Donald Trump has been whining long and hard against mail-in voting, claiming the “likelihood” of “fraud.” One suspects that his advisors and other far-right paranoids are pushing for in-person only voting in the belief that Trump’s fanatical base will be more motivated to come out in greater numbers in the case of complications due to the COVID-19. But Forbes notes that “While mail-in voting has risen substantially in primary elections held amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the practice dates back to the Civil War and has increasingly been adopted over the years, including for Trump's 2016 election win. While Trump purports widespread fraud through mail-in ballots, he has never shown evidence, and in fact, the Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 set the risk of fraud between 0.00004% to 0.0009%. Additionally, his repeated notion that mail-in voting hurts the chances for Republicans in elections, studies show that the practice doesn't help either party”—especially when it comes to 65+ voters.
Trump clearly is in fear of not just an election defeat, but the possibility—or probability—that he will be subject to prosecution for various financial crimes, which he would no longer be able to stop if he is no longer president. His various nefarious underlings, like Stephen Miller, know that their reputations make them virtually unemployable outside the far-right biosphere once Trump is no longer president. Thus when Trump tweeted that he would consider postponing the election on his own, the man who lorded over his business “organization” like a dictator who was the law unto himself, melded into the political dictator motivated by fear and paranoia when confronted by constitutional realities.
Within hours of Trump’s tweet, the cofounder of what some would say is the far-right Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi, vented his outrage in a New York Times op-ed that Trump would even speculate on delaying the election for his personal benefit: "Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate."
Calabresi also asserted that any Republican senator who refused to speak out against Trump’s suggestion should resign “immediately.” Of course we can dream of such things, but in the meantime someone has to tell the truth. Fox News? Outside of Chris Wallace, hardly. Of course, even Fox News has felt the ire of Trump on occasion when it deviated one degree from the status quo, but in general reporting on his presidency is all “fake news” if it isn’t “positive” in every aspect.
Now, the Trump campaign website has been posting at various locations on the Internet “surveys” which I am not certain his people pay attention to if they don’t get the right responses. I once filled out one of these surveys, and all of my answers were in direct opposition to Trump World ideology. That was a mistake, because Trump campaign spam keeps popping up now in my email inbox. Another “survey” which the creators tried very hard to game is the “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.” Most of the questions are “yes, no or no opinion,” and naturally I answered what I thought was the truth. Does the mainstream media care about working people? Yes. Do you believe the mainstream media has reported unfairly on our presidency? No. There were some questions that assumed the favorite Trump complaints were your complaints too: On which does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans? Well, I would say “religion” and “foreign policy” and “conservatism.” Naturally the question doesn’t allow for context; to me the media is at fault for not sufficiently highlighting Republican hypocrisies in regard to Trump’s policies, or his ideological, moral and ethical deficiencies.
As I went down the list it became quite obvious that how you viewed Trump skewed how you responded to the survey; it wasn’t really in search of the “truth.” If you disagreed with everything Trump is doing, then you might actually believe the mainstream media is not doing enough to expose Trump’s crimes, and if you are a Trump supporter, every bad story about him is simply there to make him look “bad,” regardless if they are “fake” or not. It just isn’t “fair” to harp on every instance of moral or ethical deficiency, or every instance of unlawful or unconstitutional behavior.
We need the media to keep exposing Trump and his crimes. Voters need to know what they will be voting for in November. Calabresi agrees with the anti-Trump coalition that he has fascist tendencies, and we can only surmise that any of his “base” who this does not matter to are little better than the German voters who in 1932 willingly fell victim to the Nazi Party propaganda of nationalism, fear and paranoia, putting the Nazis in power, and then the following year looked the other way when they unilaterally abolished democratic institutions by declaring a perpetual “state of emergency.” Now more than ever, voters need to listen to what the non-Trump media is reporting, because you won’t hear the truth otherwise; is Tucker Carlson talking about Trump’s fascist tendencies? No, he is too busy complaining about Barack Obama’s eulogy at John Lewis’ funeral.
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