If this didn’t brainwash 50 million people or so, you might be tempted to just shrug it off and let them live in their little bubble. Unfortunately, it does affect many millions and it’s going to have a negative influence on our politics for quite some time, Trump or no Trump. They are no longer tethered to reality and it’s very hard to see how a democracy can function this way:
President Trump’s media criticism is usually binary — there are “good stories,” favorable to him, and then the other category.
Most news coverage on Monday fell into that other category. One by one, presidential electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia formally recognized Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the president-elect, the latest and most significant rejection so far of Mr. Trump’s desperate attempts to undo the will of the voters.
But inside the sprawling and self-reinforcing network of websites, podcasts and video news that has fed some of the most reckless and unrealistic claims about the election, the myth of Mr. Trump’s political survival endures.
The lead story on the Gateway Pundit, which researchers have identified as one of the major sources pro-Trump misinformation online, floated the idea of a “BOMBSHELL” ruling in a case on Monday that the site teased as a possible game-changer: “Will a Small County in Northern Michigan Be the Key to Overturning the Nation’s Election Results?”
On a podcast hosted by Mr. Trump’s former White House chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, a conservative activist vowed to file a new lawsuit seeking to reverse the electors’ vote — adding to the dozens of suits so far, nearly all of which have been dismissed. “Intimidation and fear is not something that works in a democracy,” said Phill Kline, the director of the conservative Amistad Project, vowing to continue the fight.
The podcast was one of at least six on the list of Apple’s 100 most popular podcasts that are hosted by someone who has been vocally supportive of Mr. Trump’s attack on the nation’s electoral system.
The world seems to have recognized what the Electoral College affirmed on Monday: Mr. Trump will be leaving office whether he wants to accept his fate or not. The Supreme Court refused to second-guess this reality on Friday when it rejected a legally dubious, last-minute maneuver by the State of Texas. Numerous world leaders have accepted it by congratulating Mr. Biden. Even Mr. Trump’s own administration eventually bowed and agreed to formally begin the transition process.
Yet six weeks after his defeat, the aggressive campaign by Mr. Trump and his media boosters to insist with each new setback that the election is far from settled isn’t letting up.
Inside this bubble, the president’s allies present virtually impossible outcomes as completely plausible. They raise expectations of victory in unwinnable lawsuits and battles over electors that state legislators are unwilling to have. They bolster the credibility of questionable witnesses and advocates whose most important qualification is an unequivocal conviction that Mr. Trump won in November, despite all available evidence.
And then when they don’t meet the bar they set, they move it.
This is what the president’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, demonstrated on Monday when he insisted in an interview on “Fox & Friends” that the Electoral College vote was largely irrelevant because all that truly mattered was Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
“So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner,” Mr. Miller said, resetting the calendar to another scheme to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans, because the previous one had flopped.
Some allies of Mr. Trump had hoped the Electoral College vote would end with a different outcome: that Republican legislators in six battleground states would name slates of electors favorable to Mr. Trump. Late last week, a coalition of leaders affiliated with the Tea Party, conservative political organizations and social conservative groups wrote an open letter urging activists to “begin mobilizing immediately to contact their state legislators, as well as their representatives in the House and Senate, to demand that clean slates of electors be appointed.”
The upheaval failed to materialize and the electors cast their votes on Monday without incident. The few instances of resistance by Republicans were muted and entirely symbolic.
All along, Trump-friendly media personalities like Mark Levin, who hosts one of the most popular talk radio shows in the country, have led their audiences to believe that it was possible to pressure state lawmakers to reject Mr. Biden’s victory. They have often based their confidence on the wild accusations of people with political motives and diminished credibility.
Mr. Levin, along with Rush Limbaugh and Mr. Bannon, was one of the first to give a national platform to the conspiracy theories of the lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, whose various claims of fraud involve a multinational network of saboteurs and domestic enemies of the president both dead (Hugo Chávez of Venezuela) and alive (“Never Trump” Republican officials).
In an interview with Mr. Levin on Nov. 10, for instance, Mr. Wood called for the Biden electors to be replaced in a special session of Georgia’s legislature “so they can elect the electors to vote for Donald Trump.” He then falsely claimed that Mr. Trump not only won the state by “a landslide” but also won the national popular vote with 70 percent support.
On their own, comments as outlandish as these might not rise to become as widely accepted as they are now among Mr. Trump’s base. But the hosts validated them beyond just giving them a platform. They vouched for the professional credibility of the lawyers.
Speaking to his audience the next day, Mr. Limbaugh cited Mr. Wood’s remarks and said, “I’m telling you that if you listen to Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, they continue to make it sound like it’s a slam dunk.” Mr. Limbaugh offered his assurances that the lawyers would not put their careers on the line if they weren’t serious.
Limbaugh knows this is bullshit. So do all the others. They are just giving their people what they want.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell and Vladimir Putin both acknowledged Biden’s victory today. Big of them. They, along with every last Republican in the congress knew very well that Biden had won it over a month ago. They were just waiting to see if Trump could steal it. If it had been any closer, he might very well have gotten it done.
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