Check out this passage in the latest Trump legal filing to the Supreme Court:
Can you believe the chutzpah? They are brainwashing their followers to baselessly believe that the election was stolen and then wringing their hands that that “nation as a whole may suffer injury from the resulting confusion.”
And then they basically threaten to have their crazies burn the country down if they don’t get their way.
Nobody expects the court to accept this case but this is still stunning. They will literally say anything at this point and god only knows who will hear this stuff. You can bet lunatics like Flynn will be broadcasting it to every right wing media outfit he can.
The Washington Post takes a look at how Trump has managed to convince his cult that he actually won despite the fact that judges from across the political spectrum have thrown all 60 of their lawsuits except one out of court and his unhinged, half-wit legal team has made complete fools of themselves.
To preserve his hold on power, Trump has spent the weeks since Election Day promoting falsehoods about voting problems in Georgia and five other states, successfully persuading tens of millions of his supporters to believe a lie — that the election was stolen from him, and from them.
He has done so by harnessing the power of his position, using his pulpit at the White House and his Twitter feed to let loose a fusillade of conspiracy theories. His assault on the integrity of the election has gotten a hefty assist from pro-Trump media outfits and an assortment of state lawmakers and lawyers who gave oxygen to the debunked allegations — and a majority of congressional Republicans, who called on the Supreme Court to overturn the results in four states.
Trump is continuing to press his case, even now that the electoral college has formally elected Biden. In a meeting with allies on Friday, the president discussed deploying the military to rerun the election and appointing attorney Sidney Powell, whose conspiracy theories about election fraud have been widely discredited, as a special counsel to investigate the outcome.
Along the way, Trump has willfully damaged two bedrocks of American democracy that he has been going after for years: confidence in the media as a source of trusted information and faith in systems of government. It might be one of his lasting legacies.
A Fox News poll released on Dec. 11shows that more than a third of registered voters believe the election was stolen from Trump — a number that rises to 77 percent among those who voted for Trump. Conversely, 56 percent of voters believe Trump weakened American democracy by contesting election results in various states, with the number rising to 85 percent among those who voted for Biden, according to the poll.
How did it take hold? Well…
Even as his accusationshavecollapsed under scrutiny, they have gained traction among his most ardent supporters.
They have been spurred on by Trump-supporting cable and online news outlets such as OAN and Newsmax, which touted unfounded theories about the Dominion machines, dead people voting and poll workers in Michigan allegedly covering up windows with cardboard to prevent observers from watching the process.
At a rally in Valdosta, Ga., earlier this month for two Republican senators facing a runoff election on Jan. 5, Trump paused his speech and turned to giant screens that played misleading news reports on fraud. Thousands in the crowd watched the videos, rapt.
Trump’s arguments made sense, his supporters said. They couldn’t believe that Biden fared better than Obama had in his races, and they were suspicious that Trump was ahead in some states on Election Day but fell behind as mail ballots were counted — either unaware or untrusting of news reports explaining why that was expected.
“Do you truly believe that Joe Biden got more votes than Barack Obama?” asked Wendy Mick, 53, who traveled from New Jersey to a “Stop the Steal” rally in the District on Dec. 12, and said that Newsmax and OAN are her new preferred sources for political news. “He never campaigned. There’s no way that Biden got so many votes.”
The relative silence of Republicans lawmakers in the initial days after the election, both in states and on Capitol Hill, quickly gave way to a flood of support for Trump’s posture.
A stock line emerged among Republican leaders who refused to acknowledge Biden’s win: The president has the right to pursue all legal avenues available to him.
But Trump has donemore than pursue all legal avenues. He has openly cajoled his supporters to join the fight. And they did.
It goes on…
Apparently, like Trump, his followers simply cannot accept that anyone might disagree with them. They don’t believe it’s possible. And they are being egged on by virtually everyone in the Republican Party to hold their breath until they turn blue.
Happy Hollandaise everyone! 2021 is bound to better than 2020 — it’s hard to imagine it can be any worse.
cheers,
digby