Nicholas Kristof notes in his Sunday column how much of a toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken:
More Americans have died from Covid-19 in nine months than in combat over four years in World War II. The virus death toll exceeds 292,000, compared with 291,557 American World War II battle deaths.
We’re sometimes now losing more Americans from the virus in a single day than perished in the Pearl Harbor attacks or 9/11. But contrary to viral memes floating around the internet, the virus is not creating the “deadliest days” in American history: In October 1918, in a much smaller population, more than 6,000 Americans died of the Spanish flu on average each day for the entire month.
If American states were treated as countries, the places with the highest per capita coronavirus death rates would be: Slovenia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Bulgaria, Iowa, Bosnia, Hungary, Croatia, Illinois, North Macedonia, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, San Marino.
Historically, national crises have always stressed the social fabric. The plague led to attacks on Jews and poor harvests set off witch trials. Today as well, too many politicians and ordinary Americans disdain science or any iota of personal responsibility, polarizing the country and misleading fellow citizens.
Kristof is being diplomatic. We know who he means. Misleaders like congressman-elect Bob Good of Virginia, for example: “This looks like a group of people that gets it, that this is a phony pandemic. It’s serious virus, but it’s a virus. It’s not a pandemic.”
Holy shit. Congressman-elect Bob Good of Virginia starts speaking and immediately proclaims, "this looks like a group of people that gets it. This is a phony pandemic." pic.twitter.com/xre4DWslGW
Much of the factionalism among Christian sects comes down to differences in metaphors people choose to understand the faith, he said. This was decades ago, so that may be a bit muddy. My high-school best friend was raised a Baptist and, via a long and winding road, eventually became a Greek Orthodox priest. But they are just metaphors, he said, not truth itself. If this metaphor doesn’t work for you, find another. No need to turn it into a blood feud.
Easy to say. Not so easy to live.
People become very attached to their metaphors. They can go off the rails when they decide their metaphor is THE truth. Or when a sect turns a Bible verse or two into its central organizing principle. Snake handlers, for example. Or the prosperity gospel. Or the “Jesus Only” people.
Or freedom worshippers. In the political arena, that is.
Conservatives who preached personal responsibility (for others) when they were more secure about their places in the social order now have made personal freedom their central organizing principle.
Personal responsibility was once a dog whistle Republicans invoked for opposing social programs that benefitted “lesser” Americans: the Blacks and browns and Asians. Personal responsibility referred to “those people” who presumably failed to lift themselves by their own bootstraps. Don’t pick my pocket to help them, no. Let them sacrifice more, work harder, show more personal initiative, etc. Like nice white people.
That was when America’s social taxonomy was more clearly defined. Now that the country is getting browner, now that the lines are muddier, personal responsibility takes a back seat to personal freedom. But insistent cries of freedom are dog whistles, too. They are demands for dominance, for a United States defined again on white terms. For a United States that delivers more for them and asks less.
Thus, the insistence that wearing masks during the deadliest public health crisis in a century violates their freedom. They won’t defend women’s freedom to make decisions about their bodies, but will shout, red-faced and belligerent, that asking them to wear a mask to defend neighbors from a deadly pathogen infringes their personal freedom. Hell no! say would-be William Wallaces.
Sixteen million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. alone and 300,000 dead. Freedom is their shibboleth, a demand for dominance one sees in the Proud Boys marching in the nation’s capitol. White. Angry. Maskless mostly. Violent. At least four stabbed on Saturday, including one Proud Boy per reports.
Well over a thousand Proud Boys now marching through the streets, police only able to disperse them away from individual intersections before they mobilize around #DC#ProudBoys#DefendDCpic.twitter.com/2A8vefrw7Z
A couple weeks ago, I shared some of my picks for the best Blu-ray reissues of 2020. This has been a particularly bountiful year for restorations and long-awaited HD reissues, so in case you are stuck for last-minute gift ideas, here are a few more for consideration. And a friendly reminder: whenever you make an Amazon purchase via a click-through on this site you’ll help support your favorite starving bloggers here at Digby’s Hullabaloo. Happy holidays!
Five Graves to Cairo(Kino Classics) – Billy Wilder’s 1943 war drama tends to get short shrift from film scholars (understandable if held up next to Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment and other heralded entries in the director’s impressive canon), but it’s solid, slam-bang “popcorn” fare for movie night.
Five Graves to Cairo was the second Hollywood feature from the Austrian-born film maker. Adapted by Wilder and Charles Brackett from the Lajos Biro play “Hotel Imperial”, it is essentially a chamber piece set in a remote hotel in the North African desert. Like Casablanca (released a year earlier), it is a contemporaneously produced WW2 adventure brimming with intrigue, selfless heroics and of course-evil Nazis.
In this case the chief villain is a real-life WW2 luminary, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, played with larger-than-life aplomb by veteran scene-stealer Erich von Stroheim (who would give his most memorable performance 7 years later in Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard). Leading man Franchot Tone portrays a wounded British tank crewman who stumbles into the hotel half-alive a few days before Rommel and his entourage arrive for a rest from the desert campaign. Anne Baxter and Akim Tamiroff round off the excellent principal cast.
Kino’s Blu-ray features a 4K remaster that highlights John F. Seitz’s cinematography and an enlightening commentary track by film historian Joseph McBride.
Funeral in Berlin(Paramount) – While I enjoy the entire series, this is my favorite entry in the film trilogy (preceded by The Ipcress File and followed by The Billion DollarBrain) that starred Michael Caine as British spy “Harry Palmer” (based on a nameless protagonist created by prolific spy novelist and non-fiction writer Len Deighton).
Caine’s Palmer is a buttoned-down antithesis of James Bond. Oh, he has the trade craft and the cold efficiency, but no flashy clothes, cars or gadgets, no adventures in exotic locales. However, he is not buttoned-down in his attitude. He’s cheeky, cynical, and anti-authoritarian to a fault (e.g. 007 remains attuned that he ultimately serves at Her Majesty’s pleasure, whereas Harry may be more inclined to scoff at aristocracy).
In this installment (directed by Guy Hamilton and adapted from Deighton’s eponymous novel by Evan Jones), Palmer is ostensibly sent to Berlin to bring a Communist defector in from the cold but becomes embroiled in a byzantine web of international intrigue and inter-agency duplicity. You need to pay close attention, but that’s what makes it fun and keeps you guessing until the end. Similar (but superior) to the Cold War thriller The Defector, which came out the same year and featured Montgomery Clift (in his final performance).
Paramount’s Blu-ray touts a “1080p high-definition” transfer, which leaves room for interpretation as to whether it has been restored. I can only compare it to the PAL-DVD edition I own-to which it displays a marked upgrade in image and sound. No extras, but that appears to be par for the course with Paramount. Still, it’s nice to have it on Blu-ray!
The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (Paramount) – Just when I thought I was out…Francis Ford Coppola pulls me back in for a third (fourth?) dip into my wallet for the “definitive” cut of the film formerly known as The Godfather Part III.
In a short video intro on the Blu-ray, Coppola justifies his subtle re-cut thusly: “You’ll see a film that has a different beginning, has a different ending. Many scenes throughout have been re-positioned; and the picture has been given I think a new life…which does, in fact, act as illumination of what [The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II] meant.”
So, has all been illuminated? In the interest of fairness (and being that I was aware of the release date for the Blu-ray) I re-watched The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II recently (probably the 50th time) so that all the motifs would be fresh in my mind before diving into this slightly reshuffled “new” coda. I admit that I have more often than not binge-watched “I” and “II” without feeling compelled to revisit “III” (no thanks I’m full).
The result of watching the new cut with somewhat “fresh” eyes is that it is not as “bad” as I remember (“bad” intended as relative in the context that “I” and “II” constitute the greatest gangster saga in film history, making it a hard act to “coda”-even for its creator). On the other hand, it still doesn’t elevate the film to the masterpiece status of its prequels.
First let’s dispense with the snarky quips about Sofia Coppola’s casting as Michael Corleone’s daughter Mary that have tainted the film for years. If anything, her “non-actor” reading of the character renders her proto-mumblecore performance as naturalistic; after all, could she help being a sullen 18 year-old daughter of a rich and famous power player who was playing a sullen 18 year-old daughter of a rich and famous power player?
Frankly, what I find most distracting performance-wise in III is her Aunt Talia Shire’s tendency to overact…with her hands. For whatever reason, Shire (reprising her role as Michael’s sister Connie) made an odd acting choice to gesticulate wildly in nearly every scene (I know Italians have a rep for “talking with their hands” …but Shire overdoes it).
Nits aside, the refurbished cut holds up well. Of the changes he made, Coppola’s repositioning of one particular scene to the beginning was the wisest, because it works as a visual and thematic callback to the opening moments of the original Godfather. All in all, it is as satisfying a “coda” for the saga one could expect within a relatively scant 2½ hour running time (considering I and II total 6½hours of narrative to wrap up).
The transfer on Paramount’s Blu-ray is stunning in image and sound quality (both elements are newly restored). There are no extras (aside from Coppola’s 2 minute long introductory spiel) but I’m sure there will be a super-deluxe bells and whistles edition at some point. If you’re a fan of the trilogy (who isn’t?) I think you’ll be pleased.
The Hit (Criterion Collection) – Directed by Stephen Frears and written by Peter Prince, this 1984 sleeper marked a comeback for Terence Stamp, who stars as Willie Parker, a London hood who has “grassed” on his mob cohorts in exchange for immunity. As he is led out of the courtroom following his damning testimony, he is treated to a gruff and ominous a cappella rendition of “We’ll Meet Again”.
Willie relocates to Spain, where the other shoe drops “one sunny day”. Willie is abducted and delivered to a veteran hit man (John Hurt) and his apprentice (Tim Roth). Willie accepts his situation with a Zen-like calm. As they motor through the scenic Spanish countryside toward France (where Willie’s ex-employer awaits him for what is certain to be a less-than-sunny “reunion”) mind games ensue, spinning the narrative into unexpected avenues-especially once a second hostage (Laura del Sol) enters the equation.
Stamp is excellent, but Hurt’s performance is sheer perfection; I love the way he portrays his character’s icy detachment slowly unraveling into blackly comic exasperation. Great score by flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia, and Eric Clapton performs the opening theme.
Criterion’s Blu-ray delivers a noticeable upgrade in image quality (the transfer was approved by DP Mike Molloy). Audio commentary from Criterion’s 2009 DVD has been ported over, featuring director Stephen Frears, actors Hurt and Roth, screenwriter Peter Prince, and editor Mick Audsley. Extras include an essay by film critic Graham Fuller.
An Unmarried Woman(Criterion Collection) – I was overjoyed to learn this 1978 career high from the late writer-director Paul Mazursky (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Blume inLove, Harry and Tonto, Tempest, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Moscow on the Hudson) was getting the Criterion treatment, because it is ripe for rediscovery.
Jill Clayburgh delivers a tour-de-force performance as an upscale Manhattanite who works at an art gallery. One day she meets her Wall Street broker husband of 16 years (Michael Murphy) for lunch, after which he suddenly and unexpectedly creates a public scene, blubbering and blurting out he has fallen in love with another woman.
Clayburgh’s reaction, as she reels first from shock, then goes from pain to anger to physical revulsion (within about 30 seconds) remains one of the best moments of acting I’ve ever seen. That’s just the warm-up for Clayburgh’s journey of emotional recovery and independence, which in retrospect is deeply rooted in the “self-actualization” movement of the 1970s.
Clayburgh was nominated for an Oscar, which she would have clinched in a less competitive year (she was up against Geraldine Page, Ingrid Bergman, Ellen Burstyn and Jane Fonda). Brilliantly written, directed, and acted. Outstanding support from Alan Bates, Cliff Gorman, Patricia Quinn, Kelly Bishop, Linda Miller and a scene-stealing 16 year-old Lisa Lucas.
Criterion’s Blu-ray has a restored 4K transfer. Extras include insightful and enlightening 2005 audio commentary by Mazursky and Clayburgh (although it makes you sad that they are no longer with us…both come across as such warm and generous creative spirits).
In one interesting anecdote, Mazursky talks about initially offering Jane Fonda the part. Fonda read the script, then turned it down with a comment to the effect that she was only interested in films that make a political statement (she had also already committed to working on Coming Home). Sometime after the film came out, Fonda reached out to him and said she was sorry she had turned down the role, because after seeing it she realized An Unmarried Woman is very political, especially in light of its empowering feminist message!
There are also new interviews with Michael Murphy and Lisa Lucas, as well as a new interview with author Sam Wasson on Mazursky’s work. Excellent package…A+!
Stocking stuffers – A few more reissues I scooped up in 2020 and would recommend:
“Sometimes a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don’t like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That’s why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House.“
Conservatives are, by nature, insurgents, and it’s hard to maintain an insurgency when your friends, or people you thought were your friends, are in power.”
I’d imagine Donald Trump is going to find out that political grift as the world’s most famous “insurgent” is going to be very lucrative.
I came across this comment by a commenter named peacerme over at Emptywheel (reading this piece.) I thought it was a good way to think about the problem of prosecuting Trump.
I truly fear the codependent belief that Dems have acted out for years, that taking the moral high ground is the moral equivalent of letting bygones be bygones. This would be what happens in domestic violence when he/she or they forget about the beating last night and move on hoping it will never happen again.
Ignoring the broken laws of the Republican Party. From Iran contra, to Plame, to Iraq war, to Russian interference in our elections, to literally torturing children on the border in a way that will alter their brains for life. Dems behave with this moral superiority that is really just codependency. Instead of living in the truth and allowing the natural consequences, as provided by our laws, the Dems intervene like the father who calls in legal favors for their drug addicted child to save the family name. Never realizing that by interfering with the natural consequences, the perception of truth is altered for the addict and that this interference may well only bolster the disease and hasten the fatal illness of addiction. (If left untreated). This doesn’t require chastisement or anger, but love and the discipline to refuse to protect that addicted child from the consequences of the disease, or the violent partner from the consequence of violent behavior.
If you love your country, you let the truth and it’s consequences reign. And if you are behaving outside of dysfunction you allow the consequences to speak truth to the nation. No matter how unpopular or risky that is. To refuse to do so under some self righteous belief of superiority, some hope that if we ignore it it will go away will continue to chip at our democracy. Dysfunction is contagious. Taking the moral high ground means applying the legal process for truth’s sake despite the consequences. We need Biden’s demeanor of love respect and compassion but we need it side by side with the highest commitment to truth and the legal processes of our country!!
Agreed. Emptywheel’s piece discusses the current thinking about prosecuting Trump and his cronies (assuming no pardon) and it’s obvious that there is a strong desire to not look in the rearview mirror at all this mess. This is part of the problem. Republicans leave a huge mess for Democrats to clean up every time. It always presents this bandwidth argument in which Democrats insist that they have too much on their plate to litigate the past wrongdoings of the Republicans.
It’s possible this time will be at least a little bit different since Trump isn'[t going to quietly retire to Mar-a-lago and play golf and will instead be leading his cult, reminding the country of his degeneracy and corruption every single day. They have to do something. But the impulse to let all this go is strong and it’s hard to argue that if they do it, after all this, that the Democrats aren’t just co-dependent enablers.
Today’s pro-Trump rally in DC has kicked off with a guy who rewrote Folsom Prison Blues to be about Parler.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio appears to have been invited to the White House. Pic from his Parler account this morning.
Bad news for Fox: the guy with this sign has ditched them in favor of something called “Worldview Weekend”
Vincent Fusca — the man many QAnon believers claim is JFK Jr in disguise — is here. People are shouting “JFK” at him and asking for selfies.
The QAnon presence today seems much more visible than last month’s rally, probably because there are fewer people. Even Arizona’s “Q Shaman,” who dresses in animal pelts and promotes QAnon, is here.
Michael Flynn arrives to big cheers, flanked by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who claims he’s leading an army of hackers to prove the election was stolen.
This guy is into militias AND QAnon
The organizer of the Stop the Steal rally is talking about her belief the election was stolen by an evil supercomputer named Hammer. To fight back, she has brought a real hammer, and bangs it on the podium.
This Trump rallygoer declined to explain his shirt.
Tension at the MAGA rally as far-right “groypers” spot pro-Trump drag queen “Lady MAGA” and start heckling.
Guy in Proud Boy gear getting arrested near the White House
In this July 17, 2019, photo, President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Williams Arena in Greenville, N.C. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Donald Trump’s campaign plans to buy ads on unspecified cable television networks to promote his effort to overturn the election he lost, highlighting claims that have been refuted by elections officials and dismissed by judges across the country.
One commercial claims that mail-in ballots were “a recipe for fraud” and urges viewers to “contact your legislators today.” Trump has sought to persuade Republican state lawmakers in several battleground states to override voters and award him their states’ electoral college votes.
The campaign did not say in a release how much it would spend on the ads or which networks would run them. Trump and the Republican Party have raised about $208 million since the election. The campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday evening.
He and his allied have failed in courts across the country to convince judges that their claims of a fraudulent election have merit. Attorney General William Barr has said the Department of Justice hasn’t seen evidence of widespread fraud in the election.
On Friday night, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by Texas and Trump to nullify the election results in four pivotal states.
I suppose it’s possible that they really think they can get this done in January when the congress meets to certify the election. I’m sure they’ll make a big show of it. And maybe they figure they need to spend a little of that 200 million his cult has forked over to help him fight this bogus election result, just for show. But it appears he’s not going to shut up any time soon. Sigh.
YouTube will now remove videos that make false claims that widespread fraud or error cost President Trump the election, the company announced Wednesday in a blog post, and since September it has purged 8,000 channels for spreading “harmful and misleading” content.
The Google-owned video giant has taken heat in recent weeks for not removing or individually fact-checking content that has boosted baseless claims about voter fraud, as other social media companies have. But now that the “safe harbor deadline” — the point by which state-level election challenges must be completed — has passed, YouTube said it will bar content uploaded Wednesday or after that suggests widespread fraud or errors cost Trump the election.
“For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors,” the company said in the blog post. “We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come.”
This policy will apply to Trump, who on a daily basis has insisted without evidence that the election was rigged and that he actually won in a landslide. Democrat Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 election, and the White House transition is underway.
Will TV stations do the same thing? I wonder. I think we can certainly expect Sinclair, OAN, Newsmax and Fox to show them and they pretty much covers MAGAworld.
Michael Cohen was on MSNBC this morning and he truly believes this is all about money for Trump and nothing more. He thinks Trump sees that he may be able to swindle $5.00 per month from 20 million people which would add up to him making more money than he’s ever seen in his life. What that “product” is remains to be seen. But I suspect that he knows that if he’s seen as a loser they will lose interest in him. He must be seen as a winner who was cheated out of his rightful victory. That is something MAGA cult can get behind.
The Republicans lost their Hail Mary bid last night, as expected, and they lost it bigly. Not even their most sympathetic judicial brethren were willing to say they would have granted the injunction they were seeking.
Nonetheless, the big baby is still wailing, still ginning up his sad deluded base into believing he’s been cheated and now supposedly denied his day in court, despite losing by over 7 million votes and losing over 50 separate court cases at all levels of government including the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court on Friday night delivered its widely expected-but-still-significant rebuke of President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. In a brief statement, the court dismissed the case Trump had called “the Big One.” It said those who brought it, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and GOP leaders in 18 other states, lacked the necessary standing for the court to even consider the case.
The latest big loss in the overwhelmingly failed effort has been met, as with its many predecessors, with some remarkable spin. But both of the prevailing claims ignore the reality of the situation.
Beginning Friday night, Trump’s aides and supporters set about arguing two things:
The court made no ruling on the merits of the suit — that they essentially punted on a technicality — and that this means the claims could still have merit.
That the dissents of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas suggest there was some merit. Indeed, some have even hailed Alito and Thomas as heroes, in contrast to the three Trump-appointed justices who declined to take a stand.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany summarized the former argument Friday night on Fox News.
“There’s no way to say it other than they dodged,” McEnany said. “They dodged, they hid behind procedure and they refused to use their authority to enforce the Constitution. … This was on standing, dismissed on standing. None of the justices gave a view on the facts of the case …”
Trump on Saturday morning also promoted the idea that Alito’s and Thomas’s dissents rendered them defiant defenders of his rightful election. He retweeted a user who said, “Thank you, Justice Alito. Thank you, Justice Thomas.” In another tweet, he quoted Sean Hannity saying, “Justices Alito and Thomas say they would have allowed Texas to proceed with its election lawsuit.”
“Never even given our day in Court!” Trump proclaimed.
Except he has — and this is merely the latest in a never-ending string of losses.
Let’s deal with the latter claim first. The idea is pretty simple: that Alito’s and Thomas’s dissents suggest maybe there was some there there — that it wasn’t unanimous! There was indeed some confusion Friday night, with some critics of Trump’s legal strategy suggesting the two justices had participated in his effort to undermine democracy. And plenty besides Trump and those he quoted hailed the justices.
The justices’ dissents, though, are considerably less significant than all that.
As The Post’s Supreme Court guru Robert Barnes and many others noted, the dissents echoed the long-standing positions of the two justices, which is that the court’s “original jurisdiction” means it must accept such a case involving conflicts between states. Their dissents on that point, in fact, were merely a matter of course for them — something they’ve done before — not any kind of commentary on the substance of the claims.
And indeed, they actually made a pretty significant statement about the substance — but not in Trump’s favor.
“I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief,” Alito said in the dissent which Thomas joined, “and I express no view on any other issue.”
They key words there are “would not grant other relief.” The lawsuit was seeking an injunction to bar four closely decided states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — from selecting their presidential electors ahead of Monday’s vote of the electoral college. Not even Alito and Thomas would grant that. Legal experts argued this essentially meant they would have dismissed the case as well — just that they didn’t believe the court could decline to accept it in the first place.
In essence, there is no indication any of the justices would have granted the relief. You can’t call it a unanimous decision because there is no vote count, but that’s hugely significant.
But while that argument misunderstands (however deliberately) how the Supreme Court works, the first one — that there was some merit to the suit even though it wasn’t considered — might be more insidious. Given the Supreme Court decided not to consider the case, Trump’s allies are suggesting, it means the claims therein haven’t actually been evaluated. So even when Joe Biden is elected, they’ll argue, it’ll only be because of some kind of technicality.
This is bogus. While Paxon’s lawsuit advanced an extremely novel legal theory in seeking to overturn the election results — and even seemed to throw in the towel at actually proving fraud — it recycled claims from many cases that came before it. And those specific claims have been roundly rejected by courts across the country, at both the federal and state level.
For one, it alleged that states illegally expanded their mail-in-voting. But lower courts, including the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court and judges appointed by Trump, have repeatedly upheld the changes. Secondly, it alleged malfeasance in the vote-counting process, including the idea that GOP observers were not given sufficient access and even alluding to the idea that Dominion voting machines might have changed votes. But many of these allegations have also been rebuked by the courts as being speculative and without merit.
Indeed, in dozens of decisions, not a single court has found merit in the claims of voter fraud. (The Trump effort got a favorable ruling in one case, but only on a procedural matter.)
The argument of Trump and his supporters moving forward is going to be that, without a Supreme Court ruling on the merits, we’ll never truly know whether Biden’s win was legitimate. Trump will use this to claim he never truly lost, which certainly plays into his post-presidency plans.
But that ignores how our legal system works.
Alito’s and Thomas’s views on original jurisdiction notwithstanding, you are not entitled to have the nation’s highest court hear your case just because of the huge stakes — and that goes double when the claims in your suit have been roundly rejected by lower courts.
If the Trump team had any success in the lower courts, they could perhaps cry foul that the Supreme Court never definitively weighed in. But their baseless claims and terrible record in court means this is a settled issue.
And indeed, even the two justices that Trump and his supporters are holding up as the defiant defenders of their day in the Supreme Court, Alito and Thomas, essentially acknowledged that.
“I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!” tweets the losing 2020 presidential candidate this morning. He’s gonna gnaw this bone longer than he did losing the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
So far this Saturday morning, the president has rage tweeted about: -Gov. Kemp -The Supreme Court -Gov. Ducey -AG Barr -The Bidens
He also said he agrees with a radio host’s suggestion to “declassify everything.”
He has said nothing yet about the raging pandemic.
