , for the first time as president during a summit in Vienna .
On the last day of the summit , Kennedy was handed an ultimatum : Withdraw from West Berlin or Soviet tanks will kick you out .
Kennedy defied the ultimatum .
Instead , he began building up America ’ s conventional and nuclear forces to show his Soviet counterpart that he was ready to go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passed .
Another ultimatum came .
Kennedy defied it again .
Then again another one , which he again defied .
Finally , Khrushchev gave up and put up the Berlin Wall .
It was an embarrassing moment for Khrushchev .
A year later , tensions rose again .
U.S. officials learned that the Soviets were putting nuclear missiles in communist Cuba .
That could not be tolerated .
It was in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine and an existential threat to the United States .
The world came as close as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For thirteen days , Americans prepared for that nuclear war .
But , in the end , the Soviets backed off , and they withdrew their arms from the Americas .
Kennedy emerged triumphant .
In 1979 , fanatics came to power in Iran .
President Jimmy Carter had the year before helped negotiate peace between the Israelis and the Egyptians , and had previously called Iran “ an island of stability ” in the Middle East , but now he was caught flat-footed as revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was an embarrassing moment .
To make matters worse , the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan—another embarrassment for Carter , who had come to office seeking cooperation on arms limitation with the Soviets .
On Iran , he decided to send a rescue team to the country .
The planning went poorly , and the mission was abandoned after the aircraft crashed in Iran .
On Afghanistan , Carter doubled down on cooperation with the Soviets , rhetorically .
Carter had faced two crises at once , and he failed to live up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he would lose his re-election bid .
In 1990 , right at the end of the Cold War , Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the neighboring Kuwait .
For the George H.W .
Bush administration , there was a national interest at stake—helping to secure the world ’ s oil supply—as well as an international security interest : the stability of the international order .
But there was also an opportunity to mark the beginning of the unipolar moment .
Americans were scarred by memories of the Vietnam War and reluctant to fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But Bush persisted and America entered a new war .
In just a month , it had been won with few American casualties .
A decade later , George W. Bush—with much less experience on the international stage than his father had had—was eight months into his presidency when the United States was struck by al Qaeda .
The deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil left the nation shaken , terrified , and confused .
Every day , people expected another attack .
Bush rose to the occasion .
What followed were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set of changes to homeland security policy .
During Bush ’ s remaining seven years in office , no subsequent attack on America succeeded .
Trump isn ’ t unlucky—if anything , he ’ s lucky that it took so long for a major crisis to arise .
Sometimes crises are self-inflicted , but quite often they are caused by forces outside a president ’ s control .
We judge our presidents not by whether they faced crises but by their responses to them .
Some presidents live up to the moment ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump , though , is in a league of his own .
Carter at least didn ’ t worsen the bad situation he found himself in , as Trump manifestly has .
Trump has been a catastrophe , a failure , a disaster , and an embarrassment .
What he hasn ’ t been is unlucky .

Donald Trump loves to brag and he loves to complain.
For his bragging he is both comically famous—especially for his tendency to claim he is an expert on subjects he obviously knows little or nothing about—and creepily infamous.
As for his complaining, he spent the first three years of his presidency griping that he was the victim of various “hoaxes” and that no president “has been treated so badly as I have.”
But this year, does he have something new to complain about—his political misfortune? Consider: Everything was going well. He was coming out of impeachment triumphant and heading into his re-election battle in a time of peace and prosperity. He had ended the previous year with killing the world’s most-wanted terrorist and began the new year with killing the Middle East’s god of mischief. Then, suddenly—boom! Everything went downhill: a global pandemic, massive unemployment and economic recession, protests, riots, murder hornets, nunchuck bears—it’s been a bad few months. He’s been the unluckiest president in decades.
But has he? Let’s rewind.
In 1961, America’s young, inexperienced, and charming president, John F. Kennedy, met with the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, for the first time as president during a summit in Vienna. On the last day of the summit, Kennedy was handed an ultimatum: Withdraw from West Berlin or Soviet tanks will kick you out. Kennedy defied the ultimatum. Instead, he began building up America’s conventional and nuclear forces to show his Soviet counterpart that he was ready to go at it. The deadline came and passed. Another ultimatum came. Kennedy defied it again. Then again another one, which he again defied. Finally, Khrushchev gave up and put up the Berlin Wall. It was an embarrassing moment for Khrushchev.
A year later, tensions rose again. U.S. officials learned that the Soviets were putting nuclear missiles in communist Cuba. That could not be tolerated. It was in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine and an existential threat to the United States. The world came as close as it ever has to a nuclear war. For thirteen days, Americans prepared for that nuclear war. But, in the end, the Soviets backed off, and they withdrew their arms from the Americas. Kennedy emerged triumphant.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
In 1979, fanatics came to power in Iran. President Jimmy Carter had the year before helped negotiate peace between the Israelis and the Egyptians, and had previously called Iran “an island of stability” in the Middle East, but now he was caught flat-footed as revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took American diplomats hostage. It was an embarrassing moment. To make matters worse, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan—another embarrassment for Carter, who had come to office seeking cooperation on arms limitation with the Soviets. On Iran, he decided to send a rescue team to the country. The planning went poorly, and the mission was abandoned after the aircraft crashed in Iran. On Afghanistan, Carter doubled down on cooperation with the Soviets, rhetorically. Carter had faced two crises at once, and he failed to live up to the moment. Within a year, he would lose his re-election bid.
In 1990, right at the end of the Cold War, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the neighboring Kuwait. For the George H.W. Bush administration, there was a national interest at stake—helping to secure the world’s oil supply—as well as an international security interest: the stability of the international order. But there was also an opportunity to mark the beginning of the unipolar moment. Americans were scarred by memories of the Vietnam War and reluctant to fight again for somebody else’s country. But Bush persisted and America entered a new war. In just a month, it had been won with few American casualties.
A decade later, George W. Bush—with much less experience on the international stage than his father had had—was eight months into his presidency when the United States was struck by al Qaeda. The deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil left the nation shaken, terrified, and confused. Every day, people expected another attack. Bush rose to the occasion. What followed were two wars and a rapid, robust set of changes to homeland security policy. During Bush’s remaining seven years in office, no subsequent attack on America succeeded.
Trump isn’t unlucky—if anything, he’s lucky that it took so long for a major crisis to arise. Sometimes crises are self-inflicted, but quite often they are caused by forces outside a president’s control. We judge our presidents not by whether they faced crises but by their responses to them. Some presidents live up to the moment; others, like Carter, fail. Trump, though, is in a league of his own. Carter at least didn’t worsen the bad situation he found himself in, as Trump manifestly has.
Trump has been a catastrophe, a failure, a disaster, and an embarrassment. What he hasn’t been is unlucky.


thebulwark--2020-07-28--Trump Torched the GOP. A Business Leader Could Rebuild It.

The bedside vigil for the Republican party unfolds in real time in this space .
Many who write or read here at The Bulwark have debated whether the GOP could , or should , survive President Trump .
It ’ s critical that it does , but it can not be rescued from within .
Recently Bill Kristol questioned whether the GOP , if wiped out on November 3 , would stop being “ the party of Trumpism.
” Kristol argues , and I agree , that the case for fighting for the Republican party—rather than giving up on it—is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nativist / proto-authoritarian / nationalist-populist party ” it is now .
He offered that perhaps we should root for its rescue even if “ it will likely have to be done by people who have been complicit in Trumpism.
” Yet even as polls tell the dire story of Trump ’ s failure , the poisonous abetting among elected Republicans hasn ’ t even paused , let alone reversed .
Mitt Romney found Trump ’ s commutation of Roger Stone ’ s sentence to be “ unprecedented , historic corruption , ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump last week , twice in one moment , wished Ghislaine Maxwell “ well.
” Only Rep. Chip Roy , now in a toss-up race in Texas , was upset .
Since the revelations that the Russian government offered bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan for the lives of American soldiers , Republicans like Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger expressed concern in tweets .
Now weeks have passed and not one Republican has condemned the commander-in-chief for failing—and shame on the White House press corps for failing to ask about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resolve to men and women in uniform and Gold Star families who have lost family in battle there , let alone punish Russia .
There is no amount of Clorox injections or hydroxychloroquine that can cure the infected of their hypocrisy and sycophancy to render them fit to resuscitate the Grand Old Party .
Is it too much to ask that an impressive , accomplished and uncompromised outsider entirely unpolluted by Trumpism do this instead ?
Mock me—there is no such white knight , white whale or unicorn , right ?
But this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are that there is someone , somewhere far more qualified than Donald Trump and his wannabe successors to lead the Republican party back .
Maybe a person with a successful business career—not a fake one—who could champion competence and integrity in governance , and reject nativism , nepotism , kleptocracy , the coddling of dictators , white grievance , grifters , and conspiracy theories .
Bob Iger , executive chairman of Disney , wanted to run for president last year .
There is interesting buzz about Ginni Rometty , executive chairman of IBM @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not named Oprah , Mark Cuban , Elon Musk , or Mark Zuckerberg who can fit this bill .
A coalition of center-left and center-right has emerged in the Trump era to hold the preservation of the system itself—of power sharing within three separate and co-equal branches of government with robust checks and balances—above policy priorities .
Trump ’ s willingness to discard our Framers ’ structure has brought left and right together to fight not only for our constitutional order but also the post-WWII international order our forebears built and fought to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A post-Trump GOP should focus on leadership .
Many independents and Republicans are willing to back former vice president Joe Biden for the sake of returning to normal .
Yet Biden is a pause , a known before an unknown , and the party ’ s unity behind defeating Trump could be the last thing Democrats agree on for years , whether he is elected or not .
There not only needs to be a post-Trump political coalition but a post-Biden one as well .
A temperate Republican focused on respect for governance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also expect—should the Democratic party lurch far left under a Biden presidency and suffer significant losses in the 2022 midterms—that centrist Democrats will be open to a reformed GOP candidate over a progressive in 2024 .
The definition of being a Republican in 2020 is whether or not one supports President Trump ; presumably , the definition will loosen once he is out of office .
During the Trump administration , support has grown for free trade , the Affordable Care Act , legal status for Dreamers , and the Black Lives Matter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican party would not only return to core principles on free markets , limited government , and debt reduction , but also tack to the middle on immigration and health care and police reform .
The right candidate will have flexibility as long as he or she avoids , when possible , the extreme or binary positions that the wings of the party cling to .
A business leader clearly will appeal to the business wing of the Trump GOP—the wing that always knew better but went along with Trumpism anyway .
Would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more regulation of Big Tech ?
The business community knows better than the rest of the coalition how badly U.S. competitiveness has been hurt by political polarization , and that innovative approaches are required not only for health care and education but the overhauling the drug-supply chain , launching a clean-energy revolution , mitigating our cybersecurity liabilities , and repairing our alarming infrastructure deficit .
The outsider should address those Americans in the new , wider center who fear the emboldened right and left wings of each party .
This candidate must call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and left—one that denies science , destroys governing norms , and undermines the rule of law , while the other wishes to defund the police , police the New York Times op-ed page , and cancel the Fourth of July .
The presumptive 2024 bench of Trump ’ s party can not make the GOP competitive again , whether Trump wins or loses this fall .
Those who helped Donald Trump break a party that once stood for limited government , debt reduction , free trade , free markets , global leadership , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intend , and lack the moral authority , to rebuild it .
The ones plotting their presidential campaigns in 2024—Vice President Mike Pence , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo , former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley , Gov .
Ron DeSantis , and senators Tom Cotton , Ted Cruz , Josh Hawley , Marco Rubio , and Rick Scott—are competing to inherit Trump ’ s base , not reform the GOP .
An outsider candidate must call out the complicity of each bag holder .
They are on record supporting a president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been impeached for extorting a foreign nation into helping him win re-election , credibly accused of obstruction of justice , and credibly accused of rape .
He is also an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony crime and the subject of a criminal investigation by the state of New York for which he could be indicted after leaving office .
There have of course been other ethical , policy , and rhetorical atrocities along the way , but the enablers ’ most sinful water-carrying came in the form of their defense of Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that has taken 146,000 lives and destroyed the livelihoods of millions of Americans infected , grieving lost loved ones , traumatized on the front lines of a ravaged health care system , unemployed , struggling financially , and outraged over how badly their children ’ s wellbeing and education has been damaged .
Trumpkins who deny this won ’ t be fit to lead in 2024—or ever .
The non-Trump Republican world has shrunk to nothing—basically Romney and Maryland Gov .
Larry Hogan , who is considering a 2024 run but also said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump in November .
Hogan told the Atlantic ’ s McKay Coppins that he ’ s not sure the GOP has a future : “ People ask me what my plans are for the future .
I say , ‘ I ’ m not that concerned about what my future is in the Republican Party , but I ’ m really concerned about having a future for the Republican Party.
’ ” Trumpland has now turned on Liz Cheney , who can not hope to become the next GOP House speaker without many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ herself from Trump if he loses , and will she do so if he wins ?
The time of choosing could come sooner than Republicans think—on November 3 and the days that follow .
Trump will likely declare victory on election night , even if Biden is ahead , as he has already signaled he will discredit any mail-in ballots that come in for Biden as fraudulent .
None of this has been subtle , and no Republicans have publicly challenged him .
“ Saying the polls are fake helps in laying the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” as Kristol described to the New York Times last week .
Trump ’ s “ brand going forward depends on his being a victim of a rigged system , not accepting defeat.
” No Republicans are calling this out now , not even Hogan or Romney .
An outsider needs to rescue the GOP , which would—in turn—rescue the Democratic party , and therefore our political system .
Let ’ s hope one of them steps up soon .

The bedside vigil for the Republican party unfolds in real time in this space. Many who write or read here at The Bulwark have debated whether the GOP could, or should, survive President Trump. It’s critical that it does, but it cannot be rescued from within.
Recently Bill Kristol questioned whether the GOP, if wiped out on November 3, would stop being “the party of Trumpism.” Kristol argues, and I agree, that the case for fighting for the Republican party—rather than giving up on it—is to route it away from the “nativist / proto-authoritarian / nationalist-populist party” it is now. He offered that perhaps we should root for its rescue even if “it will likely have to be done by people who have been complicit in Trumpism.”
Yet even as polls tell the dire story of Trump’s failure, the poisonous abetting among elected Republicans hasn’t even paused, let alone reversed. Mitt Romney found Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence to be “unprecedented, historic corruption,” and was, as usual, outraged alone. Trump last week, twice in one moment, wished Ghislaine Maxwell “well.” Only Rep. Chip Roy, now in a toss-up race in Texas, was upset. Since the revelations that the Russian government offered bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan for the lives of American soldiers, Republicans like Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger expressed concern in tweets. Now weeks have passed and not one Republican has condemned the commander-in-chief for failing—and shame on the White House press corps for failing to ask about it—to offer one word of support and resolve to men and women in uniform and Gold Star families who have lost family in battle there, let alone punish Russia.
There is no amount of Clorox injections or hydroxychloroquine that can cure the infected of their hypocrisy and sycophancy to render them fit to resuscitate the Grand Old Party.
Is it too much to ask that an impressive, accomplished and uncompromised outsider entirely unpolluted by Trumpism do this instead? Mock me—there is no such white knight, white whale or unicorn, right? But this is a big country; the odds are that there is someone, somewhere far more qualified than Donald Trump and his wannabe successors to lead the Republican party back. Maybe a person with a successful business career—not a fake one—who could champion competence and integrity in governance, and reject nativism, nepotism, kleptocracy, the coddling of dictators, white grievance, grifters, and conspiracy theories.
Bob Iger, executive chairman of Disney, wanted to run for president last year. There is interesting buzz about Ginni Rometty, executive chairman of IBM. There must be several business leaders not named Oprah, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg who can fit this bill.
A coalition of center-left and center-right has emerged in the Trump era to hold the preservation of the system itself—of power sharing within three separate and co-equal branches of government with robust checks and balances—above policy priorities. Trump’s willingness to discard our Framers’ structure has brought left and right together to fight not only for our constitutional order but also the post-WWII international order our forebears built and fought to preserve for more than 70 years.
A post-Trump GOP should focus on leadership. Many independents and Republicans are willing to back former vice president Joe Biden for the sake of returning to normal. Yet Biden is a pause, a known before an unknown, and the party’s unity behind defeating Trump could be the last thing Democrats agree on for years, whether he is elected or not. There not only needs to be a post-Trump political coalition but a post-Biden one as well. A temperate Republican focused on respect for governance, institutions, and national unity should also expect—should the Democratic party lurch far left under a Biden presidency and suffer significant losses in the 2022 midterms—that centrist Democrats will be open to a reformed GOP candidate over a progressive in 2024.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The definition of being a Republican in 2020 is whether or not one supports President Trump; presumably, the definition will loosen once he is out of office. During the Trump administration, support has grown for free trade, the Affordable Care Act, legal status for Dreamers, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
A new agenda for the Republican party would not only return to core principles on free markets, limited government, and debt reduction, but also tack to the middle on immigration and health care and police reform. The right candidate will have flexibility as long as he or she avoids, when possible, the extreme or binary positions that the wings of the party cling to. A business leader clearly will appeal to the business wing of the Trump GOP—the wing that always knew better but went along with Trumpism anyway. Would they want to follow Josh Hawley into more regulation of Big Tech? The business community knows better than the rest of the coalition how badly U.S. competitiveness has been hurt by political polarization, and that innovative approaches are required not only for health care and education but the overhauling the drug-supply chain, launching a clean-energy revolution, mitigating our cybersecurity liabilities, and repairing our alarming infrastructure deficit.
The outsider should address those Americans in the new, wider center who fear the emboldened right and left wings of each party. This candidate must call out the new illiberalism of the right and left—one that denies science, destroys governing norms, and undermines the rule of law, while the other wishes to defund the police, police the New York Times op-ed page, and cancel the Fourth of July.
The presumptive 2024 bench of Trump’s party cannot make the GOP competitive again, whether Trump wins or loses this fall. Those who helped Donald Trump break a party that once stood for limited government, debt reduction, free trade, free markets, global leadership, and the rule of law do not intend, and lack the moral authority, to rebuild it. The ones plotting their presidential campaigns in 2024—Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott—are competing to inherit Trump’s base, not reform the GOP.
An outsider candidate must call out the complicity of each bag holder. They are on record supporting a president who, since his inauguration, has been impeached for extorting a foreign nation into helping him win re-election, credibly accused of obstruction of justice, and credibly accused of rape. He is also an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony crime and the subject of a criminal investigation by the state of New York for which he could be indicted after leaving office.
There have of course been other ethical, policy, and rhetorical atrocities along the way, but the enablers’ most sinful water-carrying came in the form of their defense of Trump’s delusional denial of a deadly pandemic that has taken 146,000 lives and destroyed the livelihoods of millions of Americans infected, grieving lost loved ones, traumatized on the front lines of a ravaged health care system, unemployed, struggling financially, and outraged over how badly their children’s wellbeing and education has been damaged. Trumpkins who deny this won’t be fit to lead in 2024—or ever.
The non-Trump Republican world has shrunk to nothing—basically Romney and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who is considering a 2024 run but also said he has not ruled out voting for Trump in November. Hogan told the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins that he’s not sure the GOP has a future: “People ask me what my plans are for the future. I say, ‘I’m not that concerned about what my future is in the Republican Party, but I’m really concerned about having a future for the Republican Party.’” Trumpland has now turned on Liz Cheney, who cannot hope to become the next GOP House speaker without many of its participants. Will she separate herself from Trump if he loses, and will she do so if he wins?
The time of choosing could come sooner than Republicans think—on November 3 and the days that follow. Trump will likely declare victory on election night, even if Biden is ahead, as he has already signaled he will discredit any mail-in ballots that come in for Biden as fraudulent. None of this has been subtle, and no Republicans have publicly challenged him. “Saying the polls are fake helps in laying the predicate for claiming the election is rigged,” as Kristol described to the New York Times last week. Trump’s “brand going forward depends on his being a victim of a rigged system, not accepting defeat.”
No Republicans are calling this out now, not even Hogan or Romney. An outsider needs to rescue the GOP, which would—in turn—rescue the Democratic party, and therefore our political system. Let’s hope one of them steps up soon.


thebulwark--2020-07-28--Donald Trump vs. Democracy

Donald Trump vs. Democracy

The fundamentals are clear : Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and is poised to lose it again in 2020 .
His only hope is to squeak out an Electoral College margin in the only states that matter—and only through a multifarious campaign of voter suppression which exploits the pandemic to undermine democracy itself .
Failing that , he can use bogus charges of voter fraud to question results in key states , including those where a surfeit of mail-in ballots delays a final count .
The battleground states of Arizona , Florida , Michigan , North Carolina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ favored Trump in 2016 ; recent polls show him trailing Joe Biden in all six .
But many Democrats now believe that , with money and effort , they can flip three other states that Trump carried easily in 2016 : Ohio and , more surprisingly , Georgia and Texas .
At a time when the coronavirus has deep-sixed Trump ’ s approval ratings , flipping states that Trump barely won would seem like a relatively easy task .
But the coronavirus has severely complicated the electoral landscape by making voting on Election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In a saner age , this would prioritize concerted and well-funded efforts to make in-person voting easier and safer , while facilitating voting by mail on an unprecedented scale .
Were our political parties jointly committed to assuring a free and fair election in which every eligible citizen who wants to vote can , the fixes would be obvious .
Safe in-person voting requires more polling places , longer voting hours , expanded early voting , and sensible public health measures to protect voters and poll workers alike .
And swiftly and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballots requires more and better equipment , increased election workers , a proactive system for printing and distributing ballots and , critically , agreed-upon standards for counting votes in a consistent and impartial manner .
But Trump and his party are fundamentally opposed to that most basic tenet of democracy : an honest and inclusive election .
Instead , they want to choose their own electorate through selectively excluding probable Democratic voters—minorities , urbanites , and the young—by making it more difficult for such people to vote and , in this year of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s methods for restricting in-person voting are a time-tested product of its reliance on a shrinking demographic of older , often less educated white people : Enforcing discriminatory voter ID laws that target minorities .
Closing polling places to make voting in Democratic areas harder and more time-consuming .
Limiting early and absentee voting .
Paring voter rolls on pretexts that disproportionately disenroll eligible voters of color .
But the pandemic hands Republicans potent new weapons : Eschewing public health measures in overcrowded polling places predominantly used by Democrats , thereby endangering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most critically , amplifying the impact of in-person voting by Republicans through the suppression of mail-in balloting .
The strategy rests on four related premises .
First , that making voting tougher for presumptive Democrats than Republicans can tilt closely contested states .
Second , that Trump voters are more enthusiastic , and thus more likely to vote in person .
Third , and less flattering , that—conned by their ignorant and derelict leader—his base voters are simply too dumb to appreciate the risk of in-person voting .
Fourth , that mass voting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disenfranchise Democratic voters .
The GOP ’ s public rationale for pushing voter ID laws and limits on mail-in balloting is preventing voter fraud .
But numerous investigations and studies have found no statistically significant evidence for such fraud .
In truth , these bogus claims are themselves voter fraud in very thin disguise : a justification for denying the vote to qualified citizens while providing fictitious grounds for challenging adverse election results .
Instead of stuffing ballot boxes , Republicans mean to starve them .
This November such efforts will be extremely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dedicated $ 20 million to fund an army of 50,000 poll watchers to monitor voters deemed “ suspicious ” ; fund lawyers to challenge electoral practices they deem inimical ; and various stratagems to limit the reach of voting by mail—including , ironically , underfunding such efforts .
The GOP ’ s claim that voter ID laws are necessary to prevent supposed in-person fraud has a gamy history .
Prior to 2013 , the Voting Rights Act required that states with a history of discriminatory voter exclusion—typically Southern states with a large African-American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department for proposed changes to voting procedures .
But in the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder , Chief Justice Roberts , joined only by the other Republican-nominated justices , ruled that America ’ s racial progress rendered pre-clearance unnecessary .
With unseemly alacrity , fourteen states—eight Southern , all but one governed by Republicans—triggered stringent voter ID laws .
These states included Georgia and Texas—as to the latter of which a federal judge ruled in 2014 that its photo ID law existed “ because of and not merely in spite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate.
” But the GOP has also used voter ID laws to limit voting by college students .
No matter—the Supreme Court has consistently upheld them , and they have operated to keep demographic change from turning Georgia and Texas into swing states .
But the pandemic-driven recourse to voting by mail has resulted in further efforts to protect the GOP from the ravages of democracy .
Trump himself gave the game away : Referring to a proposal by congressional Democrats to finance more voting by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things—levels of voting that , if you ever agreed to it , you ’ d never have a Republican elected in this country again.
” Indeed , encouraging voting by mail would , he tweeted in all-caps , “ LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.
” Heaven forfend .
Ever the patriot , Trump further claimed that mail-in voting would be exploited by “ foreign powers who don ’ t want to see Trump win.
” The mind of Donald Trump is , indeed , where irony goes to die @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to underfund the agency charged with delivering mail-in ballots in a timely manner : the U.S .
Postal Service .
Addressing these efforts , Laurence Tribe warned that funding the USPS is “ vital if voting isn ’ t to become a form of Russian roulette .
People died for the right to vote .
They shouldn ’ t have to die to exercise it.
” But , as we have seen , Trump views the death of other Americans with profound indifference .
And the GOP has found means of undercounting whatever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ matching , ” which allows a poll worker to discard ballots if he or she decides a voter ’ s name on the outer envelope doesn ’ t match the name on a registration form , and summarily ignoring ballots postmarked on or before Election Day but received thereafter .
But Trump ’ s claim that “ there is tremendous evidence of fraud whenever you have mail-in ballots ” serves another purpose .
Said California secretary of state Alex Padilla to the New York Times : “ He is not just seeking to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but confidence in the November election results that he may not like.
” Thus Trump has succeeded in turning the public-safety measure of voting by mail into yet another polarizing political issue .
A recent New York Times/Siena College survey of voters in battleground states showed that while a majority support mail-in voting during the pandemic , 72 percent of Trump supporters oppose it .
That his base would support any post-election claims of fraudulent voting by mail , including calls for upending the results , seems all but guaranteed .
Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the U.S. Supreme Court ’ s Republican majority .
Since April , the court has issued four rulings which , Justice Sotomayor observed in dissent , continue “ a trend of condoning disfranchisement.
” Perhaps the most notorious was the Court ’ s ruling that a federal judge in Wisconsin wrongly extended the deadline for absentee voting because of the pandemic .
Dissenting , Justice Ginsburg wrote that the majority had presented voters with a terrible choice : “ Either they will have to brave the polls , endangering their own and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose their right to vote , through no fault of their own .
That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin citizens , the integrity of the State ’ s elections process , and in this most extraordinary time , the health of the Nation.
” The five Republican justices were unmoved .
In another ruling , the Court declined to reinstate a lower court decision that would have allowed all Texas voters to submit ballots by mail because of the pandemic .
Nor did the five justices confine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 .
In another case , the Court allowed Florida ’ s Republican legislature to bar voters with felony convictions , often minorities and the poor , from voting unless they pay court fines and fees—a discriminatory practice which Justice Sotomayor aptly analogized to the poll taxes long since held unconstitutional .
By now it seems clear that the Court will not interfere with Republican efforts to limit voting for patently partisan purposes—an ominous foretaste of what might happen were the majority presented with another Bush v. Gore .
It may well be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states exposes that our localized system of voting is a byzantine patchwork ripe for mischance and manipulation .
The state allows universal mail-in balloting and , because of the pandemic , is sending vote-by-mail applications to every registered voter .
Ballots are subject to signature matching , however a state law enacted last year requires election officials to “ make reasonable efforts ” to contact voters whose ballots might be rejected because of an apparent signature mismatch .
While mail-in voting is universal , it is prey to several difficulties .
As of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballots sent by Election Day but received thereafter—a policy that reportedly caused the rejection of more than 18,000 ballots in this year ’ s primary .
Here , too , mail-in ballots are subject to signature matching .
An analysis by the Florida ACLU found that black and Latino voters were much more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected .
And , as noted above , the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state ’ s de facto poll tax on ex-felons who served their time but still have some lingering fees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voting by mail .
But Republicans have contrived to limit the number of such ballots that are cast , and to undercount those that are .
To start , an “ exact match ” law requires that voters ’ names on their government-issued IDs must precisely match their names on voting rolls .
In 2018 , this affected 53,000 voter registrations .
Earlier this year , the Republican speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives complained that sending out mail-in ballot applications during the pandemic would “ be extremely devastating to Republicans and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times reports , Georgia ’ s Republican secretary of state “ has decided to stop sending absentee-ballot applications to registered voters , which seems certain to increase crowding at the polls .
Instead , he plans to create a website where voters can apply for absentee ballots , a step that will not help many older Georgians or those without Internet access ” —in other words , minorities and the poor .
In 2018 , according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , “ precinct closures and longer distances ” to polls likely prevented as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Election Day .
Seven counties in Georgia now have a single polling location .
As voting-rights activist Rashad Robinson told the Nation , “ The systemic under-resourcing of polling locations in predominantly Black communities like Atlanta is an intentional method of voter suppression from a Republican-led state legislature that works to further disenfranchise our communities.
” Finally , the state has a history of voter purges—as reported by the AJC , 560,000 removals before the 2018 elections , and another 287,000 last November .
One must add to this calculated systemic manipulation sheer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ primary , a dearth of functioning voting machines caused snafus that included hours-long waits for in-person voting .
In November , the election is virtually certain to be a nightmare of malice and ineptitude .
The state has provided mail-in ballot applications for the November general election to all registered voters .
In response , Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state , falsely claiming that it had sent actual ballots .
The state permits mail-in balloting .
In the past , numerous voter ID laws have been invalidated by courts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voter can vote by mail , there is a history of voter purges .
However , the Republican secretary of state appears to be playing 2020 straight .
The state allows voting by mail , and because of COVID-19 most voters used it in this year ’ s primary .
But the overwhelming response caused serious delays in tabulating results .
Moreover , the Trump campaign is suing the state and the election boards of all 67 counties to ban the use of drop boxes for submitting take-home ballots .
Like Georgia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history of successful voter suppression .
Texas restricts voting by mail to citizens 65 or older , or those who claim disabilities—which does not , the state supreme court ruled , include voters fearful of contracting COVID-19 .
And , as mentioned above , the U.S. Supreme Court did not permit a lower court to extend mail-in voting to all Texans during the pandemic .
In recent years , Texas has closed some 750 polling places—more than any other state , and about 10 percent of the total number of locations statewide .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ closures disproportionately affected areas heavily populated by blacks and Hispanics .
Finally , Texas has a highly restrictive voter ID law .
All this raises a central question : Is Texas truly a red state , or simply a state that makes it harder for minorities to vote ?
The state GOP has made itself famous as a leading practitioner of electoral chicanery .
That Wisconsin permits voting by mail hardly relieves a decade of extreme gerrymandering , restrictive voter ID laws , limits on early voting , and efforts to limit mail-in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ primary , more than 20,000 such ballots were rejected—12 times the number rejected in the 2016 presidential primary .
Another 79,000 votes by mail would have been rejected had a court not ordered the state to count ballots postmarked on time .
Also , election authorities shuttered all but 5 of the 180 polling places in Milwaukee , creating hours-long waits and an unconscionable risk to public health .
The only good news is that indignant Democrats turned out regardless .
But they can expect more of the same : The Wisconsin GOP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s okay for voting to kill them .
Given this multistate maze of complexity , a plethora of difficulties in November seems inevitable .
In particular , the increase of mail-in votes will likely overwhelm the Postal Service and local election boards in most , if not all , of the nine key states .
Combined with the novelty of this process for many voters and vote-counters alike , this creates the near-certainty of an unprecedented volume of innocent or malign rejections of mail-in ballots—including those received after November 3—which augurs a host @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Pennsylvania ’ s primary , with its two-week delay in counting some ballots , raises the prospect of shifting counts and changed results in critical states .
All this chaos would serve Trump ’ s aim of delegitimizing his prospective defeat .
As Amy Walter observed to CNN : This could render an election where the winner is uncertain—or where Trump can conjure uncertainty .
Larry Diamond , a noted analyst of democratic institutions , told CNN : “ There ’ s a significant scope for an unprecedented post-election crisis in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Timothy Wirth and Tom Rogers in Newsweek : Whatever the endgame may be , there is only one way out of the looming electrical chaos : for Biden to win an Electoral College victory so overwhelming that Trump ’ s claims of victimhood will be literally unbelievable .
That means relentless grassroots efforts in swing states combined with an unremitting campaign to focus outrage on Trump and his party ’ s efforts to defeat democracy .
Like hanging , the prospect of Trump cheating his way to a ruinous second term may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from democracy to rise in anger and do whatever it takes to cast the ballots he so desperately fears .

The fundamentals are clear: Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and is poised to lose it again in 2020. His only hope is to squeak out an Electoral College margin in the only states that matter—and only through a multifarious campaign of voter suppression which exploits the pandemic to undermine democracy itself. Failing that, he can use bogus charges of voter fraud to question results in key states, including those where a surfeit of mail-in ballots delays a final count.
The battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all narrowly favored Trump in 2016; recent polls show him trailing Joe Biden in all six. But many Democrats now believe that, with money and effort, they can flip three other states that Trump carried easily in 2016: Ohio and, more surprisingly, Georgia and Texas.
At a time when the coronavirus has deep-sixed Trump’s approval ratings, flipping states that Trump barely won would seem like a relatively easy task. But the coronavirus has severely complicated the electoral landscape by making voting on Election Day a potentially serious public health risk. In a saner age, this would prioritize concerted and well-funded efforts to make in-person voting easier and safer, while facilitating voting by mail on an unprecedented scale.
Were our political parties jointly committed to assuring a free and fair election in which every eligible citizen who wants to vote can, the fixes would be obvious. Safe in-person voting requires more polling places, longer voting hours, expanded early voting, and sensible public health measures to protect voters and poll workers alike. And swiftly and accurately counting the anticipated flood of mail-in ballots requires more and better equipment, increased election workers, a proactive system for printing and distributing ballots and, critically, agreed-upon standards for counting votes in a consistent and impartial manner.
But Trump and his party are fundamentally opposed to that most basic tenet of democracy: an honest and inclusive election. Instead, they want to choose their own electorate through selectively excluding probable Democratic voters—minorities, urbanites, and the young—by making it more difficult for such people to vote and, in this year of COVID-19, more dangerous.
The GOP’s methods for restricting in-person voting are a time-tested product of its reliance on a shrinking demographic of older, often less educated white people: Enforcing discriminatory voter ID laws that target minorities. Closing polling places to make voting in Democratic areas harder and more time-consuming. Limiting early and absentee voting. Paring voter rolls on pretexts that disproportionately disenroll eligible voters of color.
But the pandemic hands Republicans potent new weapons: Eschewing public health measures in overcrowded polling places predominantly used by Democrats, thereby endangering voters and poll workers. And, most critically, amplifying the impact of in-person voting by Republicans through the suppression of mail-in balloting.
The strategy rests on four related premises. First, that making voting tougher for presumptive Democrats than Republicans can tilt closely contested states. Second, that Trump voters are more enthusiastic, and thus more likely to vote in person. Third, and less flattering, that—conned by their ignorant and derelict leader—his base voters are simply too dumb to appreciate the risk of in-person voting. Fourth, that mass voting by mail would undercut Republican efforts to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
The GOP’s public rationale for pushing voter ID laws and limits on mail-in balloting is preventing voter fraud. But numerous investigations and studies have found no statistically significant evidence for such fraud. In truth, these bogus claims are themselves voter fraud in very thin disguise: a justification for denying the vote to qualified citizens while providing fictitious grounds for challenging adverse election results. Instead of stuffing ballot boxes, Republicans mean to starve them.
This November such efforts will be extremely well funded. The GOP has reportedly dedicated $20 million to fund an army of 50,000 poll watchers to monitor voters deemed “suspicious”; fund lawyers to challenge electoral practices they deem inimical; and various stratagems to limit the reach of voting by mail—including, ironically, underfunding such efforts.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The GOP’s claim that voter ID laws are necessary to prevent supposed in-person fraud has a gamy history.
Prior to 2013, the Voting Rights Act required that states with a history of discriminatory voter exclusion—typically Southern states with a large African-American minority—receive “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department for proposed changes to voting procedures. But in the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice Roberts, joined only by the other Republican-nominated justices, ruled that America’s racial progress rendered pre-clearance unnecessary. With unseemly alacrity, fourteen states—eight Southern, all but one governed by Republicans—triggered stringent voter ID laws.
These states included Georgia and Texas—as to the latter of which a federal judge ruled in 2014 that its photo ID law existed “because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law’s detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate.” But the GOP has also used voter ID laws to limit voting by college students. No matter—the Supreme Court has consistently upheld them, and they have operated to keep demographic change from turning Georgia and Texas into swing states.
But the pandemic-driven recourse to voting by mail has resulted in further efforts to protect the GOP from the ravages of democracy. Trump himself gave the game away: Referring to a proposal by congressional Democrats to finance more voting by mail, he said “they had things—levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Indeed, encouraging voting by mail would, he tweeted in all-caps, “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.”
Heaven forfend. Ever the patriot, Trump further claimed that mail-in voting would be exploited by “foreign powers who don’t want to see Trump win.” The mind of Donald Trump is, indeed, where irony goes to die.
Hence the GOP’s effort to underfund the agency charged with delivering mail-in ballots in a timely manner: the U.S. Postal Service. Addressing these efforts, Laurence Tribe warned that funding the USPS is “vital if voting isn’t to become a form of Russian roulette. People died for the right to vote. They shouldn’t have to die to exercise it.”
But, as we have seen, Trump views the death of other Americans with profound indifference. And the GOP has found means of undercounting whatever mail-in ballots are cast: “signature matching,” which allows a poll worker to discard ballots if he or she decides a voter’s name on the outer envelope doesn’t match the name on a registration form, and summarily ignoring ballots postmarked on or before Election Day but received thereafter.
But Trump’s claim that “there is tremendous evidence of fraud whenever you have mail-in ballots” serves another purpose. Said California secretary of state Alex Padilla to the New York Times: “He is not just seeking to undermine the confidence in the election, but confidence in the November election results that he may not like.”
Thus Trump has succeeded in turning the public-safety measure of voting by mail into yet another polarizing political issue. A recent New York Times/Siena College survey of voters in battleground states showed that while a majority support mail-in voting during the pandemic, 72 percent of Trump supporters oppose it. That his base would support any post-election claims of fraudulent voting by mail, including calls for upending the results, seems all but guaranteed.
Trump’s final backstop, it seems, is the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican majority. Since April, the court has issued four rulings which, Justice Sotomayor observed in dissent, continue “a trend of condoning disfranchisement.”
Perhaps the most notorious was the Court’s ruling that a federal judge in Wisconsin wrongly extended the deadline for absentee voting because of the pandemic. Dissenting, Justice Ginsburg wrote that the majority had presented voters with a terrible choice: “Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin citizens, the integrity of the State’s elections process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation.”
The five Republican justices were unmoved. In another ruling, the Court declined to reinstate a lower court decision that would have allowed all Texas voters to submit ballots by mail because of the pandemic.
Nor did the five justices confine their efforts to dismissing the impact of COVID-19. In another case, the Court allowed Florida’s Republican legislature to bar voters with felony convictions, often minorities and the poor, from voting unless they pay court fines and fees—a discriminatory practice which Justice Sotomayor aptly analogized to the poll taxes long since held unconstitutional.
By now it seems clear that the Court will not interfere with Republican efforts to limit voting for patently partisan purposes—an ominous foretaste of what might happen were the majority presented with another Bush v. Gore.
It may well be. A survey of the nine critical states exposes that our localized system of voting is a byzantine patchwork ripe for mischance and manipulation.
Arizona
The state allows universal mail-in balloting and, because of the pandemic, is sending vote-by-mail applications to every registered voter. Ballots are subject to signature matching, however a state law enacted last year requires election officials to “make reasonable efforts” to contact voters whose ballots might be rejected because of an apparent signature mismatch.
Florida
While mail-in voting is universal, it is prey to several difficulties. As of now, the state will not count ballots sent by Election Day but received thereafter—a policy that reportedly caused the rejection of more than 18,000 ballots in this year’s primary.
Here, too, mail-in ballots are subject to signature matching. An analysis by the Florida ACLU found that black and Latino voters were much more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected. And, as noted above, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state’s de facto poll tax on ex-felons who served their time but still have some lingering fees or fines.
Georgia
The state permits universal voting by mail. But Republicans have contrived to limit the number of such ballots that are cast, and to undercount those that are. To start, an “exact match” law requires that voters’ names on their government-issued IDs must precisely match their names on voting rolls. In 2018, this affected 53,000 voter registrations.
Earlier this year, the Republican speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives complained that sending out mail-in ballot applications during the pandemic would “be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives.” Further, the New York Times reports, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “has decided to stop sending absentee-ballot applications to registered voters, which seems certain to increase crowding at the polls. Instead, he plans to create a website where voters can apply for absentee ballots, a step that will not help many older Georgians or those without Internet access”—in other words, minorities and the poor.
In 2018, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “precinct closures and longer distances” to polls likely prevented as many as 85,000 Georgians from voting on Election Day. Seven counties in Georgia now have a single polling location. As voting-rights activist Rashad Robinson told the Nation, “The systemic under-resourcing of polling locations in predominantly Black communities like Atlanta is an intentional method of voter suppression from a Republican-led state legislature that works to further disenfranchise our communities.”
Finally, the state has a history of voter purges—as reported by the AJC, 560,000 removals before the 2018 elections, and another 287,000 last November.
One must add to this calculated systemic manipulation sheer incompetence: In this year’s primary, a dearth of functioning voting machines caused snafus that included hours-long waits for in-person voting. In November, the election is virtually certain to be a nightmare of malice and ineptitude.
Michigan
The state has provided mail-in ballot applications for the November general election to all registered voters. In response, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state, falsely claiming that it had sent actual ballots.
North Carolina
The state permits mail-in balloting. In the past, numerous voter ID laws have been invalidated by courts as intentionally discriminatory.
Ohio
While every registered voter can vote by mail, there is a history of voter purges. However, the Republican secretary of state appears to be playing 2020 straight.
Pennsylvania
The state allows voting by mail, and because of COVID-19 most voters used it in this year’s primary. But the overwhelming response caused serious delays in tabulating results. Moreover, the Trump campaign is suing the state and the election boards of all 67 counties to ban the use of drop boxes for submitting take-home ballots.
Texas
Like Georgia, the state has a long and rich history of successful voter suppression.
Texas restricts voting by mail to citizens 65 or older, or those who claim disabilities—which does not, the state supreme court ruled, include voters fearful of contracting COVID-19. And, as mentioned above, the U.S. Supreme Court did not permit a lower court to extend mail-in voting to all Texans during the pandemic.
In recent years, Texas has closed some 750 polling places—more than any other state, and about 10 percent of the total number of locations statewide. According to a 2019 analysis, the closures disproportionately affected areas heavily populated by blacks and Hispanics.
Finally, Texas has a highly restrictive voter ID law. All this raises a central question: Is Texas truly a red state, or simply a state that makes it harder for minorities to vote?
Wisconsin
The state GOP has made itself famous as a leading practitioner of electoral chicanery. That Wisconsin permits voting by mail hardly relieves a decade of extreme gerrymandering, restrictive voter ID laws, limits on early voting, and efforts to limit mail-in ballots.
In Wisconsin’s April primary, more than 20,000 such ballots were rejected—12 times the number rejected in the 2016 presidential primary. Another 79,000 votes by mail would have been rejected had a court not ordered the state to count ballots postmarked on time. Also, election authorities shuttered all but 5 of the 180 polling places in Milwaukee, creating hours-long waits and an unconscionable risk to public health.
The only good news is that indignant Democrats turned out regardless. But they can expect more of the same: The Wisconsin GOP seems to have decided that it’s okay for voting to kill them.
Given this multistate maze of complexity, a plethora of difficulties in November seems inevitable. In particular, the increase of mail-in votes will likely overwhelm the Postal Service and local election boards in most, if not all, of the nine key states.
Combined with the novelty of this process for many voters and vote-counters alike, this creates the near-certainty of an unprecedented volume of innocent or malign rejections of mail-in ballots—including those received after November 3—which augurs a host of legal challenges. And the experience of Pennsylvania’s primary, with its two-week delay in counting some ballots, raises the prospect of shifting counts and changed results in critical states.
All this chaos would serve Trump’s aim of delegitimizing his prospective defeat. As Amy Walter observed to CNN:
Many of these states are not prepared for what this election will be. . . . They have never done vote-by-mail like this. It’s messy and mistakes are going to be made. People are going to stand in long lines. Ballots won’t arrive. There will be people in every state who can make a case that the process was flawed.
This could render an election where the winner is uncertain—or where Trump can conjure uncertainty. Larry Diamond, a noted analyst of democratic institutions, told CNN: “There’s a significant scope for an unprecedented post-election crisis in this country.”
One worst-case scenario is imagined by Timothy Wirth and Tom Rogers in Newsweek:
The election is thrown into the House of Representatives, pursuant to the Constitution. Under the relevant constitutional process, the vote in the House is by state delegation, where each delegation casts one vote, which is determined by the majority of the representatives in that state. Currently, there are 26 states that have a majority Republican House delegation. 23 states have a majority Democratic delegation. There is one state, Pennsylvania, that has an evenly split delegation. Even if the Democrats were to pick up seats in Pennsylvania and hold all their 2018 House gains, the Republicans would have a 26 to 24 delegation majority. This vote would enable Trump to retain the presidency.
Whatever the endgame may be, there is only one way out of the looming electrical chaos: for Biden to win an Electoral College victory so overwhelming that Trump’s claims of victimhood will be literally unbelievable. That means relentless grassroots efforts in swing states combined with an unremitting campaign to focus outrage on Trump and his party’s efforts to defeat democracy.
Like hanging, the prospect of Trump cheating his way to a ruinous second term may focus the mind—causing those he would exclude from democracy to rise in anger and do whatever it takes to cast the ballots he so desperately fears.


thebulwark--2020-07-29--Bill Barr Was Worse Than You Thought

Bill Barr Was Worse Than You Thought

The most revealing moment at Tuesday ’ s House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General William Barr was actually several moments—long awkward ones .
During the contentious hearing , Representative David Cicilline ( D-R.I. ) asked Barr what seemed like a straightforward question : “ Is it ever appropriate , sir , for the president to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election ?
” Instead of answering , Barr dodged and parried .
“ It depends what kind of assistance , ” he said .
Cicilline tried again .
Speaking deliberately , he repeated the question : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or presidential candidate to accept or solicit foreign assistance of any kind in his or her election ?
” Finally , a full 15 seconds after he was first asked the question , Barr answered : “ No , it ’ s not appropriate.
” Notably , this is not the first time that Barr has struggled with that question .
On May 1 , 2019 , Senator Chris Coons ( D-Del . )
also tried to get a straight answer from Barr .
“ Going forward , what if a foreign adversary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competitor in 2020 ?
” Coons asked , suggesting North Korea as a possible actor .
“ Do you agree with me the campaign should immediately contact the FBI ?
” Barr hesitated , leaving a pause of at least 5 seconds .
“ If a foreign government ?
If a foreign intelligence service ?
” Barr finally answered , parsing his words carefully .
“ If a foreign intelligence service does , yes.
” You can watch that clip here : So here is the question : What was going through Barr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ again today ?
It was an easy question for anyone who has taken the oath to protect the nation .
Why not snap out a quick reply and move on ?
What was the hesitation ?
What was going through his mind ?
Should I make it clear that foreign interference is wrong ?
Or will that anger the president , the only audience I care about ?
How can I hedge ?
But let ’ s not overthink this , because there ’ s really no mystery here .
Barr has told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Some of us thought that Barr would be pretty awful as Trump ’ s designated Roy Cohn .
Back in April 2019 , I offered “ Seven Reasons Not to Trust William Barr.
” But Tuesday he reminded us that he has turned out to be even worse that the pessimists feared .
“ Your opening statement reads like it was written by Alex Jones or Roger Stone , ” Representative Hank Johnson ( D-Ga. ) quipped .
He exaggerated only slightly .
By now , Barr has established himself as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make decisions that at the very least give the appearance that Barr is doing Trump ’ s personal bidding .
Barr denies politics plays a role in his decisions while leading the Justice Department .
But on Tuesday , he did little to dissuade the criticism that Trump ’ s personal desires influence him .
In his efforts to defend himself , Barr painted Trump as the consummate professional president , giving Barr “ complete freedom ” to do what he needs .
“ From my experience , the president has played a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Barr testified .
But this seems to understate the impact of Barr ’ s performance .
On issue after issue , the attorney general displayed his willingness to adapt himself to Trumpian bullsh*t , even if that included lying on the president ’ s behalf : Under questioning about the government ’ s coronavirus response , Mr. Barr defended Mr. Trump by also falsely blaming former “ President Obama ’ s mishandling ” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing shortages and a “ run down ” Strategic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a reference to a 2014 draft policy on laboratory-developed tests that was never finished or enforced .
( The Justice Department plays no role in procuring and distributing tests . )
The stockpile , which is the federal government ’ s repository of medicines and medicinal products , contained more than $ 7 billion worth of supplies with Mr. Trump took office and had more than 16,660 ventilators available when the pandemic began .
Mr. Barr ’ s description of protests last month in Washington ’ s Lafayette Square and the federal response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his White House press secretary .
St. John ’ s Church “ was on fire , ” the attorney general said of a small fire in the basement .
And he misleadingly insisted that “ no tear gas was used , ” though the United States Park Police confirmed “ the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls.
” This is not normal stuff .
Barr repeated Trump ’ s claims that mail-in voting would lead to massive fraud , attacked the credibility of National Guard whistleblower Adam DeMarco , and played the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal agents into the nation ’ s cities .
As former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller tweeted : But Barr ’ s approach clearly appealed to the GOP ’ s hacky-sack demo : Despite all his tough-guy bravado , Barr has thin skin and at times he was clearly rattled : He also struggled under questions from Representative Pramila Jayapal ( D-Wash. ) about his hypocrisy on protests .
She accused Barr of taking “ an aggressive approach to Black Lives Matter protests , but not to right-wing extremists threatening to lynch a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
the president ’ s benefit ” : In Michigan when protesters carried guns and Confederate flags and swastikas and called for the governor of Michigan to be beheaded and shot and lynched , somehow you are not aware of that .
Somehow you didn ’ t know about it so you didn ’ t send federal agents in to do to the president ’ s supporters what you did to the president ’ s protesters .
.
.
.
There is a real discrepancy in how you react as the attorney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When white men with swastikas storm a government building with guns , there is no need for the president to “ activate ” you , because they ’ re getting the president ’ s personal agenda done .
But when black people and people of color protest police brutality , systemic racism , and the president ’ s very own lack of response to those critical issues , then you forcibly remove them with armed federal officers [ and ] pepper bombs because they are considered terrorists by the president .
You can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t his finest moment , but it probably played well enough in the White House .
Which , after all , is all Bill Barr really cares about , isn ’ t it ?

The most revealing moment at Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General William Barr was actually several moments—long awkward ones.
During the contentious hearing, Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.) asked Barr what seemed like a straightforward question: “Is it ever appropriate, sir, for the president to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election?”
Instead of answering, Barr dodged and parried.
“It depends what kind of assistance,” he said.
Cicilline tried again. Speaking deliberately, he repeated the question: “Is it ever appropriate for the president or presidential candidate to accept or solicit foreign assistance of any kind in his or her election?”
Finally, a full 15 seconds after he was first asked the question, Barr answered: “No, it’s not appropriate.”
Notably, this is not the first time that Barr has struggled with that question. On May 1, 2019, Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) also tried to get a straight answer from Barr.
“Going forward, what if a foreign adversary offers a presidential candidate dirt on a competitor in 2020?” Coons asked, suggesting North Korea as a possible actor. “Do you agree with me the campaign should immediately contact the FBI?”
Barr hesitated, leaving a pause of at least 5 seconds.
“If a foreign government? If a foreign intelligence service?” Barr finally answered, parsing his words carefully. “If a foreign intelligence service does, yes.”
You can watch that clip here:
OMG — Barr hesitates before acknowledging that presidential campaigns that are offered dirt from hostile foreign governments should probably contact the FBI pic.twitter.com/eqFkHjmBJj — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2019
So here is the question: What was going through Barr’s mind last May and then again today? It was an easy question for anyone who has taken the oath to protect the nation.
Why not snap out a quick reply and move on? What was the hesitation? What was going through his mind?
Should I make it clear that foreign interference is wrong? Or will that anger the president, the only audience I care about? How can I hedge?
But let’s not overthink this, because there’s really no mystery here. Barr has told us who is he over and over.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Some of us thought that Barr would be pretty awful as Trump’s designated Roy Cohn. Back in April 2019, I offered “Seven Reasons Not to Trust William Barr.” But Tuesday he reminded us that he has turned out to be even worse that the pessimists feared.
“Your opening statement reads like it was written by Alex Jones or Roger Stone,” Representative Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) quipped. He exaggerated only slightly.
As the Washington Post noted:
By now, Barr has established himself as a loyal defender of Trump, willing to make decisions that at the very least give the appearance that Barr is doing Trump’s personal bidding. Barr denies politics plays a role in his decisions while leading the Justice Department. But on Tuesday, he did little to dissuade the criticism that Trump’s personal desires influence him. In his efforts to defend himself, Barr painted Trump as the consummate professional president, giving Barr “complete freedom” to do what he needs. “From my experience, the president has played a role properly and traditionally played by presidents,” Barr testified.
But this seems to understate the impact of Barr’s performance. On issue after issue, the attorney general displayed his willingness to adapt himself to Trumpian bullsh*t, even if that included lying on the president’s behalf:
Under questioning about the government’s coronavirus response, Mr. Barr defended Mr. Trump by also falsely blaming former “President Obama’s mishandling” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing shortages and a “run down” Strategic National Stockpile. The first claim was a reference to a 2014 draft policy on laboratory-developed tests that was never finished or enforced. (The Justice Department plays no role in procuring and distributing tests.) The stockpile, which is the federal government’s repository of medicines and medicinal products, contained more than $7 billion worth of supplies with Mr. Trump took office and had more than 16,660 ventilators available when the pandemic began. Mr. Barr’s description of protests last month in Washington’s Lafayette Square and the federal response also mirrored that of Mr. Trump and his White House press secretary. St. John’s Church “was on fire,” the attorney general said of a small fire in the basement. And he misleadingly insisted that “no tear gas was used,” though the United States Park Police confirmed “the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls.”
This is not normal stuff. Barr repeated Trump’s claims that mail-in voting would lead to massive fraud, attacked the credibility of National Guard whistleblower Adam DeMarco, and played the Antifa card to justify the surge of federal agents into the nation’s cities. As former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller tweeted:
We should never get used to an AG being this partisan: the line on Captain DeMarco being a Democrat, the attacks on the Obama admin over CDC policies (which is totally outside Barr's remit), his claim there were two forms of justice under Obama, the Antifa BS. Way over the line. — Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) July 28, 2020
But Barr’s approach clearly appealed to the GOP’s hacky-sack demo:
Two other things worth noting:
Despite all his tough-guy bravado, Barr has thin skin and at times he was clearly rattled:
When Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) asked Barr “under penalty of perjury” whether his past statements about the White House having fully cooperated with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation were true, Barr quipped that they were also wise—and then growled at Neguse when he pivoted to the next question. “You said ‘under penalty of perjury’—I’m going to answer the damn question,” he said.
He also struggled under questions from Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) about his hypocrisy on protests. She accused Barr of taking “an aggressive approach to Black Lives Matter protests, but not to right-wing extremists threatening to lynch a governor if it’s for . . . the president’s benefit”:
In Michigan when protesters carried guns and Confederate flags and swastikas and called for the governor of Michigan to be beheaded and shot and lynched, somehow you are not aware of that. Somehow you didn’t know about it so you didn’t send federal agents in to do to the president’s supporters what you did to the president’s protesters. . . . There is a real discrepancy in how you react as the attorney general—the top cop in this country. When white men with swastikas storm a government building with guns, there is no need for the president to “activate” you, because they’re getting the president’s personal agenda done. But when black people and people of color protest police brutality, systemic racism, and the president’s very own lack of response to those critical issues, then you forcibly remove them with armed federal officers [and] pepper bombs because they are considered terrorists by the president.
You can watch the exchange here:
"When White men with swastikas storm a government building with guns, there is no need for the president to activate you, because they're getting the president's personal agenda done."
~Rep. Jayapal pic.twitter.com/LVkMebgHea — Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) July 28, 2020
It wasn’t his finest moment, but it probably played well enough in the White House. Which, after all, is all Bill Barr really cares about, isn’t it?