By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
Tweeteth Il Duce: “With Universal Mail-in Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” [sic]
Steven Calabresi, a founder of the Federalist Society (the right-wing lawyers’ outfit that’s sent Trump all his unqualified but young and ideologically pure judicial nominees), who voted for Trump and previously argued against his impeachment, referred to the tweet as “fascistic” and called it grounds for impeachment.
There’s exactly zero evidence that mail-in voting leads to inaccuracy and fraud, notwithstanding Attorney General Barr mendaciously echoing Trump’s claims. In the Pacific Northwest, we know this. Trump touts absentee voting, though, since he and several of his Whitehousians have partaken. It might not be six of one, but it’s definitely half-dozen of the other. He’s suing Nevada for choosing mail-in voting, but Florida’s, his new home, is OK. With Trump, the most consistent consistency is inconsistency. Did you know he’s suing Pennsylvania, too, for providing ballot drop-boxes?
Second only to Trump’s disastrous pandemic failures, the “great embarrassment” to the U.S. is hours-long lines outside polling places, and the fact that their numbers have been drastically reduced in minority neighborhoods, while in white precincts there are often no lines at all. That’s not just embarrassing: it’s Republican. And it shows why Trump and Republican leaders (our Secretary of State is a thoughtful exception) fear mail-in voting: it’s not that it inherently benefits Democrats, which studies show it doesn’t. It’s that it un-scales Republican thumbs.
Trump hasn’t the power to delay the election, by the way. It’s yet another example of imperial delusions and disregard for our Constitution.
Even worse is his intent to pre-invalidate the election. In doing so, he’s running against the Constitution, not Biden; and all but literally suborning revolution if he loses. That’s more than fascistic; it’s betrayal. As is the revelation that he rejected a nationwide pandemic response because it seemed at first to be killing only people in Democratic states. What’s the word for that? Felonious? Evil? Impeachable? Then there’s his pre-election undermining of the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to handle ballots (not to mention needed medications). And refusing to expose foreign sabotage of the election. We’re running out of descriptors. (tinyurl.com/sabotage4u)
It’s consistent, though, with his increasingly bizarre lying. Several weeks ago, he told Fox “news” viewers that he’d be signing “a full and complete health care plan” in two weeks. Entirely made up. Didn’t exist then, doesn’t now. We know Trump lies to his supporters with impunity, but this? This is psychosis, seeing things that aren’t there. Like a “beautiful” response to the pandemic. Amendment 25, where are you?
On deaf ears, is where this falls among Trumpists, as letters to this paper regularly show. A recent one compliantly regurgitated Trump’s favorite lies about Biden (open borders, defunding police, Medicare for all including illegals, socialism…) and warned of anarchy everywhere. How, one wonders, does the writer reconcile predictions of rampant lawlessness with the fact that as soon as Trump’s storm troopers left Portland, it returned to the peaceful demonstrations that were happening in the days leading up to their arrival?
Violence is exactly what Trump wants. Aided by right-wingers posing as “antifa” and his own military-style tactics, beating, gassing, kidnapping citizens, he created it, with the intention of benefiting his campaign. What’s that, if not seditious?
And now, as if they’ve concluded their thievery is running out of time, Trumpic corruption is accelerating. The “Paycheck Protection Plan” sent most of its money to wealthy pals and Republican donors. The latest proposed by Republican senators is more of the same, plus a $1.5 billion gift to Trump’s D.C. hotel. He keeps firing Inspectors General, but the sleaze will out. Can he hold it off till after the election?
In his interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, who pressed him insistently with facts and follow-up, after which he ran to Fox “news” for a hug, it was clear Trump doesn’t understand coronavirus data, and was hallucinating again: nonexistent “manuals and books” that support his claims. A thousand deaths per day: “It is what it is.” “We’re doing everything that can be done.” All he could say about Rep. John Lewis is that he hadn’t attended his inauguration; but he again wished an alleged child-sex-trafficker well.
Trump’s deadly delusions and deceptions are getting worse. If Republicans don’t renounce him, they’ll wander the desert for 40 years. Assuming we have that long.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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