The Hair Dye Coup (2020), as talking head Keith Olbermann calls it, is President Trump’s attempt, both legal and ill, to hang onto power in the US despite losing the 2020 election. It is both laughable and frightening at the same time. As of November 20th, it looks likely to fail, but Trump remains in power till at least January 20th, two long months from now.
State of play: Two weeks ago all the main news outlets, even right-wing Fox News, projected Joe Biden to be the winner: unofficial vote counts showed that he won enough votes in enough states to win the Electoral College vote on December 14th. When the same news outlets four years ago reported that Hillary Clinton lost just as badly, she conceded the next day. But now it has been almost two weeks and Trump still has not conceded. He is still saying he won.
Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, spreader of Russian disinformation, and Trump’s personal lawyer, says that Trump won and that he can prove it in court. He said that at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in north-east Philadelphia. He said it at the Republican National Committee as hair dye ran down his face (pictured above) – underscoring how half-baked his claims are.
Trump has been crying voter fraud since before the election. The stuff that Giuliani or Trump or Fox News say might sound reasonable – but none of it, so far, has held up in court.
Republicans have become victims of their own propaganda: they make voter fraud seem more common than it is to push through voter suppression laws. But the fact is, voter fraud is just not that common, certainly not common enough to overturn enough of the 6 million some votes that Biden won by.
In 2000 it all came down to a few hundred votes in Florida. Biden’s victory is far more solid and broad-based than that. Even in Georgia, after a hand recount, Biden still led by some 12,000 votes. And he does not even need Georgia to win the Electoral College.
Plan C is to pressure Republican officials to delay certifying the vote in their states or to send in their own slate of the electors for the Electoral College. As in 1876, that would likely throw the election to Congress where each state would get one vote. There are more red states than blue states, so Trump would win. But that does not seem to be working either. Republicans at the state level, unlike those in Washington, seem willing to stand up to Trump. It probably helps that Democrats did so poorly down ballot, giving state Republicans something to lose if they help Trump.
Plan Mitch: Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat through Senate procedure. Can he steal a presidency?
Plan E for emergency. Now that Special Operations report directly to Christopher Miller, a Trump lackey put in charge of the Defence Department on November 9th, they could secretly carry out some sort of horrific Reichstag Fire event.
– Abagond, 2020.
Update (December 1st): Currently in the middle of Plan C. All the swing states have certified their vote and Trump’s lawsuits seem to have all fallen flat. So now Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan are holding hearings on voter fraud. If they use that to declare the vote fraudulent and send in a separate slate of electors, Trump could win.
Update (December 6th): Trump today on Twitter:
“…I WON THE ELECTION, BIG.”
Update (December 15th): Plan C has failed. The Electoral College vote was mercifully uneventful, refreshingly un-2020. Plan Mitch also looks way less likely now that McConnell has at long last conceded that Biden won. But at least one Congressman, Mo Brooks of Alabama, plans to challenge the Electoral College vote on January 6th, the day Congress counts the vote and accepts it.
Update (December 22nd): On the 18th at the White House Trump talked about seizing the voting machines in swing states to inverstigate voter fraud and also about using the military to hold a new elections in those states. He discussed this with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, the newly pardoned Michael Flynn, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel (= John Dean in Watergate terms). Meadows and Cipollone talked him down.
Update (January 7th): On January 6th, when Congress was to count the Electoral College vote and declare the winner, Trump told his supporters at a “Save America” rally to march on the Capitol building to overturn the election. They stormed the Capitol. Members of Congress fled. Hours later police regained control and the vote counting resumed.
Update (January 7th, 09:50 GMT): The count has been completed and Biden has been declared the winner of the 2020 election. Trump has promised a peaceful transfer of power.
See also:
- US Election Day 2020
- The US Capitol riot
- Election of 1876
- electoral college
- The Republican bubble
- Fox News
- Donald Trump
- Rudy Giuliani – in better days
- Reichstag Fire
- Autocracy: Rules for Survival
- Christopher Miller
Giuliani deserves this humiliation and more he’s disgusting.
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That’s gross! All that nasty black goo! Nasty looking thing 🤮
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Are you sure all this is USA and not India???
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Great piece Abagond.
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Update (December 1st): Currently in the middle of Plan C. All the swing states have certified their vote and Trump’s lawsuits seem to have all fallen flat. So now Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan are holding hearings on voter fraud. If they use that to declare the vote fraudulent and send in a separate slate of electors, Trump could win.
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@ Abagond: So we are not out of the woods yet? This is utter madness.
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@Mary
Remember, Abagond’s source is Trump tweets right now. But, yeah, it ain’t over ’til the electoral college meets… and even then I doubt Trump goes away.
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I found it interesting that nobody spoke under oath in front of MI legislature last night and when someone tried to swear in Giuliani, they were ruled out of order. That deliberate an attempt to not be under oath discredits everything they said.
I went looking for the actual witness affidavits and they’re sworn and signed documents and look to be filed in county court. So, I’m not sure Trump could pardon them from perjury because it’s not a federal court. But maybe there’s something to that as to why they wouldn’t speak under oath and only referred back to previously signed affidavits. Seems to me that if you’ve got the actual witness in front of you while you’re seeking answers and you have the ability/authority to swear them in before they speak, you’d take advantage of that. It matters because what Trump’s people say in court, under oath, and what they say in front of cameras when they’re not under oath tends to be different. So, MI Republicans just gave the circus a platform to spew conspiracies instead of actually doing any real investigation into what, if any, actual improprieties took place.
I also have no idea who brings perjury charges but I like to see an example made out of some folks for trying to undermine democracy. Maybe not the idiots that believe dead people voted because they didn’t comprehend how the clerks had to enter 1/1/1900 into the software to flag birth dates for further validation or that Michigan already eliminated ballots of people who died between mailing their ballot and election night… But a person who signs a sworn affidavit saying she saw batches of ballots counted and tallied multiple times (in one case stating she saw a batch of 50 ballots count as at least 400 in a world where the highest discrepancy was 27 votes)… A person who repeatedly insisted they were aware of the fact they signed an affidavit under threat of prison if she’d lied on it… maybe that person gets the public spectacle of a perjury trial that it seems she’s looking for.
Trump tweets will no doubt mention another witness who “shut down an unhinged dem” in the hearings. She lost credibility with me when she stated we need voter ID laws because “All Chinese look alike.”
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@ Open Minded Observer
That it is not under oath is not an accident. Trump failed in the courts, so he is trying to win in the court of public opinion where the standards of proof are way less rigorous, especially within the Trumposphere (OANN, Newsmax, Sean Hannity, Trump’s tweets, biff, etc).
It might give Republican lawmakers enough political cover in enough states to send in a separate slate of electors. Failing that it at least helps to keep his movement and fundraising alive so he can pay off campaign debts and maybe start TNN.
Garry Kasparov sees a sinister, destructive motive:
(https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1326682451708678145)
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@Abagond
Totally agree about not being under oath as a deliberate means to play to the court of public opinion. I’m just not sure the MI legislature is as interested in overturning the election as they are in hanging the embarrassment of national scrutiny and messy elections on the Democratic Governor and Secretary of State. My bet is they hope to direct all of the feelings of frustration over the election into dominating state and local elections as a means to compensate for losing their gerrymandering.
“… it at least helps to keep his movement and fundraising alive…”
Oh yeah. It’ll pay for all his campaign expenses for the next 4 years (i.e. living expenses, jet fuel for “Trump force one”, hotel stays at Trump resorts where he will meet with campaign advisors, etc…). Grifter from day 1.
re Kasparov: Of course there’s no doubt that other nations are invested in this chaos (whether directly or riding the wave). Don’t the Chinese call him Chuan Jianguo which translates to Comrade building the nation or something? I probably learned that from left-wing media so, maybe the idea that he’s done wonders for Chinese expansion as a global superpower is overblown. But, no matter what party you belong to, you cannot deny that division and distrust are more woven into the fabric of the US than they were before a Trump presidency. One could also argue that he’s merely a symptom and not the disease depending on how strongly you believe he himself is capable of planning and foresight vs having a personality that is both easily manipulated and naturally compliments efforts to destabilize the United States.
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Update (December 6th): Trump today on Twitter:
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@ Open Minded Observer
I think Trump is both symptom and disease. If he politically implodes over the next few weeks or months, that would be a huge gain for the US, but the underlying cancer would still be there. It could flare up in an even worse form.
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Case closed.
Neither Plan C, or this one is viable anymore. Today, Senator McConnel accepted Biden as President-elect of the United States.
The last alternative left now seems like a mirage. Trump became today a de facto loser. No more options left!
I’m wondering what his followers are thinking at this moment. Maybe they are ruminating how influential the “deep state” is. Probably they are seeing the two last “suspicious moves” of Attorney General William Barr* as evidence that even old friends of Trump end up corrupted and bought by the “deep state” to do its bidding against Trump. A true Trojan horse…
P.S.:
Attorney General William Barr has blocked the Hunter Biden’ case for a while and in doing so became one of the most effective enablers of Joe Biden’s win.
Later he said that his Department hadn’t found evidence of wrong doing in the electoral process, turning the Trump case even more difficult to proceed. He was indeed the most effective operative of the “deep state”!
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@ munubantu
I am glad he said that. But excuse me if I am not in the habit of trusting that man. He is as Machiavellian as they come. I am not crossing Plan Mitch off the list till January 6th (when Congress accepts the Electoral College vote).
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Update (December 15th): Plan C has failed. The Electoral College vote was mercifully uneventful, refreshingly un-2020. Plan Mitch also looks way less likely now that McConnell has at long last conceded that Biden won. But at least one Congressman, Mo Brooks of Alabama, plans to challenge the Electoral College vote on January 6th, the day Congress counts the vote and accepts it.
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I think that McConnell wants to leave the Trump era behind and assume himself for now the lead of the Republican party. He will be Machiavellian but not in the way you think. Trump will probably learn what “(un)truthful friends are”.
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@ munubantu
Trump says it is too soon to give up! At least as of 16 hours ago.
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I wouldn’t give up either if I were making $200 million a month in donations! I mean, I like to think of myself as somewhat honorable, but c’mon… that’s some serious coinage he’s making with this latest scam.
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Update: On the 18th at the White House Trump talked about seizing the voting machines in swing states to inverstigate voter fraud and also about using the military to hold a new elections in those states. He discussed this with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, the newly pardoned Michael Flynn, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, and Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel (= John Dean in Watergate terms). Meadows and Cipollone talked him down.
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Update: On January 6th, when Congress was to count the Electoral College vote and declare the winner, Trump told his supporters at a “Save America” rally to march on the Capitol building to overturn the election. They stormed the Capitol. Members of Congress fled. Hours later police regained control and the vote counting resumed.
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Update: The count has been completed and Biden has been declared the winner of the 2020 election. Trump has promised a peaceful transfer of power.
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