There has been an almost 100 percent media solidarity in declining to consider the obviously vivid possibility that the 2020 election result was false.
By Conrad Black, AM GREATNESS November 1, 2021
President Trump’s October 28 letter to the Wall Street Journal detailing some of his complaints about the 2020 election and the Journal’s editorial comment on it the following day clearly reveal the shortcomings of both sides of this argument. But the important thing to note is that there are two sides to the argument over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election result.
The prolonged and intensive effort in which the Wall Street Journal has eagerly participated, to suppress and throttle the merest suggestion of illegitimacy surrounding the 2020 election result, has failed. It has always been understandable why there would be a great body of opinion that would wish to suppress any consideration of the question. It is a sobering and demoralizing thing to imagine that the vastly important process of choosing the president of the United States could possibly be an erroneous or even a fraudulent process.
But an election where there are more than 40 million ballots that are cast by people other than those who allegedly voted and where, in places, the apparent turnout is unprecedentedly high (even when the number of erroneously cast ballots is reduced in the recent past by over 90 percent), invites and requires much more serious examination than it received—especially when a flip of 53,000 votes in Pennsylvania and any two of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, would have flipped the election result in the Electoral College to Trump.
As is often the case in this and similar debates, President Trump, by his inability to resist indulging in his “constructive hyperbole,” is his own worst enemy. This was particularly evident in the embarrassing number of assertions he made that he had won the popular vote, a feat that would have required to flip 2.5 million votes or to add 5 million new unanswered Trump votes. There is a good deal of both direct and circumstantial evidence of skulduggery at the polls but nothing on a scale that remotely justifies the former president’s claim. Since the election went off well in 44 of the states and serious irregularities appear to be confined to the four aforemenioned states as well as Michigan and Nevada, victory in the popular vote for Trump is practically impossible.
But as in all confederal and parliamentary systems, it is not the popular vote that determines the winner, and six previous presidential elections were won by candidates who received fewer votes than their chief opponent. It is the allegations of dishonest voting or vote-counting in the six states where serious challenges were made that require serious attention.
There is no thought now of reversing the presidential election result. Most of the states where there are serious doubts about the accuracy of the results have already acted legislatively to ensure that there is no repetition of such questionable results.
Whatever the attitude of any media outlet to the election campaign as it was unfolding and the election result as it came in, there has been an almost 100 percent media solidarity in declining to consider the obviously vivid possibility that the election result was false.
In the exchange in the Wall Street Journal last week, Trump delivered a machine-gun fusillade of allegations, as is his frequent custom, some of which are unrigorous. And the Journal editors, as people in that position frequently do when confronted by one of Trump’s flurries of charges, picked out a few of the more vulnerable ones and led the credulous reader to the conclusion that all of Trump’s allegations were false or overstated.
In fact, there are tens of millions of unverifiable votes, many of which were cast suspiciously and counted and recounted unconvincingly. These are the recounts that the anti-Trump media robotically recite. Even the Journal did this on October 29 in stating the Georgia vote was hand-recounted three times confirming the result. This is the truth but not the whole truth, as the recounts of already fiddled votes were taken after the unverifiable harvested ballots had already been inserted in the total to be recounted. The result was merely the tedious repetition of a likely false count.
In fact, many of Trump’s points were not and could not be refuted and it was disingenuous, to say the least, of the editors of the Wall Street Journal to cite three areas where the former president went too far and then engage in the shabby debating device of implying that all of Trump’s points in his letter of October 28 were wrong. Most were not and have not been adequately answered, in the Journal or elsewhere.
Instead, the whole challenge is deliberately portrayed as Rudolph Giuliani forlornly bringing harebrained complaints of individual electors before various state courts and demanding penalties far in excess of what it would be appropriate to grant. Here and elsewhere, Trump’s efforts are portrayed as essentially a King Lear-like exercise in blind rage by the former president at the supposedly indisputable result of the election.
Once again Donald Trump’s habitual recourse to rhetorical excess and the Journal’s tired effort of accusing him of irresponsibly overstating his case, cause readers who cannot be expected to retain the details of these intricate and arcane arguments, to believe that Trump the blowhard and over-reacher is the source of these complaints about the election which, on balance, is then assumed unjustified. Given the scores of millions of harvested or untraditionally dropped ballots, the refusal of the judiciary at any level to evaluate the many serious problems with the election on their merits, and instead just to decline to hear them for technical reasons having nothing to do with the gravamen of the complaint, has lent a level of credence to Trump’s charges that cannot be so easily dismissed with the condescension of a biased high school debating coach.
There were only 19 lawsuits that directly challenged the legality of the changes to voting and vote counting methods, almost all of them enacted officially on behalf of those for whom COVID-19 regulations made it harder to vote. None of these lawsuits, including the Texas attorney general’s case supported by 18 other states, was adjudicated on its merits. In a belt-and-braces approach to ensuring that Trump was defeated, the political establishment not only stuffed the necessary ballot boxes, but ensured that there would be no serious judicial review of the result.
It is vitally important that President Trump continue to impugn the election result and that his complaint continues to attract a respectable amount of credence so that it cannot be airily rejected as sour grapes and self-serving bloviation from a familiar source. If Trump did not have a serious case, there could be no possible excuse for his conduct, including his purposeful but certainly not insurrectionist address to his followers in Washington on January 6.
The election result cannot now be altered; the Supreme Court probably ducked the Texas case to avoid the immense controversy an overturned election would cause. But nor should Trump’s enemies get away not only with a questionable election result but also with the suffocation of legitimate questions about the election and the connected propagation of the fraud that he premeditatedly promoted an invasion of the Capitol by an insurrectionist mob.
Despite the wall-to-wall hostility of the national political media, the suspicion about the election is too evident and widespread to be exterminated. The national interest requires the sensible verification procedures provided in the Georgia and other voting reform bills—no matter the antics of naïve and cowardly captains of industry or baseball team owners who accepted that the Georgia law was a replication of Jim Crow, segregation, and the Klan lynch mob, as they move the baseball All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver.
The danger, apart from the almost terminal incompetence of the Biden slapstick regime, is that dishonest elections become institutionalized, as the Democrats attempted in H.R. 1.
Though we would wish Trump put it less self-servingly and more persuasively, this is his argument. The Wall Street Journal should know better than to try to continue Trump-bashing when the real issue is free elections.
Election fraud? No… Just move along…There’s nothing here to see.
Bear
Your prosecutor not withstanding, the fraud can not stand, and if they do not certify the fraud as fraudulent and remedy this matter, it renders all legal standards as nonsensical by extension. If a national election of the highest office can be stolen, certified, proven as such and legally ignored, the contract between the public and their govt is breached, perpetually, and the republic is no republic at all. But we will see what comes of this.
I do not believe Trump would have any difficulty in a fair election and no one would succeed against him, in my opinion, in either a primary or general election, again in a fair election. But that again is the where the rubber meets the road. When the presidential election can be stolen so openly and demonstrated so clearly, there can be no expectation of the next presidential election being any different than the last one. What would stop them from doing the same exact thing again with tighter software and more clever schemes. Fraud vitiates everything and certified fraud perpetuates the scandal as routine. In such a situation as this, someone supporting the system, perhaps Desantis or Pompeo or someone else, could gain the support of that very system which would be an advantage that Trump could never duplicate.
I think none of us should be blind to the fact that these elections are currently open to being completely manipulated by ridiculous levels of faked votes in multiple states and no one has an interest in changing this – not the Dems(LOL) and not the Reps. If Trump is not restored to office, no one ever will pursue this, and the system will reward each of those who plays an appropriate role in supporting the system. Hence, there is no reason for any of these players to draw sunlight into the process, especially if they have some concern of a past political miss-step that might be brought to the fore from such a pursuit of sunlight. Not to belabor the topic(perhaps too late), but these are my thoughts. I do hope your prosecutor friend is wrong, though I am not certain he will not be proven correct. But if he is, the whole system is quite a fraud and the republic is nothing more than a managed farce. How appropriate for us all to be stripped of our liberties just as we recognize this fact. But we will see how matters mature.
@Peloni, just a few days ago I was talking to a former prosecutor (who is die hard conservative) and he 100% agrees with me there are ZERO legal avenues to have Trump become POTUS based on the last election. There is no precedent and nothing in the law or constitution to reverse the election.
If someone is telling you otherwise frankly they are in the wishful thinking business and not versed in the law.
You are correct Pompeo or Destantis would benefit from Trump’s support. Trump would win a nomination in my view if he runs but would have a harder time in a general election. He has a die hard 40% of the GOP but some are no longer in his camp and this is also true of Independents. About one half of the voters are now Independents. GOP is at most 30 percent or so of the voters.
@Bear
The Reps are actually in a state of civil war and have been so since Trump first glided down the golden escalator, but the civil war is not about Trump, it is over the issue of corruption. The GOP is as thick in the stew as the Dems which is why they sank the GOP presidency simply to rid themselves of the troublesome issues that Trump alone commands a trusted stand on. Since the trip on the golden escalator, the lines of left and right are quite blurred and have been redrawn with the RINOs often aligning with the Dems against Trump.
There is no reason that these Rep governors do not pursue a review of the elections in their states, elections that they were not even on the ballot, ie no worry that they would be turned out. However, the likes of Abbot of TX and Desantis of FL do not dare expose to the public the corruption that is buried in their states, likely because once the string is pulled many points of corruption might become exposed. Trump, meanwhile, would have no limiting concerns of pulling these strings, as many as he could find.
I do not agree that Desantis or Pompeo could do what Trump can do at the polls. Using Pompeo or Desantis instead of Trump would lose many people, especially if they were to not receive his support. There is only one Trump and his support is quite broad and growing even among some liberals in whose presence you once could never mention his name without a serious argument. I do not recall Desantis or Pompeo pulling support for conservative candidates on the national stage. No, it is Trumps game, should he accept the hell associated with the return to what could never have been an easy task for him.
Regarding the Trump returning to office, you are wrong. It may come to nothing, but there are legal routes that end in renewed elections or overturned election results. Whether this will be seen in our future is, as I have noted, uncertain in my view. But fraud vitiates everything and a just remedy must be pursued and enacted, whatever that remedy will be, I am uncertain. They can not simply ignore the fraud, especially if foreign actors can be tightly established to be involved in this mess, which is still uncertain in my mind. But they can not leave the fraud as non-fraudulent. Their is simply too much that substantiates it for what it is.
@Peloni the USA has no mechanism short of civil war to make Trump President based on the last election. If he runs in the next election and wins then he could become POTUS again.
Frankly, the GOP would much more easily win if someone like Pompeo or DeSantis was the parties nominee.
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In addition to this, the Dems are not doing a lousy job. They just don’t care that their actions are not popular with the peons, and the peons, regardless of their whining and chanting and some very odd ideas, can have only a limited effect upon their actions. There is an agenda and appearances are no longer important. The Dems have no check on their authority, none, and they know it. This is why they have suspended freedom of health choices and freedom to work without prejudicial political pressures being placed upon their employers. They have control of the electoral process and can use it as they see fit. Perhaps, they miscalculated, perhaps they stood down to satiate the masses with a momentary victory while the big game was never under threat. Perhaps many other scenarios are true. We can’t know what we don’t know. What we do know is that 2020 election fraud is not in question. It happened. It likely happened in all states. It is telling that DeSantis keeps pursuing election reform but never calls for the review of the 2020 election. There is a great question by many millions of people. If polls are to be believed, nearly 2/3 of the public do not believe the 2020 election. Yet no one will take the simple initiative to open the votes for close inspection. If there is no fraud, there should be nothing to find, and no harm in looking. As with the vaccines, with regards to early treatment of Covid, if there is no harm, there can be no foul in pursuing it.
Also, Youngkin won with the backing of a protest movement that is based around the rejection of the 2020 election. The economy is stifling, the Korruptocrats are raiding the nation’s finances, supply lines are getting worse and worse, and many other matters have all coalesced around this movement which more then suspects the election was rigged. Dropping that central motivating force would not benefit anyone. Not today, not in 2022 and not in 2024.
You may be correct that the toothpaste can not be replaced into the tube. There is some uncertainty of how this may all resolve, to be sure. Yet, ignoring fraud can not produce any potential of resolving it. We must expose the truth, recognize our reality and pursue just reforms to prevent the nation’s truest basis of liberty being continuously controlled as needed. This all begins with exposing the fraud. It may become a good deal messier before a just resolution may be found, and it may be there is no just resolution in our future. This will depend upon the resolve of the people to certify their authority over their govts unkind disregard of the people.
As I noted previously, corruption should never be certified as final as it invalidates the entire system as fraudulent. We can not let this matter sit idle, though I do understand your belief that it might be a political disadvantage. To this, I would state that the reality of the fraud is our only advantage in remedying the results of the fraud and sunlight should provide no disadvantage to the truth nor to those who seek it fairly.
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Bear, New Jersey, which is rumored as key to the Dems future despotic goals(maybe), had several dozen machines “malfunction”. The election has been called while the number of outstanding votes is not even known, which is absurd. Electoral-corruption has been evident since Bernie Sanders likely won the Iowa primary which the party could not afford to be certified and shut down the election with no result – an election that we still have no interest in finding out who won 18months later. Every election since then til now has had obvious corruption taking place in real time in front of the world. Do recall the recent mayoral election in NYC. The fact that the Republicans took Va should not offer any sense of normality to this very broken system. I know nothing of this fellow in Va, and whatever might be said of him will be of little value in settling any issues of corruption in the electoral process. It is true that Trump supported him, but Trump supported many of those who were quite ready to impeach him in Feb. Dozens of those who Trump supported voted to ignore the obvious election corruption and certified the election rather than sending the process back to the State Legislature for clarity and support of their intent which is both legal and, given the rampant issues, was quite important to settle the issue then rather than leaving it to fester, with questions of legitimacy remaining. If Yongkin is a White Hat, he will pursue election reform and election review. Settling the outcome of the last election is not a point of curiosity, or politics. The public have a right to know their vote was set aside by these Corruptocrats on both sides of the political divide and the politicians do not have a legitimate basis to deny a close inspection of the certified fraud. Should Youngkin refuse to review the fraud in VA’s 2020 election, well, that will be a big tell to his true color.
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@Peloni, I agree corruption should not be accepted nor should voter fraud.
However the Presidential election will NEVER be changed. Reality spoke Tuesday that the Dem party is doing a lousy job governing and a majority of voters want to change that and do not accept their candidates in many places.
The election in many places elected GOP candidates. The balloting is not being disputed I believe. At least I have not heard of any.
Hundreds of thousands of votes in multiple states. This is the very definition of widespread fraud. Focusing on the the 2020 election theft is not a political gambit. It is a legal requirement, a requirement for which the very systems of justice, law enforcement and the legislators have completely abandoned any and all respect.
We stand beyond the precipice in which a fair election is dependent upon a fair accounting and counting of fair votes. The fact that there is a great opposition building to those who have subjected their will upon a democratic nation requires that this opposition respect the requirement of pursuing the fair account and fair counting of not just those who will hold authority over them, but of those who currently hold authority over them.
We are either free men with a fair accounting of our will and consent to rule or we are slaves who must accept such violated practices and stolen offices as sacrosanct. There is no basis for empowering those who steal elective offices. Supporting such matters, which includes ignoring such matters, makes us all less than victims and something more akin to accomplices to our own enslavement and that of the coming generations.
No, this fight has only just begun, and win or lose, we must not accept a fraud as something meaningful, or as we have been betrayed by our leaders, we will betray our own children. This is something we can not choose to ignore.
Freedom is not a choice, it is an inherent right, a right encumbered by responsibilities for each of us to respect the legal franchise between those consenting to be governed and those empowered to govern. The respect within this relationship requires the general, rather than specific, use and application of due process from our elected officials for our fellow man, which does also include those among us who hold such elected offices.
If we choose to abandon our responsibility in this relationship, we choose, not just for today, and not just for ourselves. So, I suggest we choose carefully. Fraud vitiates not just future charters, agreements and elections.
Fraud vitiates everything and everyone it touches, like a cancer it grows while feeding upon pragmatic choices and shifting goals of momentary gain, not unlike similar choices that have entrapped many of those encumbered by the wide based fraud put in place by many powerful men.
The best way to treat cancer is to rip it out, root and stem, otherwise, you will manage as best you can til it eats you whole from within. The coming generations will find our acceptance of violated election practices as the first step towards their poor inheritance, ripe with the loss to choose their leaders and enforce the recollection that the governed must consent to their rule.
Only through a proper respect and enforcement of electoral practices may we find a reckoning to express the will of the governed, and those who govern must accept that they have no right to ignore the will of the governed, or the Republic has already fallen.
2020 in not a past election, it is every election.
GOP should forget Presidential election and they can win as proven by Tuesday’s election. If fact they should take house and senate in next year’s election if they follow the blue print. Biden and the Woke crowd are making it easy. I do not agree with all the anit-Trump sentiment in the following article but candidates talking issues can win and do not need to make a referendum on Trump. Just being against the the crazy things the far left is trying to do like close police departments, open borders, and their poisonous education ideas will do it.
For book readers:
“East West street”, by Philippe Sands
A remarkable book on two Jewish lawyers from Eastern Europe who argue for and against using both crimes against humanity and the Holocaust in the judgement of Nazi Germany!
They are the main culprit not only for allowing but promoting the electoral frauds (a work in progress from the day Trump decided to run) but are also complicit (my opinion) in crimes against humanity as far as the pandemic is concerned.