Dem
47
GOP
53
We put two parts of that headline in quotations, and we'll eventually explain why, for both. First up is "Election Integrity." Several of the outlets that broadcast Donald Trump's speech last night listed it in their broadcast schedule as "Trump Address on Election Integrity," or something very similar. We understand why they did that, because they had to call it something, and they're ostensibly trying to play it down the middle. However, that framing isn't really down the middle, as it implies this is a serious subject that will be treated in a serious fashion. It's not a serious subject any more than "Trump Address on Aliens who Built the Pyramids" or "Trump Address on the Dangers of the Bermuda Triangle" would be. Further, even if it WAS a serious subject, Trump is never the person to address something in a serious and thoughtful way.
An accurate title would be something more like "Trump Address on the Same Conspiratorial Crap He's Been Flogging for 6 Years." It was foreseeable this would be the case the moment he announced the speech. Naturally, news outlets (and pseudo-news outlets) can't use something that so obviously editorializes like that. What they CAN do, however, is decline to cover the speech. That was the choice ABC and NBC made, and it so infuriated Trump that in both the speech, and on his social media platform for the preservation and promotion of fascism, he excoriated those two outlets and threatened to revoke their broadcast licenses. As a reminder, while broadcast networks are bound by the equal time rule, they are not required to cover presidential addresses. And indeed, all of the major broadcast networks took a pass on some speeches from Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well. Still, FCC Chair Brendan Carr has his marching orders, and will undoubtedly get to work first thing this morning.
We should also point out that several other networks provided what we would call semi-coverage of the speech. They aired clips, or a portion of the speech, or both, but did not have the whole thing. On this second list, among others, are CBS, CNN and MS NOW. That means the only news station to air the speech in full was C-SPAN. If you did not see the speech, and you are a real glutton for punishment, here is their feed:
The speech was also broadcast in full by Fox, OAN and Newsmax.
If there was any doubt at all what kind of speech this would be, that doubt was dispelled in the first minute. Here is the opening portion:
Good evening. Before we begin, I'm proud to report that our country is safer, stronger, and far wealthier than it has ever been before. We are doing great. Less than two years ago, we inherited an economic and social disaster after the worst inflation in 48 years, the wide open borders with millions and millions of people pouring in from all over the world, including criminals of all types, and 11,888 murderers, many of whom killed more than one person.
We had transgender for everybody, men in women's sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. America is respected like we have never been respected before.
So, we're just a shade over a minute into the speech, and Trump has already made clear that it's going to be the same old mix of culture wars and gaslighting, and that his only interest is in speaking to the base. There's also already enough falsehoods to keep CNN fact checker Daniel Dale busy all night long. For example, the 11,888 murderers (a favorite Trump factoid) refers to all immigrants currently in prison on a murder conviction—some of them 40-50 years into their sentences, and the vast majority of them arrested and convicted during years that Biden was not president.
We don't want to dwell on Trump's outright falsehoods too much, because he always lies. But let's give just one more example, which came another minute or two into the speech:
Our previously wide open borders have been transformed into the most secure borders in the history of our country, with zero illegal aliens being admitted to the United States in the past 14 months. That is zero.
He (and his speechwriters?) just have no restraint. Certainly the number of people admitted across the United States' southern border is down right now. And if he'd just contented himself with some impressive statistic—say, "Illegal immigration has been cut by 80%"—then some people might accept that without double-checking. But ZERO people? Really? Is there anyone who believes that is true, or could possibly be true? Ok, we'll admit, there is ONE person. Trump himself believes it's true.
It was so tiresome, and so "same old, same old" that we only made it to 9:04 p.m. ET before googling "How long is Trump speech expected to run?" As it turns out, there were only about 50 seconds left before Trump finished the portion on, well, everything that is not "election integrity"—crime, the economy, the Iran War, etc. (no mention of ICE, of course). That first 5 minutes was there, in part, to allow Trump to fellate himself (a key element of every Trump speech and rally) and, in part, to justify the use (and abuse) of a "presidential address to the nation."
The last 20 minutes of the speech, give or take a minute, were entirely dedicated to the so-called "discovery" of new evidence of so-called "election fraud." Trump was mostly announcing that the documents would be posted to the White House website, and he largely did not address specific documents, or facts. He did assert that the documents support four conclusions:
We put discovery in quotes here (and in the headline) because there's nothing new here, at least in terms of the claims being made.
Now, because we try to be reasonable people, we allowed for the possibility, no matter how slight, that the administration might have come up with something new, if not in terms of the claims being made, then at least in terms of evidentiary support for those claims. However, even while the speech was still ongoing, we thought of numerous questions. Among them:
What we're trying to say is that while our minds were open, they were only a little bit open, because the whole thing just does not pass the smell test.
The promised documents were posted to the White House website around the time the speech ended. But even before anyone started to look at them, there was even more reason to be very skeptical. Trump's speech was laden with conspiratorial, non-fact-based language, with the use of phrases like "shadow government" and "deep state." And there was also this portion, which may have been the most unhinged part of the whole speech (and THAT is saying something):
Recently, we found significant numbers of burn bags information, and this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information, given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned, it was supposed to be burned.
These bags were supposed to be at a different level by different people, incinerated and checked, but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky. We believe this was not done on purpose, but rather through gross incompetence of the people that were supposed to burn the bags. But the findings are stunning.
This is meant to sound very damning. But there's nothing here that explains what was in these alleged burn bags, or why they might be connected to Obama. Note also that Trump's bending over backwards to try to construct a plausible theory that allows for this evidence to be damning (to the point that it was apparently marked for destruction), and yet it still exists to be discovered.
Similarly, noted lickspittle and loyal Trump lackey Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) was on TV a few hours before the speech. On these occasions, the administration and its allies coordinate their talking points, in part so everyone is on the same page, and in part because Tuberville is too go**amn dumb to come up with his own. And during his TV hit (on Newsmax, naturally), he asserted that "four or five" of his colleagues were fraudulently elected, and then added this:
We have very little election integrity. Zero in some states like California and New York, where they just blatantly cheat. You know, in California, if you even bring an ID to the polling place, they might put you in jail for bringing it. I mean, they hate voter ID. And so, we got to get it straight.
Again, these folks just can't help themselves. It's hard to swallow that even one senator is fraudulent, much less four or five, much less if those four or five are the senators from California and New York, which are overwhelmingly blue states. But then, since that's not enough, Tuberville has to keep going and assert that California is arresting people for so much as bringing ID to polling places. We defy him to give even ONE example of that. Beyond the fact that it would be a national scandal if it happened, there is also the fact that most people drive to their polling places in California. And to drive, you have to carry your—wait for it—driver's license.
The upshot is that before the documents were even made available, our skepticism meter was at 9.9. And unlike Nigel Tufnel's amp, it doesn't go to 11.
And now, the documents. Here is the link, if you would care to take a look. There are a couple of hundred pages in total, give or take. The documents are often heavily redacted, and are presented without any context. It is often not clear what is fact, what is educated opinion, and what is an outright guess. There are briefings, e-mails, reports, a PowerPoint slide show or two, and some other stuff. It's a big, steaming pile of... something.
We will concede we did not read every document, especially since some of them are effectively unreadable due to the redactions. Seriously, take a look at the first page of "PRC U.S. Presidential Election-Related Intelligence in 2020 - clean - declass marked_Redacted," which is in the China collection (set #2):
The second page isn't much better, and the third and final page is redacted entirely. What is ANYONE supposed to learn from this?
Actually, we will answer our own question: You're not supposed to learn anything from this document dump. Returning to the observation we make above, if the administration had actually discovered anything close to a smoking gun, they'd be shouting that from every rooftop, and would be making sure that it got posted to every social media site in creation. This did not happen, because they don't have a smoking gun or anything close to it. And so, by dumping a whole bunch of official-looking documents, with lots of official-looking notations like "SENSITIVE GOVERNMENT AGENCY" and "DECLASSIFIED BY COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT," and lots of redactions, the administration is trying to create the impression of substance. That's all you can do in the absence of actual substance, we suppose.
Incidentally, it took only about an hour before near-ironclad evidence—a smoking gun, if you will—emerged that this was a slapdash operation executed by incompetent boobs. People with a stronger stomach than us have been poring through the documents, and they already found one that provides evidence of foreign interference in a presidential election. The problem, from Trump's point of view, is that it's evidence of Russia interfering on his behalf. Undoubtedly, that was not supposed to be in there. We would link to the document directly, but: (1) they are actually pdfs enclosed in zip files, and so not directly linkable, and (2) we suspect that document is going to disappear from the collection sometime very soon. That said, if you want to try and view it while you can, it's on pages 2-3 of the document "NICA Foreign Threats To 2020 US Election_19AUG2020 DECLASS_REDACTED," which is in the same China collection as the redacted document above.
We've probably spent more time on this stupid speech than we should have. Is that because we wasted 25 minutes watching it and taking notes, and damn it, we are going to do whatever it takes to get some value out of those 25 minutes? No. Well, OK, yes, but that's not the only reason. It's because this is clearly prelude to... something. The question is: What is that something?
We can only see two possible answers to that question. The first is that Trump, desperate to pass the SAVE Act, which he thinks will SAVE his A**, is about to put the full-court pressure on in the Senate. He could say he won't sign any bills, that he won't nominate any more judges, and maybe that he'll impound every dollar currently set to go to the senators' home states. The sky could well be the limit. Of course, it's also possible that his "plan" for a full-court press is merely to double the number of appearances he makes on Fox and triple the number of whiny "Truths" he sends out. He is not a man known for having much in the way of imagination, or a spine.
The more worrisome possibility is that this is a declaration of war against the midterms, and that he's planning to use this "proof" as the basis for declaring martial law, or trying to suspend the elections, or sending armed soldiers to polling places, or refusing to seat members of Congress from blue states, or something along those lines. It is certainly concerning that, in his speech, Trump said that he planned to have the DNI lead this investigation. That is the same obeisant DNI he has bent over backwards to put in that job on an "interim" basis.
Let us be clear, however, that if Trump IS thinking this way, he is delusional. He very clearly imagines a world in which, by force of will, or fiat, or gaslighting, or whatever, he can keep the elections that a Republican wins valid, but can invalidate most or all of the elections won by Democrats. It just cannot work. Most Americans—Democrats, independents, and many Republicans—are simply not going to accept the legitimacy of a government constructed in this way, and aren't going to consent to be governed by it. One can imagine something like Govs. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA) using state troopers to escort their delegations through Washington, DC, so they may take their seats. Or everyone in blue and purple states (and probably some red states) just stopping all income tax payments. Or riots in the streets, in every city in America. It would be the Second American Civil War.
The people around Trump must know this. More importantly, the members of Congress know this. It is not easy to imagine what might get Trump impeached and convicted by THIS Congress, but trying to wreck the elections would likely cross that line. And if he is impeached and removed, making clear that his power over the GOP is broken, then the next stop for him would be prison, not unlike what happened to former President Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea, under very similar circumstances. Remember, the last time Trump tried to overturn an election, most members of Congress did not play along, and many members of his inside circle did not play along, either. He's got a more sycophantic inside circle this time around, but we are certain it is still the case that ending democracy is a bridge too far for most members of Congress.
We acknowledge that this item has a tone that is exceedingly sharp and dismissive, and occasionally vulgar. We don't like having to write that way, but this isn't just a politician talking about his political program. It's the most powerful man in the country actively trying to undermine the Constitution, for his own selfish reasons. Frankly, not only is "exceedingly sharp and dismissive, and occasionally vulgar" appropriate in our view, it's actually somewhat restrained. (Z)