Former President Donald Trump likely committed multiple felonies in a failed attempt to undermine a U.S. election and perpetrate what would have amounted to a coup.
This is not my opinion. This is the summation of a federal judge, who wrote in a case brought against one of Trump’s former attorneys, John Eastman, that Eastman and the former president essentially conspired to “overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” federal court judge David O. Carter wrote.
And of course they did.
By now, any person with a brain knows that Trump and his minions attempted exactly that – to undermine the 2020 presidential election by first casting doubt on the COVID-related processes that would be utilized and then using those pre-placed doubts to convince weak-minded Republicans to help him overturn the results.
Alabama’s Mo Brooks and Tommy Tuberville helped him. Dozens more Republican congressmen did the same. Hell, some of them are still using the Big Lie in campaign speeches and ads.
Even after watching thousands of misguided Trump supporters attack the U.S. Capitol, beating cops and smearing human feces on the walls, and knowing full well that audit after audit of the 2020 election has found zero evidence of widespread fraud (and in many instances, it was President Joe Biden who actually gained votes after the audits, and Trump supporters who went to jail for fraud), candidates are still leaning on the Lie.
In Alabama, both Katie Britt and Mike Durant have joined Brooks in this absurdity, pretending that “fraud” cost Trump the election. Both have stated in recent interviews that election fraud in 2020 was a major issue. Just a few days ago, Durant said Trump was “robbed.”
It’s so ridiculous here that Brooks is actually using his actions on Jan. 6 and before – when he was one of the original champions of the Big Lie – to bash Britt and Durant.
Think about that for a moment.
Brooks, who last week told the world that Trump was attempting to get him (and presumably others in Congress) to participate in an illegal undermining of the election, is now using the lies about voter fraud to his advantage. Because apparently, Alabama GOP voters, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, are dumb enough to still believe that fairytale.
And why shouldn’t any of these politicians, who absolutely know better, decline to take a stand for truth and instead go right on telling the people how beautiful the naked emperor’s clothes are?
We’ve achieved a level of pathetic that I didn’t think was possible.
A level where educated, smart people spend their days pretending that this absolute lunatic conman isn’t pulling one of the greatest scams in American history. A level where they still pretend that an election held more than a year ago, that has been audited and investigated more than 100 times without a single shred of evidence of even moderate fraud, is still somehow suspect because they want to appeal to voters who are too childish to accept their candidate lost.
A level at which a Supreme Court justice’s wife was texting the former president’s chief of staff some of the most insane, drunk-on-Facebook nonsense about the Biden family going through military trials for treason at Guantanamo Bay.
A level at which we’re giving a deranged pillow manufacturer access to voter lists and allowing him to run tests on voting systems.
A level at which a federal judge wrote: “The illegality of the plan was obvious. Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election. As Vice President Pence stated, ‘no Vice President in American history has ever asserted such authority.’ Every American — and certainly the President of the United States — knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed. President Trump knowingly tried to subvert this fundamental principle.”
Of course that’s all true. I know it. You know it. Everyone with a working brain knows it at this point.
Yet, still it carries on. Because some people don’t want to admit that Jan. 6 was as serious as it actually was. Others don’t want to acknowledge their roles in a coup. Still others simply don’t want to admit they were wrong.
And at the end of the day, the excuses are probably the biggest takeaway from all of this. Because despite all of the rah-rah, “America is great” faux-patriotism from the right, the truth is they never really cared about country or honor or patriotism.
Just like the man they’re all following off this cliff, they care only about themselves.
