The revelations of Trump’s utter contempt for democracy because of his attempts to overturn the election results get worse with each day of public congressional hearings, if you can believe it. The fourth day of congressional hearings yesterday saw a stream of solidly Republican state election officials in Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, all of whom voted for Trump, describe the awful abuse and harassment they experienced when they refused to go along with the Trump gang’s demands that they reject the results of the elections in their state and substitute alternate delegates, and the blatant lies that they were told as to the supposed evidence that existed of mass fraud. It should be emphasized that Trump was not simply uttering falsehoods about fraud. He consistently displayed a blatant disregard for truth, repeatedly telling lies that he had been told were lies even by his own administration officials.
The evidence is mounting that the events of January 6th, 2021 were not isolated but the culmination of a concerted effort by Trump and his cronies to overturn the election, and that they were willing to go to almost any lengths to do so. After listening to these hearings, what surprises me is that he did not order the military to act to keep him in power, so determined was he to stay in power.
The Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Rusty Bowers said that Trump’s minions told him that they had evidence of widespread fraud and would give it to him. But that evidence never came even to this day. He also described the pressure campaign.
“We received, my secretaries would say, in excess of 20,000 emails, tens of 1000s of voicemails and texts which saturated our offices and we are unable to work,” Bowers said.
Every Saturday, Bowers said organizations that he did not name would stage protests near his house.
“We have various groups combined. They have had video panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood, and leaving literature, both on my property and arguing and threatening with neighbors, and with myself,” Bowers said.
Here’s another official’s experience.
“All of my personal information was doxed online. It was my personal email, my personal cell phone, my home phone number. In fact, we had to disconnect our home for about three days because it would rain all hours of the night would fill up with messages,” Bryan Cutler, the Republican speaker of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives told the committee.
There was also gripping testimony from a lowly Georgia poll poll worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby ‘Lady Ruby’ Freeman, whom I had not heard of before, who described how they were threatened by Trump’s goons and were advised by the FBI to abandon their homes after being targeted by name as being crooks who had cheated in the election.
Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are detailing how Trump and Giuliani’s promotion of a conspiracy theory that they somehow rigged the vote has disrupted their lives.
Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are passing around USB ports “as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine,” Giuliani said in video testimony to the Georgia senate that the committee just played. In reality, Moss testified, what’s being shown in the video was a ginger mint. But that video began the campaign of attacks by Trump supporters against the mother and daughter.
Moss, who is Black, said people found her Facebook profile and left her “hateful” and “racist” messages, including one saying “Be glad it’s 2020 and [not] 1920.”
“I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere. I gained about 60 pounds,” Moss said of the the threats’ effects on her. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I second-guessed everything that I do.”
Moss’s mother Ruby Freeman described what it was like for her, as an ordinary person and small business owner, to be targeted by name by the president of the country and be accused as a ‘vote scammer’ and to have his goons go after her.
The committee also showed Trump attacking Freeman as a “vote scammer” in a call with the Georgia secretary of state. Moss and Freeman are ending their testimony with the latter describing how it feels to be personally attacked by the president.
“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me,” Freeman said in recorded testimony played by the committee.
Earlier, Moss had described just how intense the attacks from Trump supporters against them became. People would repeatedly make large pizza orders to Freeman’s home, sending delivery drivers to her door. In one instance, Moss said, strangers turned up at Freeman’s home and tried to force their way in to attempt a “citizens arrest” of her. Around January 6, Freeman was advised by the FBI to leave her home for her safety.
Here is part of the heartbreaking testimony given by Moss and her mother.
Those of you who have voted in US elections will know that poll workers are ordinary people, many of whom are often retired and acting out of a sense of civic duty. They are not elected officials who understand at some level that they can be the target of attacks. It is unconscionable for the president of a country to paint poll workers as villains out to undermine democracy and single them out by name so that they can be threatened.
Raffensperger’s testimony provided a possible answer to a puzzle. In the Georgia election, while Trump lost to Biden by nearly 12,000 votes, down ballot Republicans won against Democratic opponents. Why would that be? Raffensperger said that 33,000 voters did not vote for Trump but voted for other Republicans. In other words, Trump lost Georgia because many Republicans did not particularly like him personally. That should worry him and those in the Republican party who still are supporting him.
Stephen Colbert gave his take on the day’s hearings.
Trump had gotten pushback from the military before this point. Trump doesn’t like pushback; he likes toadies.
I’m pretty sure that the armed forces would have rejected as illegal any orders from Trump to enforce his will over the peoples’.
Now I’m having a faint memory that the military did in fact say that they would not accept any order from Trump to overturn the election. Maybe I’m misremembering.
Maybe I’m remembering this:
https://www.forces.net/news/trump-warned-against-using-military-resolve-election-disputes
And/Or this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/chairman-joint-chiefs-says-no-role-military-presidential-election-n1238772
Further down from the second article I linked to:
“I gained about 60 pounds”
My goodness.
Yeah, after the botched photo-op and General Milley’s apology I think the military realized Trump was dangerous. In his speech right before the George Floyd protesters were violently cleared out, Trump was threatening to send federal troops to cities perceived to be Democratic strongholds without following the legal procedure of having the governors request federal aid.
Even Bush Jr. was smart enough (or had staff that was) that when he wanted to use the military as a prop, he purchased time on a retired aircraft carrier that the military no longer owned. As with so many other things, Trump was not competent enough to do the same. Instead he used an active duty general who realized what was happening shortly afterward and shut it down ASAP.
After the insurrection in the capitol there was another message from the active duty Joint Chiefs of Staff condemning the riots.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-capitol-military-idUSKBN29H2WF
So in my opinion the US military was very clear and unambiguous for a good 7 months there about what they thought of getting involved in politics. And it wasn’t just statements by retired people although that does help show this wasn’t a temporary thing. It’s an enduring part of the culture. In fact it’s so much a part of the culture we don’t normally see statements like that because before this, there was no reason for anyone to assume they were necessary. In fact they were so unnecessary that making such a statement before, say, Obama took office would have been seen as ominous and strange rather than reassuring.
It is a shame that Bowers, Cutler, Moss, Freeman, and others like them couldn’t get the same sort of protections that Judge Kegstand got for the mild protests at his house.
It is criminal. The only “potential” part of it is whether laws will actually be enforced this time and he ends up in a federal prison.
johnson catman, #5: We have top men working on it right now…. Top. Men.
“It is criminal. The only “potential” part of it is whether laws will actually be enforced this time and he ends up in a federal prison.”
I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, we may well get a Watergate scenario where Biden holds his nose and pardons the creature “for the good of the country”. At the very least, though, Eastman and Giuliani better get 10+ years actual prison time. Anything less, and it’s time for tumbrels and Madame Guillotine, IMO.
It wouldn’t even have to get that far, but I can definitely see it happening. Or Biden could try to act above the fray and just say more vacuous crap about having an “independent” DOJ or some such thing, while knowing Garland is enough of a centrist asshat to get the same result.
It would not be “for the good of the country” to pardon TFG. It would cause more problems because the shitgibbon would proceed to run again, claiming that the pardon exonerates him, and create more chaos and trash democracy even more.
Milley said, “I will not follow an unlawful order.”
Like gassing peaceful protesters to clear them from Liberty Park so Trump can get a bible photo-op? That kind of unlawful order?
Marcus @11: Maybe it’s just another detail I don’t understand about your crazy country, but I don’t think army generals have authority over cops.
Rob, it was a messy situation at Lafayette Square.
All so that Trump could hold a Bible in front of a church. Milley was part of the show:
Presumably, though, the presence of that alphabet soup above had already created that “perception” (and the reality behind it).
cr @13: I’m aware of the story. Milley was suckered, but AFAIK he had no authority to stop the clown show.
General Milley found TFG so unhinged that he took steps to insure that nobody would follow any orders from the WH without his personal approval. Imagine being the guy who is getting nervous back channel calls from China, because tfg also attempted wagging the dog so he could declare martial law. (Guillotines are way too classy, but the man’s head on a spike sounds appropriate for his seditious crimes).
Much of the criminal plot was published last September, in Woodwards book Rage. Nicely excerpted in the article. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/14/politics/woodward-book-trump-nuclear/index.html
We sometimes speak different languages…. Does that mean he was tricked? Was he just idly keeping to himself, apparently nothing important to do as the fucking CJCS, and he got punked somehow? Do you think that’s how it went?
Not so clear. They were not just metropolitan police, as you had said. Lots of federal thugs too, and the order all came down from on high that day. Of course, the president is commander-in-chief, so it ultimately lands on him, but both Barr and Milley should still have had a spine and attempted to do their actual jobs, which is not just submitting to arbitrary demands from the dear leader.
The actual fact is that General Milley did not follow an order to gas protesters, as Marcus insinuates. He was never ordered to do that, and he never did that.
(Rob was being polite)
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On-topic, good job being done by those congressional hearings, I reckon.
cr @16:
From what I’ve read, he had been at the White House for a meeting with Trump. Trump wanted to deploy active-duty troops in response to nationwide protests about George Floyd’s murder. Milley opposed the idea. That was doing his job, no?
Exactly what do you think Milley or Barr should have done in the moment? What would their “actual jobs” have been? Commanding cops and NG troops to stand down? Neither of them had the authority to do that.
Exactly what do you think Milley or Barr should have done in the moment?
Just marched along with the president’s coterie, of course, singing “kum ba ya” and posing for the photo op. You know, like he went along with it…?
I’m deeply familiar with the techniques of internet comment discussion. This is where you knock down every possible choice the chair of the joint chiefs might have made, in order to apparently try to justify or excuse what he did do. I’m supposed to list all the possibilities, starting from “get a trombone and blow it with his ass.” He was head of the joint chiefs of staff and he could have refused to join the little parade, or held a press conference, or done many things requiring only courage and a sense of honor.
He didn’t give any orders and maybe he couldn’t have. But, are you trying to excuse his conduct, just so you can argue on some blog comments?
Meanwhile, Morales tries to imply I said he gave orders when I said nothing of the kind. You’ve got to deliberately misconstrue the comment I made, so you can argue with it. What skepticism fail. I have no idea why Mano allows such toxic commenters over here, yeech.
Well, you’re deeply something, mate.
I realize you really don’t like to be argued with in blog comments, but it would help if you didn’t say silly things in blog comments.
FWIW, I read “the comment” the same way as John and Rob.