Month: May 2021

Dan Pfeiffer’s newsletter today takes us beyond the “Facebook Trump problem” to get to the even more serious serious problem stalking politics and American life due to Facebook. He goes into detail about the Trump ban and what it means and then says this:

I am glad Trump is still off Facebook, but the anticipation for this decision and the narrow focus on Trump obscures two much larger problems.

First, whether Trump has an official page or not is somewhat beside the point. With or without Trump, Facebook is a festering swamp of Trumpism. An hour or so after the decision, Kevin Roose of the New York Times sent out his daily autogenerated tweet with the top-performing link Facebook posts in the U.S. Per usual, it was a horror show. The top three posts are all from Ben Shapiro. The top ten also include two from Dan Bongino, two from Fox News, and one from Sean Hannity.

For all of the conservative complaints about “Big Tech,” Facebook’s algorithm rewards Right Wing propaganda over all other content. This algorithmic perversion of the political discourse is the source of much of what ills our country. Rewarding this content is a choice that Facebook has made for reasons of profit and politics. That will still be true even if Trump’s suspension remains in place.

Second, Facebook is too big and too powerful to be held accountable. The company has been subject to huge, well-coordinated boycotts becoming something of a pariah. Millions have deleted the app in protest. Yet, the company just reported another quarter of massive earnings growth.

As Zephyr Teachout wrote yesterday in the Daily Beast reacting to the decision:

The minute we start anticipating a corporate decision with the intensity that we anticipated today’s decision is the minute we should realize Facebook is way too powerful. It controls the faucets on the flow of information, and decides which news stories thrive and which ones are hidden, what is scientifically backed Covid advice and what is not, what is terrorism and what is expression and what constitutes a conspiracy and what does not. And it does all this based on cash flow.

Over the next several months, there will be multiple efforts to pressure Facebook to keep Trump off the platform. I will support them all and hope they succeed, but I want us all to keep focused on the bigger problem of Facebook’s role in spreading conspiracy theories and radicalizing segments of the American public. Like with everything else in American political, its too easy to focus on the dangers of Donald Trump at the expense of trying to address the existential threat of Trumpism run amok.

Over the next several months, there will be multiple efforts to pressure Facebook to keep Trump off the platform. I will support them all and hope they succeed, but I want us all to keep focused on the bigger problem of Facebook’s role in spreading conspiracy theories and radicalizing segments of the American public. Like with everything else in American political, its too easy to focus on the dangers of Donald Trump at the expense of trying to address the existential threat of Trumpism run amok.

This is way beyond Trump now. He’s actually becoming more of a symbol to his followers now while propagandists and other bad actors continue to seed the civil discussion with bullshit. Facebook is a truly malignant force as far as politics and culture are concerned. If all you want to do is share your kids pictures and chat up your old high school boyfriend, it’s great. But honestly, every other promise it once offered has been corrupted.

Anyone else notice there are no photos of Biden with Trump since he lost the election? Trump doesn’t want anyone to see photographic proof he was beaten by Biden and that he’s a loser. I think VP Harris should set up a lunch with Trump to show he was beaten by Biden and a woman!

One of the constructs in the mind of right wingers is the need to show people the right way to treat your defeated opponents to prove your manliness. You make them grovel. You boast. You point at them and laugh like Nelson Muntz. HA HA! I won! You lost!

It’s what CONAN the Barbarian says is best in life.

In video games you teabag your opponent. (I just found out that teabagging dated back to 1985 NWA World Championship wrestling which makes it even more on brand for Trumpsters. )

Trump has made it clear that he holds grudges and is vindictive. I still remember Richard Branson talking about his lunch with Trump. Apparently he spent the whole time talking about how he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying the people who didn’t help him get out of bankruptcy. (I wonder who those people are. Have they been destroyed? )

We see how DJT continues to use the GOP’s fear of crossing him.  He wants people to be afraid of what happens to them when they don’t help him or suck up to him. This strategy is still paying off for Trump post his election defeat.

Biden isn’t going to get Trump into a lunch photo op where he can grin and make him admit publicly he lost. Biden says that we shouldn’t treat our political opponents like enemies.

For a normal political opponent that would be the right thing to do, but when your political opponent is a lawbreaking, thieving, insurrection inciting, narcissistic you need to think about other ways to deal with them.

Set up the video, present the evidence, prepare for the evasion

What I’ve noticed is that the only time DJT admits the truth is under oath during a deposition. So that is what it is going to take in this case. I don’t know what will be the occasion for Trump to admit, under oath, he lost the election–but we should be looking for it. Maybe Georgia’s Attorney General can get in a question about this during that case. (And by we I mean voting rights activists, since the Biden administration isn’t going to do this. The national media won’t do this either. Maybe we can get some secretly recorded video, but that won’t be under oath.)

I want to make clear that the reason we need to do this is NOT to humiliate Trump, although that would be a nice side benefit, but because we must have some visual evidence from him to throw at his base.

“TRUMP admitted he lost! Here’s video proof!”

This video evidence can be used like we have been using the story of Trump being vaccinated to get his base vaccinated “Even Trump got the vaccine!”

We know that we COULD have had video evidence of Trump getting vaccinated, but he didn’t allow himself to get photographed getting the vaccine. It’s important to acknowledge that Trump and his staff knew the power of that visual, yet they chose not to set up a video and show it to his base. (Yet another example of Trump intentionally deciding that more COVID deaths will happen.)

Every day we don’t have video evidence of Trump acknowledging his loss is another day factually wrong statements about the election can be pushed by him to the media. The media need visuals, accepted by his base, to bring to his base.

Even the right wing media need something if they want to be in the general vicinity of the truth. The MSM can use it on Republicans when they are talking about voter suppression laws. And as I said, we need Trump acknowledging this under oath. Because as Corey Lewandowski told us he has no obligation to be honest to the media. Remember, Trump is not under oath talking to the media.

Anything the reporters bring up to him can be questioned. No one he talks to in the media will even pin him down with anything that is certified. Now he’s working on creating his OWN “alternative facts” to keep the doubt going that the press WILL talk to him about.

This whole process reminds me of how Trump used Obama’s birth location to constantly sow doubt about Obama’s legitimacy. Nothing was good enough for Trump, ‘That’s not the long form birth certificate! It’s different than a certificate of live birth!”

Then, when the long form was provided, people still questioned the validity of the actual document.

They developed a trick to avoid having the validity of the evidence come out of their own mouths. When asked, “Is Obama a citizen?” They responded, “I take him at his word.” That dodge allowed them to not mention their personal acceptance of the validity of the evidence and shifted the burden to the person who is giving their word.  Which can then imply uncertainty about character of the person, “Just how good is his word?”

The media falls for all this because of their need to be “fair & balanced” and a desire for good faith responses. Because it’s not a crime to lie to the media, the GOP keeps dragging this out. You would think that after four years the media would be better trained and prepared for this level of manipulation, but they keep “leaving it there” so they can return to it next week.

The media still expect Trump to follow the norms they believe in. But Trump is following norms. They just happen to be the ones that criminals and many rich and powerful people use.

We need to understand what finally gets these types of people to admit defeat. We need to understand what proof they will accept that shows that defeat.

We need to use some of the right’s own measurements to show them that their leader has lost. If we don’t, they won’t stop pretending they are still the winners.

We need to take steps to make this video evidence happen. Then we need to rub that evidence in the faces of their supporters. It’s what’s best in life.

#Leftisbest

They aren’t even pretending that they represent all the people anymore. It’s just GOP Uber Alles.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed off on a bill to restrict voting rights for millions of people early Thursday morning. But, to add insult to injury, the governor made it into an exclusive live television event for Fox News. According to the Miami Herald, all reporters were blocked from attending the event—but it was broadcast live on Fox & Friends, and members of the MAGA fan group Club 45 USA were allowed to attend the signing. They whooped as DeSantis put pen to paper and he said: “I’m actually going to sign it right here, it’s going to take effect… the bill is signed!”

The bill is similar to those signed in other Republican-run states since former President Donald Trump started baselessly disputing the results of the 2020 election. It will introduce strict voter-ID requirements for people who want to vote by mail, and limit the use of ballot drop boxes.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) just signed the state's new restrictive voting bill live on Fox News (after barring local press from the bill's signing). pic.twitter.com/hR2ZXooABy

— The Recount (@therecount) May 6, 2021

The election in Florida ran like clockwork and Trump won handily. But they’re doing this anyway. It’s performative at this point, both as a way to kowtow to Dear Leader and help validate the Big Lie and push the illusion that their voters cannot trust election results if they lose. Needless to say, suppressing the vote is what they are really after but in some cases, like this one, they may be suppressing their own as well. Not that it matters. If they lose they’ll just cateraul that it was rigged and carry on with this nonsense.

Since they are passing all these restrictive voting laws it makes you wonder how they can explain it if they end up losing anyway? Russian sabotage? The Deep State? JFK JUnior and the pizza pedophile ring? I’m sure they’ll come up with something. And keep in mind, it doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, it’s better if it doesn’t.

Eric Metaxas was once considered to be one of the “reasonable” conservative evangelical leaders. He never was. But he’s completely gone around the bend:

To be sure: masks outdoors are not necessary if you're not in a mosh pit or something, so he's arguing they're a political symbol. OK, but it's a symbol identified with being cautious about protecting folks from disease, not racial superiority. pic.twitter.com/BFGUTyK3gu

— Bad COVID-19 Takes (@BadCOVID19Takes) May 6, 2021

I’m offended when people wear red MAGA hats. I think they’re a symbol of fascism, for real. But I’m not going to lecture people about what they wear in public, and demand they stop doing it.

These people screamed “tyranny” when governments passed mask mandates fulminating about how it infringes on their freedom. Now that the outdoor mandates are gone they are intent upon forcing people not to wear them, because it makes them feel icky for some bizarre reason.

Wearing a mask outdoors is the most benign gesture on earth with zero downside for anyone concerned. It hurts no one and could help some people who are unvaccinated or have health issues. Maybe somebody has a cold or the flu and doesn’t want to spread it around. Maybe they just want to do it because they are completely delusional and think they will drop dead on the street if they don’t. Whatever! Who cares? It’s nobody’s business but their own.

This essay by Melissa Ryan in the Progressive, is well worth reading. The right has been very successful for a long time in taking their politics to the and influenced curriculum for years to reflect their far right theocratic ideology. Ryan points out how they are doing the same thing now — in the name of Trumpism which, in many cases, is simply all about making it possible to cheat in elections:

Arizona and Michigan are battleground states, but they aren’t outliers. State Republican parties across the nation are feeling the increased influence of Trumpian/far-right extremists. At least fifty-seven Republican state and local officials from twenty-seven states were at the Capitol on January 6. Nearly all are facing calls to resign — but mostly from their political opposition, not other Republicans. As of mid-February, only two have stepped down.

State Republican parties in Wyoming, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, and South Carolina and county Republican parties in Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Michigan, and Washington State have all voted to censure their fellow Republicans for various offenses that come down to not showing loyalty to Donald Trump.

The Texas Republican Party, currently chaired by former Tea Party Congressman Allen West, has endorsed legislation to allow a vote on secession from the United States, following news that Texas state Representative Kyle Biedermann planned to introduce the bill at the statehouse.

Shirlene Ostrov resigned as chair of the Hawaii GOP after the party’s official Twitter account was used to promote the QAnon conspiracy theory. The party’s vice chair of communications also resigned. In addition to QAnon tweets, the account also promoted a Holocaust denier.

In Oregon, the state Republican Party in February elected as its chairperson state Senator Dallas Heard, a known far-right extremist. Just a few weeks prior, the Oregon GOP claimed in an official statement that the attempted coup on January 6 was a “false flag” attack carried out by people on the left to discredit Trump.

The GOP’s transformation is part of an intentional strategy that Trump’s allies have been optimizing since his 2016 presidential campaign.

Ryan concludes:

Can U.S. democracy survive this current moment? It’s a question many of us have been asking since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, and one that seems even more prescient as our country moves forward after a violent attempted coup where, so far, few of the elected officials who fanned the flames and incited the riot have been held accountable for their actions.

If Democrats want to reverse the nation’s current course, it’s clear that the next stages of the fight will be at the state and local level. As Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Jessica Post told me, “These attacks on our democracy underscore the high stakes of state and local elections — we cannot afford to ignore the races down the ballot. Democrats are going to stand up and fight voter suppression with every available tool, and we need strong grassroots support to show the GOP that they cannot attack our freedom to vote without a fight.” …

The path to saving U.S. democracy might be rough and full of obstacles, but it does exist. Most Americans, regardless of their political views, don’t want to live in a nation with attempted coups, white supremacist violence, and the fear of a second civil war.

The Republican Party retains a lot of political power, but it has tied itself to a deeply unpopular former President whose continued presence will make it difficult for a new party leader to emerge. That gives pro-democracy Americans who are ready to fight back an opening.

She’s right. The administration and the congress are focused on repairing the carnage left behind from four years of Trump and passing sweeping legislation to prepare people for the challenges of the future. Activists and politicians at the state level need to focus on this particular threat. I’m not sure I see that happening yet in any systematic way. I suspect there’s a whole lot riding on the courts and that is very, very risky.

I urge you to watch this discussion between Chris Hayes and Stuart Stevens from last night:

Chris Hayes: Ask yourself this, what happens when that faction takes over the Republican party and they have a majority in the House during the next presidential election. What happens when the House of Representatives, maybe under Speaker Kevin McCarthy, refuses to simply pro-forma ratify the election on January 6, 2025?

That’s where this is headed. Make no mistake. Stuart Stevens wrote a whole book about his former party’s slide into Trumpism called “It Was All a Lie, How the Republicans Party became Donald Trump” and Stuart Stevens joins me now.

The stakes here really do seem colossal to me. I think the battle has already been lost by one side. What do you think?

Stuart Stevens: Look, I don’t think this is a tipping point for the Republican Party, I think the Republican Party has tipped. I think it’s a tipping point for America. The greatest danger is to not realize the greatest danger. And what we have here is a moment that appears normal in many ways. We have a normal president who is going about the business of running a normal very functional government. But this is an extraordinary moment.

And we shouldn’t look to the past and ask is this like 1964, is it like 1968, is it like 52? Because this never really happens in America, at least not since 1860. We should look abroad like Hungary. This is a Viktor orban moment. And what the Republican Party has become, and it’s painful for me to admit this because I spent decades working in it, it has become a major anti-democratic force, little d democratic force, in America.

It is a dangerous organization that wants to end the American experiment. And the sooner we get about realizing that and understanding it, and quit trying to pretend that it’s not, the safer we’ll be and the more we’ll be equipped to deal with it. Because our society is not really ready to deal with what we’re forced to deal with now, not by our choosing.

Hayes: I agree. It’s very well said. One thing I think bears investigation here, and I’d like to get our thoughts. There’s always a theory about Donald Trump that his power fundamentally derives from media attention. That he had hacked the media economy, he was a creature of the media. And that’s how he got his power. There’s a lot to that and I think it’s right.

But what we’re seeing here is that that’s not the whole story. You know, Facebook today, they’re going to keep him off the platform, no one reads his tweets, he gives interviews and no one cares, he doesn’t drive the news cycle. The power is still there for some other elemental reason. There is something else going on that is making grown individuals act in a way that would be embarrassing in normal circumstances. Like Kevin McCarthy.

Stevens: Well, we assume that Kevin McCarthy has shame. I think that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt.I think Kevin McCarthy is quite happy. I don’t think he feels debased, I think he feels power. These are people who are different from us. They are people who have decided that they are defined by power — power to no purpose. And it’s a very dangerous reality.

Look we’ve seen this before in America in the 30s, there was a fascist movement in America. But we didn’t become fascist, why? Probably because Roosevelt was president and not Henry Ford or Lindbergh. So we elected someone who does not believe in American norms, who has strong autocratic tendencies and what we’ve discovered is what we used to study in civics when we still is that leadership matters. And when you say that it’s ok to embrace the worst part of yourself. The self that doesn’t want to admit that the other side won, you are on the road to autocracy.

Democracy doesn’t work when you’re for democracy when you win and not for it when you lose. That’s a different system of government and the threat out there.

Hayes: You know I’m glad you raise that because something that’s gone somewhat unremarked on and the landing point of that monologue and that is that something really dangerous, aside from the violent insurrection that happened on january 6th, is the introduction of the notion of essentially a congressional veto on the peoples vote for presicentRight?

Like you’ve got this big thing on January 6th that was seen as proform. They’re just there to move the paper around and make it official. The idea that maybe you’ll lose the presidential election people spend a billion dollars you go around you campaign you lose, but if you hold both houses and you can whip the vote, who knows? That is a genuine fear of mine that now looms and to me the Liz Cheney thing is a kind of microcosm of that bigger fight.

Stevens: Look, We shouldn’t kid ourselves. This is the plan. It is to be able to take the House in 2022 go about impeaching at least Harris, maybe Biden. Take the Senate they’ll try to remove him. and look when you have something that happened as it did on January 6th and it goes unpunished it becomes a practice. And what happened when those Republican senators voted not to hold Trump responsible is I think will be recorded as the equivalent of the Munich Accord of our time.

It is when you attempt to appease something that you know is evil to gain power and to gain this. Now, Chamberlain was a much more noble figure than anyone involved in the Senate. At least he was anti-war in a very legitimate way with dreadful consequences.

We should not grant them the privilege of assuming they will revert to normality. This is normal to them, this is what they want. They do not want to believe in a system in which they can lose. And look when you read books like “How Democracies Die” by the two Harvard professors or “Twilight of Democracy” by Anne Applebaum, it makes it clear that most modern democracies die not because of tanks and coups. It’s not like Allende in Chile. It’s more like Orban. The Philippines had a beautiful constitution modeled after the American constitution and Marcos trampled all over it.

It’s through the ballot box and through judicial fiat that democracies die. And that really is what we’re about now. And I can’t tell you which side is going to win. I would like to say, of course, these people are going to lose. But we’ve kind of done that and we’ve proven it wrong. So I think we have to assume that we’re really in a battle for democracy.

I found this to be a very bracing is somewhat frightening discussion. He’s right, but he isn’t fatalistic about it:

https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1390112379048845313

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is reportedly worried about at least one thing in particular if Congress successfully put together a bipartisan commission to study the Capitol insurrection on January 6: Being forced to share under oath his allegedly explosive communications with then-President Donald Trump on that day.

CNN correspondent Jamie Gangel reported on Wednesday that McCarthy is, in her words, “very concerned” that the commission would call on him to testify on his call with Trump in which the GOP leader pleaded the President to call off the mob of his supporters.

“[McCarthy] does not want to do that,” Gangel said.

The House Republican leader, who’s been hard at work trying to get into Trump’s good graces in the aftermath of the insurrection, refuses to discuss the details of that call, especially when asked to confirm Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s (R-WA) claim that Trump had told him “well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election then you are.”

“My conversations with the President are my conversations with the President,” McCarthy told Fox News last week.

He acted like someone who cares about democracy and lives in reality for a few short minutes. It’s his darkest secret.

TPM

Arizona Republicans are going to keep excavating that pile of manure until they come up with a pony. Jeremy Stahl (Slate) explains:

On Wednesday, a member of the Arizona election audit team that has been heavily touted by former President Donald Trump revealed that its examination of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County will include a “forensic” analysis of ballots to determine if the paper is made of bamboo—in order to determine whether or not China delivered tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots to tip the state to Joe Biden.

If that sounds much too crazy for an audit that was initiated by the Republican-led Arizona legislature and whose communications are being spearheaded by Republican former secretary of state, Ken Bennett, it very much is not.

Here’s the rest of the interview #AzAuditPool pic.twitter.com/crdMzmSkeg

— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021

See, “people in Southeast Asia…use bamboo in their paper processing.” Get it?

By this point, any chain of custody on the ballots has been destroyed. But still they keep digging.

We’re into gibberis now. Next comes the drooling.

“Ah, but are the Emperor’s new clothes not wondrous?!”

Watching Republicans debase themselves would be more surprising if they were not so eager to declare themselves in his thrall. Publicly embracing Donald Trump’s Big Lie is the only purity test that matters. The Romneys and the Liz Cheneys who refuse are apostates. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik may replace Cheney as GOP conference chair as soon as next week.

What we are witnessing is not a tipping point for the Republican Party, but one for America, Stuart Stevens (“It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump“) told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday night. The past is not the place to look for parallels, but perhaps Hungary in this century: “This is a Viktor Orbán moment.” The Republican Party has become “a major antidemocratic force” in America, Stevens believes. “It is a dangerous organization that wants to end the American experiment.”

Stevens went on (sorry, no video embed available at the moment; UPDATE: C&L had the video):

These are people that are different than us. They are people who have decided that they are defined by power, power to no purpose. And it’s a very dangerous reality.

Look, we have seen this before in America in the [19]30s. There was a fascist movement in America. But we didn’t become fascist. Why? Probably because Roosevelt was president and not Henry Ford or [Charles] Lindbergh. So we elected someone [Trump] who does not believe in American norms, who has strong autocratic tendencies, and what we’ve discovered is what we used to study in Civics … that leadership matters.

And when you say that it’s okay to embrace the worst part of yourself, the self that doesn’t want to admit that the other side won, you are on the road to autocracy. Democracy doesn’t work when you’re for democracy when you win and you’re not for it when you lose. That’s a different system of government and that’s the threat out there.

Hayes added that what happened inside the Capitol on January 6 introduced the notion that with control of both houses of Congress a party so inclined could overrule the popular will. What once was a pro forma function of Congress accepting electoral votes won through elections in the states is now a contested idea (backed by a violent mob).

As we slowly emerge from this pandemic, all of us are realizing there is no pre-2020 normal to go back to. The same is true of Stevens’s former political party.

“This is normal to them. This is what they want. They do not want to believe in a system in which they can lose,” Stuart continued. “Most modern democracies die not because of tanks and coups,” he said, citing Chile, Hungary and the Philippines. It is “through the ballot box and through judicial fiat that democracies die.” He is not sure which side will lose, the autocrats or the small-d democrats.

“We are in a battle for democracy.” Suit up.

This is something I wish everyone would watch.// 'We Are Really In A Battle For Democracy, And I Can't Tell You Which Side Will Win' | @crooksandliars https://t.co/B2YXdEcd9A

— Suburban Guerrilla 💙 (@SusieMadrak) May 6, 2021

So long as they embrace the ceremonial trappings of a republic, the budding fascists living next door won’t know the difference, will they?

My God:

John Brakey, an official helping oversee the audit of the 2020 Arizona election, says auditors are looking for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusation that 40K ballots from Asia were smuggled here. #AzAuditPool

Here’s the rest of the interview #AzAuditPool

Originally tweeted by Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) on May 5, 2021.

These are the people being enthusiastically supported by the likes of Donald Trump, which is no surprise. But Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley along with all the rest are fully on board too. They’re all nuts.

As Vox’s Aaron Rupar quipped on twitter, it’s looking more and more like QAnon is actually the moderate wing of the GOP now.

So where did this bamboo lunacy come from? Slate has this:

On Wednesday, a member of the Arizona election audit team that has been heavily touted by former President Donald Trump revealed that its examination of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County will include a “forensic” analysis of ballots to determine if the paper is made of bamboo—in order to determine whether or not China delivered tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots to tip the state to Joe Biden.

If that sounds much too crazy for an audit that was initiated by the Republican-led Arizona legislature and whose communications are being spearheaded by Republican former secretary of state, Ken Bennett, it very much is not.

On Wednesday, audit liaison John Brakey told a reporter from the local CBS affiliate in Phoenix that the audit team was checking to see if 40,000 Biden ballots were smuggled into Arizona from Asia by checking the paper’s fiber to try to detect bamboo.

“There’s accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in and stuffed into the box and it came from the Southeast part of the world, Asia. And what they’re doing is to find out if there’s bamboo in the paper,” Brakey told Dennis Welch of CBS5 News.

Welch asked Brakey a series of follow-ups, such as “Why do you check for bamboo?” and “This is part of what you’re looking for?” and he answered that others were searching for the bamboo ballots because “people in Southeast Asia…use bamboo in their paper processing” and “this is part of the mystery that we want to un-gaslight people about.”

Again, is the bamboo analysis truly part of the audit effort? Apparently, it has been from the beginning.

During a press conference for the audit last week, Brakey said what auditors were “looking for is folds in pieces of paper, because there’s a guy who came out and said certain things, that the ballots were stuffed, that we’re going to find bamboo in the paper.”

Bennett, the spokesman for the audit, then confirmed, “we’re evaluating the paper. We’re evaluating the paper.”

Where did this theory—apparently of major concern for the Arizona auditors—that someone in Asia had sent 40,000 ballots to Maricopa County in order to sway the election for Joe Biden and against Donald Trump come from? It appears to have come from an election fraud gadfly named Jovan Pulitzer, who Slate’s Aaron Mak reported earlier this week is supporting the work of Maricopa audit firm “Cyber Ninjas.”

In addition to Pulitzer having claimed to invent a technology that would detect whether a ballot’s ink and folds might indicate forgery, Mak flags that back in December Pulitzer began to espouse a theory that China had imported ballots to tip the election to Biden and that he could detect such malfeasance by uncovering bamboo particles via “a forensic analysis.”

Here’s footage of Pulitzer making that claim, in a video that was circulated on Dec. 23:

VOTE VERIFICATION!!

"China 🇨🇳 use Bamboo 🎍 to make Paper 🗳️.
Is VERY Detectable."

Jovan Hutton Pulitzer with Saul Montes-Bradley@realDonaldTrump@DonaldJTrumpJr@SidneyPowell1@GenFlynn@LLinWood @PatrickByrne@CodeMonkeyZ @JovanHPulitzer pic.twitter.com/hCXthgFDL0

— Giulio Barbonari (@GiulioAnselmo) December 24, 2020

Pulitzer claimed at the time:

The ballots are supposed to be printed here in the United States of America and, in some cases, the ballots have to be printed in that exact state. American paper has a signature in it. And with forensics, you can look at that paper and see if it is the constituents of that paper is what we use to make paper. Now let’s say there was an influx of China ballots. China does not have the tree and lumber population we have because it got deforested primarily a long time ago. They use bamboo—and they do use wood pulps—they use bamboo in their paper and they use about 27 different mixes of grasses that we don’t have here in the United States. And even though you can’t look at it and see it, it’s very detectable. And so I can ensure you that outside of a catastrophic failing this will be plugged.

In another video published on Dec. 29, Pulitzer further explained his theory.

#ExecutiveOrderScan #42USC1974 #NoFoldNotLegalVotea #KinematicArtifacts #ScanTheBallots #JovanHuttonPulitzer @realDonaldTrump @GenFlynn @LLinWood @SidneyPowell1 @KanekoaTheGreat @SecretWeaponUSA @CarissaKeshel @TuckerCarlson @gatewaypundit @seanhannity pic.twitter.com/YcpNRs8vEJ

— JovanHuttonPulitzer™ (@JovanHPulitzer) December 29, 2020

“Well did you know from a forensic level that you can tell absolutely the difference between paper here in the United States, or paper that was made in China,” he said. “There’s different formulations, different inks, even different fibers, and our systems were able to tell every one of these.”

Now, Pulitzer—the inventor of one of the worst gadgets of all-time and a former professional treasure hunter—is assisting Cyber Ninjas in conducting this audit, complete with checking for bamboo fibers from “China ballots.” Bennett told the Arizona Mirror last month that Pulitzer had consulted with “Cyber Ninjas” CEO Doug Logan to design the process for testing the ballots.

As Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman said during a press briefing about the audit on Tuesday, the reality is that with Pulitzer and Logan now in total—and secret—control of those ballots, the “chain of custody” for Maricopa’s election documentation has been completely compromised.

“Arizona and Maricopa County has opened up a lot of questions because, like I said, how do you know those ballots weren’t altered?” Wyman said. “And it doesn’t even matter if they were at this point, because I don’t think you can guarantee that they weren’t and that’s all you have to do is cast doubt on this process.”

“From a legal standpoint, chain of custody, ballot integrity has been so destroyed by a lack of procedures that moved into evolving procedures” Matthew Masterson, a former senior cybersecurity advisor at the Department of Homeland Security, said in the same briefing. “You can’t reestablish that chain of custody and integrity after the fact. So, from just a legal standpoint, I don’t know how you can establish proper chain of custody, evidence standards, anything for a court, or otherwise, it’s gone.”

Wyman added that the Department of Justice ought to be observing the audit going forward.