The Ongoing American Fascist Coup d'Etat - Volume One
There is only one logical reason for the Republican Party to persist:
They intend to end this "election foolishness" once and for all!
The articles I've found most significant over the last few days are:
⇒ Kentucky state police training quoted Hitler to create ‘ruthless’ warriors
⇒ Health agencies resist Trump civil service executive order
⇒ George W. Bush congratulates Biden and Harris on election victory
⇒ Trump campaign displays doctored newspaper to question election outcome
⇒ Martha McSally, Arizonans Are Just Not That into You
⇒ China declines to formally recognise Biden win in US elections
⇒ Electoral Precedent 2020 from XKCD
⇒ What Bill Barr’s memo and Mitch McConnell’s speech mean for the election
All these article are summarized and linked below.
Kentucky state police training quoted Hitler to create ‘ruthless’ warriors
Instructional presentation quotes the Nazi leader on three separate slides, as well as Confederate general Robert E Lee
State police officers stand together during demonstrations on 23 September 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky, to protest the death of Breonna Taylor by police in March.
Jon Cherry/Getty Images
The instructional slideshow, decorated with a bald eagle and American flag, advises officers to “meet violence with greater violence”. It includes the line “über alles” – a phrase from a Nazi-associated verse of the German national anthem – ironically juxtaposed against a background of American troops in Iwo Jima during the second world war.
“It is entirely inexcusable for the words of Hitler to be used in training Kentucky State Police,” the Anti-Defamation League tweeted on Friday.
The genocidal führer is quoted more than any other figure in the presentation, on three separate slides. “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence,” reads one of the citations.
A quote attributed to Lee, meanwhile, touts the importance of “truth and manliness” in a slide titled The Thin Gray Line. During the American civil war, Confederate soldiers who betrayed the Union wore grey uniforms.
The training’s explosive contents were first reported by Manual RedEye , a high school news publication in Louisville, Kentucky, after a local attorney uncovered the slideshow while requesting information about a detective who shot and killed a man .
Lt Josh Lawson of the KSP told student reporters that “the quotes are used for their content and relevance” to teach “topics [that] go to the fundamentals of law enforcement such as treating everyone equally, service to the public, and being guided by the law”.
But Morgan Hall, the communications director for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, called the controversial material “unacceptable” and said it had not been used since 2013.
The slideshow’s title page includes a subhead with the name of Lt Curt Hall, who according to LinkedIn was a decades-long veteran with Kentucky law enforcement.
“As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed,” congressman John Yarmuth, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter . “And as a Jewish American, I am genuinely disturbed that there are people like this who not only walk among us, but who have been entrusted to keep us safe.”
He continued: “And don’t give us the ‘it’s a few bad apples’ excuse. This is a poisonous culture that has gotten too many innocent people harassed and killed, and we refuse to stand for it any longer.”
More than a hundred people have been shot and killed by police in Kentucky since the start of 2015, according to a database published by the Washington Post .
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, died in March after Louisville police raided her apartment and shot her . When no officer was charged directly with Taylor’s death, Americans across the country took to the streets in protest, decrying yet another example of Black lives cut short by police violence.
Health agencies resist Trump civil service executive order
The order would strip certain civil service and due process protections from career federal employees who make policy.
Commissioner Stephen Hahn looks on as President
Donald Trump speaks during a press conference
at the White House on August 23, 2020.
Pete Marovich/Getty Images
The order — which Trump issued on Oct. 21 — would strip certain civil service and due process protections from career federal employees who make policy.
FDA officials see it as laying the groundwork for an across-the-board effort to replace longtime career scientists with political allies in a second Trump term. Tensions between the agency and Trump’s inner circle have grown over the past couple of months, as White House aides have sparred with the FDA over efforts to fulfill the president’s vow of a coronavirus vaccine before Election Day.
Multiple top FDA officials have raised concerns about the executive order directly to Commissioner Stephen Hahn in recent weeks, voicing sharp opposition to the prospect of determining which employees would be eligible, said two health officials with knowledge of the matter.
That group includes Patrizia Cavazzoni, the acting head of the FDA’s drug center, who has suggested that she might submit a blank document if required to draw up a list of eligible workers, according to an FDA official familiar with the discussion.
Hahn, meanwhile, has told officials that if the agency is forced to comply with the order, he’ll rely solely on his six center directors to determine which career civil servants are covered by it — a move seen within the FDA as a tacit endorsement of keeping the agency’s list as short as possible.
“There’s a legitimately palpable fear this could be wielded as a weapon to nix everyone,” the FDA official said of the executive order. “They see this as an opportunity to round up all the scientists who have been perceived to have been causing an obstruction.”
George W. Bush congratulates Biden and Harris on election victory
The former Republican president said the incoming Democratic president “has won this opportunity to lead and unify our country.”
“I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night,” Bush said in a statement, referring to his conversation with Biden. “I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency.”
The former Republican president and incoming Democratic president “have political differences,” Bush said he knows Biden “to be a good man, who has won this opportunity to lead and unify our country.”
Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Bush’s congratulations come as many congressional Republicans have yet to publicly acknowledge Biden as the incoming president. News networks and The Associated Press called the race for Biden late Saturday morning after the Democrat was projected to win Pennsylvania, putting his campaign over the Electoral College threshold of 270 votes.
That means Biden will become the nation’s 46th president in January, while Harris will become the first woman, Black woman and Asian American woman to serve as vice president.
Acknowledging that he and the incoming Democratic president “have political differences,” Bush said he knows Biden “to be a good man, who has won this opportunity to lead and unify our country.”
Bush said he also extended to Biden the same offer he gave to his successors, Barack Obama and Donald Trump: his prayers for success and a pledge to help in any way he could.
Trump has had a tense relationship with the Bush family. He branded former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida as “low energy” during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, blamed George W. Bush for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and mocked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, for his “thousand points of light” volunteerism program. George W. Bush didn’t support the president’s reelection.
Trump has refused to accept the results as legitimate. In a defiant statement on Saturday, the outgoing president accused Biden of “falsely” posing as the winner, warning that “this election is far from over.”
Trump’s team has sought to delegitimize Biden’s victory by falsely claiming that illegal ballots put Biden over the top in key battleground states that had showed Trump winning on election night. The so-called red mirage appeared because Democrats overwhelmingly voted by mail, while Republicans were far more likely to vote in person on Election Day. The mail-in votes took longer to count.
In his statement, Bush congratulated Trump “on a hard-fought campaign.”
“He earned the votes of more than 70 million Americans — an extraordinary political achievement,” Bush said. “They have spoken, and their voices will continue to be heard through elected Republicans at every level of government.
The 43rd president also hailed the level of participation in the Nov. 3 election, casting turnout as “a positive sign of the health of our democracy” and highlighting that regardless of how Americans voted, their votes counted.
Bush conceded that Trump has the right to request recounts and mount legal challenges. However, “The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear,” he said.
“The challenges that face our country will demand the best of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris — and the best of us all,” Bush continued. “We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future. There is no problem that will not yield to the gathered will of a free people.”
His closing message was for all Americans to join his family “in wishing our next President and Vice President well as they prepare to take up their important duties.”
Trump campaign displays doctored newspaper to question election outcome
“The media doesn’t select the President,” a since-deleted tweet said, accompanied by the image of an altered Washington Times front page showing Al Gore won in 2000.
President Donald Trump speaks at the Trump campaign
headquarters on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in Arlington, Va.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
“Greeting staff at @TeamTrump HQ this morning, a reminder that the media doesn’t select the President,” Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a now-deleted tweet.
The post included an image of a doctored Washington Times front page from Nov. 8, 2000, declaring Al Gore the winner over George W. Bush after “Florida pushes Gore over the top with bare majority,” as the text below the headline reads. A second image showed copies of the fake newspaper page taped across the kitchen area of the campaign’s office in Arlington, Va.
Bush won the 2000 election against Al Gore after a recount in Florida, and The Washington Times said Sunday that it never ran a “President Gore” headline.
The newspaper replied directly to Murtaugh’s post on Sunday afternoon, tagging him and the @TeamTrump account and notifying them: “Those photos have been doctored.”
“We also wish to add that Mr. Murtaugh has been officially notified via email about this error,” The Washington Times added in a subsequent reply.
Murtaugh deleted his original tweet, according to Twitter, which said the post was removed by its author.
The attempt to dismiss the media’s role in presidential elections comes as Trump, his campaign and some of his Republican allies continue to contest the result of Tuesday’s election, even after President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris delivered victory speeches on Saturday after several networks and The Associated Press projected Biden to surpass 270 Electoral College votes with a win in Pennsylvania over the weekend.
Trump himself asked on Twitter on Sunday: “Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be?”
The Associated Press has been calling presidential elections since 1848.
Martha McSally, Arizonans Are Just Not That into You
She lost two Senate elections in a row. Maybe her latest defeat will become an opportunity to reinvent herself again?
Just one problem: Martha McSally is no John McCain.
US Senator Martha McSally (R) (R-AZ) speaks next to US President Donald Trump at a Keep America Great Rally in Phoenix, AZ, on February 19, 2020.
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
She started her political career by running in a June 2012 special election in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District after a gunman almost took the life of the incumbent, Gabby Giffords, in 2011. McSally wanted to portray herself as a moderate Republican in a Democratic-leaning district. She avoided public statements on immigration but winked and nodded at immigration reform. She maintained that, while she was personally pro-life, the Supreme Court had removed the issue from legislative consideration. She lost the primary by a wide margin, and the Democratic nominee won in November.
Undeterred, McSally immediately launched her campaign for the same seat in the November 2012 election. The same version of McSally ran, the pragmatic veteran, a problem-solver, trying to go to Washington to fight for affordable healthcare, jobs, Medicare, and Social Security . This time she didn’t face a serious primary challenger and clinched the nomination. But she lost the general election, this time by a razor-thin margin. Democrat Ron Barber was declared the winner by less than 1 percent after an automatic recount.
Nevertheless, she persisted. McSally ran again for the same seat in 2014, a great year for Republicans. Their majority in the House increased to the greatest number in the postwar period, and McSally rode the wave. After yet another automatic recount, she was declared the winner by just 160 votes.
In the House, McSally was a Pima County Republican. The county she represented is heavily Democratic and heavily Hispanic. She tried to be a compromising and moderate Republican, avoiding controversial issues and focusing on national security matters. She joined a congressional task force to come up with a legislative solution for DACA recipients, an issue that heavily affected her district on the Mexico border.
At least at first, she modeled herself in office after the man she one day hoped to succeed. When Arizona’s then-junior senator, Jeff Flake, announced his retirement, McSally saw the opportunity to join McCain in the Senate. (McCain had announced his diagnosis with aggressive brain cancer several months before Flake announced his retirement, raising the possibility of both of the state’s Senate seats becoming open in quick succession.)
In her 2018 campaign to replace Flake, McSally’s two opponents for the Republican nomination were Joe Arpaio, the disgraced sheriff, and Kelli Ward, Arizona’s wacko daughter. No longer interested in moderation or compromise, she tried to run a Trumpy campaign. She dropped her support for Dreamers. She emphasized her pro-life positions. And she clinched the nomination. During the general election campaign, she doubled down on Trumpiness.
It didn’t work, and she became only the second Republican nominee to lose a Senate election in Arizona since 1965. Yet her concession to Kyrsten Sinema was graceful.
During the campaign, McCain succumbed to his illness. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appointed former Arizona Senator John Kyl to finish his term, but Kyl announced his resignation within days of McSally’s loss to Sinema. With a stroke of the governor’s pen, McSally was headed to the Senate despite having just lost her race.
China declines to formally recognise Biden win in US elections
China, along with Russia and Mexico, is holding off on sending a message of congratulations to Joe Biden, saying the outcome of the vote is yet to be determined
Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Monday the result of the election would be determined under US laws and procedures, and Beijing would follow international practices in extending its sentiments.
Joe Biden will likely return ties with China
to a less contentious state, analysts say
Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
China has had a fractious relationship with President Donald Trump, characterised by growing friction over trade, technology and competition for influence in Asia and the world, with the two powers sparring over issues from blame for the COVID-19 pandemic to Beijing’s human rights record in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Analysts say Biden will likely return ties to a less contentious state, although Beijing has stuck throughout the election to a position of not commenting directly on what it says is an internal American political issue.
“I noticed that Mr Biden has declared victory of the election,” Wang told reporters at a daily briefing. “We understand that the presidential election result will be determined following US laws and procedures.”
In 2016, President Xi Jinping sent congratulations to Trump on November 9, a day after the election.
China is one of only a small number of high-profile nations, including Russia and Mexico, that have yet to issue statements on the election, in which Democrat Biden emerged the winner over Republican incumbent Trump after days of ballot counting. Trump has yet to concede and is challenging counting in several districts.
“Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be?” Trump said in a tweet on Sunday.
Relations between China and the US are at their worst in decades over disputes ranging from technology and trade to Hong Kong and the coronavirus, and the Trump administration has unleashed a barrage of sanctions against Beijing.
While Biden is expected to maintain a tough stance on China – he has called Xi a “thug” and vowed to lead a campaign to “pressure, isolate and punish China” – he is likely to take a more measured and multilateral approach.
Wang Huiyao, head of the Center for China and Globalization and an adviser to the government in Beijing, said he expects more dialogue under a Biden administration.
“Biden’s election means an opportunity to re-establish relations with the US as he is more likely to uphold multilateralism. That means China and the US can start discussing issues including climate change, pandemic control and trade,” Wang said.
‘Entangled in controversy’
Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, said in a tweet: “China hasn’t congratulated Biden on his victory as quickly as Western countries did”.
“I think it’s because China needs to keep larger distance from the US presidential election to avoid getting entangled in its controversy. This actually shows that China respects the US as a whole,” he added.
China’s view aligns both with its stated policy of non-intervention in other countries’ domestic political affairs and its desire to hedge its bets with whichever party ends up in office.
Without commenting on an election winner, Wang said Beijing would “always maintain that China and the US should strengthen dialogue and community”, expand cooperation, and “manage and control differences based on mutual respect”.
Wang added: “We hope the new US government can meet China halfway.”
What Bill Barr’s memo and Mitch McConnell’s speech mean for the election
Top Republicans are starting to sound somewhat sympathetic to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud. But how far will it go?
Attorney General William Barr leaves the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the Capitol Building on November 9, 2020.
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty
On Monday, Attorney General Bill Barr gave special authorization for US attorneys to investigate “substantial” allegations of election fraud , in a departure from the Justice Department’s typical practice of waiting until election results are certified to avoid influencing the results. After meeting with Barr, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor that Trump was “100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” adding that “the courts are here to work through concerns.”
Later on Monday, news broke that Richard Pilger, the career Justice Department official who headed the Election Crimes Branch, resigned from his post in protest of Barr’s move, writing in an email to colleagues that the new guidance was “abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations.” (Pilger has not resigned from the department entirely, though, just from his particular post.)
It’s unclear whether Barr’s authorization of election fraud investigations will lead to anything at all, much less a second term for Trump. To get to 270 electoral votes, Trump would need to somehow overturn the outcome in at least three states where Biden leads by 10,000 votes or more. Among the many (largely dubious) claims of election irregularities the president’s legal team has made so far, there’s nothing close to a claim that would disqualify that many votes.
So it’s possible that this is an exercise mainly meant to humor the president and/or satisfy the Republican Party’s base — which, though it may be damaging to public confidence in the election system , won’t actually prevent Biden from being sworn in.
The more dangerous scenario would be as follows. First, Trump’s team or Justice Department officials lay out exaggerated or misleading claims of “fraud” to cast a cloud over the outcome in key states. Second, partisan Republican-appointed judges or GOP state legislators respond to these claims by blocking the certification of those key states for Biden.
To be clear, it seems unlikely that this would happen. Biden’s leads are probably too big in too many states. But it’s clearly what Trump wants to happen. And with December 8 as the deadline for states to certify election results, the president has four weeks to try to pull it off.
Bill Barr’s memo, explained
After a relatively quiet few weeks leading up to the election, Barr barged back into the political fray with a sudden change to the Justice Department’s practices on investigating potential election fraud. Barr laid out the change in a memo to US attorneys on Monday (you can read the full text of it at this link ).
The practical change is that US attorneys now have blanket permission to investigate voting and vote-tabulation irregularities on their own. Before this, the general guidance was that federal prosecutors should consult with the department’s Elections Crimes Branch and wait to take overt investigative steps until the election results are certified, as a way to avoid influencing the outcome.
There are some important caveats, though. Barr wrote that any investigation “of claims of irregularities that, if true, would clearly not impact the outcome of a federal election in an Individual state” should be delayed until after certification. He also wrote that “specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries,” adding that “nothing here should be taken as any indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election.”
Despite these qualifications, Pilger, the head of the department’s Election Crimes Branch, was sufficiently disturbed by Barr’s memo to step down from his post soon after Barr sent it. Pilger wrote in an email to colleagues that the change meant “abrogating the forty-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.” He added that, having familiarized himself with the policy, he “must regretfully resign” from his role.
“I have enjoyed very much working with you for over a decade to aggressively and diligently enforce federal criminal election law, policy, and practice without partisan fear or favor,” Pilger added, seeming to imply something different was now going on.
The case for Barr’s change is this: If there actually was voter fraud on a scale large enough to impact the outcome of this election, it would be good to know that quickly. (Again, this seems extremely unlikely given that tens of thousands of votes would have to be affected across at least three states.)
But the reality is, the president has been making completely baseless assertions for months that there would be widespread voter fraud, and he continues to do so in an effort to explain his loss. And Barr and top Justice Department officials have often shown themselves — often dubiously — as eager to back up the president’s talking points.
Barr himself has opined that fraud in mail voting is widespread. And back in September, when a local office in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, opened and discarded nine ballots due to a contractor mistake , the US attorney for that district inserted himself into the matter , making unusual, partially erroneous public statements about his ongoing investigation.
So will Trump and Barr’s US attorneys truly play it straight with any investigation into voter fraud? Or will they mislead the public and/or misstate their findings in an effort to help the president politically — as Barr did with his letter framing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report?
What Mitch McConnell said
The networks may have called the election for Biden on Saturday, but few leading Republicans have done the same. Just a handful of GOP senators — Mitt Romney (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Ben Sasse (R-NE) — issued statements congratulating Biden, and even they tended to stress that Trump has the right to pursue legal challenges.
But in a Senate floor speech Monday, McConnell laid out his own take on the election results — and he’s not ready to congratulate Biden just yet.
“President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell said. “And notably, the Constitution gives no role in this process to wealthy media corporations. The projections and commentary of the press do not get veto power over the legal rights of any citizen, including the president of the United States.”
McConnell’s speech wasn’t a call to arms, exactly. He didn’t endorse Trump’s claims of voter fraud. He merely said that if Trump thinks there’s fraud, he can look into it and sue if he wants to. “The courts are here to work through concerns,” McConnell said. “This process will reach its resolution. Our system will resolve any recounts and litigation.”
But his message seemed to emphasize support of Trump’s rights and criticism of Democrats. And as one of the highest-ranking Republicans in Washington, it sent a message to many other GOP members of Congress out there: You don’t need to rush and declare this over just yet.
McConnell also met with Barr on Capitol Hill on Monday. It is not known what they discussed.
What’s really going on here?
So how should we think about all this?
One explanation that’s been put forth is that Republicans are trying to humor the president while understanding he’s headed for the exit. One anonymous senior Republican official told the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker just that, claiming, “No one seriously thinks the results will change.”
A second explanation is that this is about playing to the base. The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker reported that “Republican insiders privately concede Biden ousted Trump,” but they’re reluctant to acknowledge that because they fear “a rebellion by grassroots conservatives loyal to President Trump that would sink the party’s Senate majority.”
Indeed, those two special elections in Georgia in January are surely on McConnell’s mind, as they’ll determine whether he’s Senate majority leader or minority leader next year. But even beyond Georgia, Republicans are aware their base loves Trump, and that if they’re perceived as being disloyal or having stabbed him in the back, they could pay the price in future primaries. Theoretically, the hope here might be that Trump will eventually decide to throw in the towel, so they don’t have to publicly undercut him before that. And maybe he will.
But what if Trump doesn’t want to throw in the towel?
Currently, Biden leads by about 146,000 votes in Michigan, 45,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 36,000 votes in Nevada, 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, 14,000 votes in Arizona, and 12,000 votes in Georgia. For Trump to get 270 electoral votes, he would have to change the outcome in at least three of those states — a tall order.
Trump also faces a deadline: December 8, when states have to have their election results certified. (Six days after that, on December 14, the Electoral College will vote , setting its results in stone. Congress has the role of counting those electoral votes in January, but it would take a majority in both the House and Senate to sustain any objection to the initial count.)
So Trump evidently hopes he can concoct a narrative of fraud that will win over Republicans — and that some combination of Republican state officials, legislators, and judges will block the certification of results in key states for Biden.
That seems far fetched. Trump’s suits have had little legal success so far, Republican state officials involved in the counts have insisted they’ve found no fraud , and some GOP leaders in state legislatures have said they won’t or can’t change the outcome. But Trump has four more weeks to try to change their minds.
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If anyone thinks Trump is just screwing around, and that everything will straighten itself out... they're fools!
The Republican Party has been working to eliminate democracy in America for decades, with the Federalist Society, and then RedMap... and now they're close enough to taste their victory.
They'll reach for it, knowing that everything they do will always be helpful for them - the more they can make Americans mistrust their democracy, the sooner they will take power permanently.
1) The Kentucky State Police article is significant. The fascists are working openly to subvert democracy.
2) The "Deep State" is as it always has been: civil servants trying to do their job, without reference to party dogma. So Trump must fire them...
3) I would never have imagined a President vastly worse than Bush... but we have one...
4) Gosh... The Trump campaign cheated. The headline is lost amid all the other crap coming from the White House.
5) Arizona isn't over yet. It's still mathematically possible for Trump to pull it out. But for sure, we'll have two Democratic Senators!
6) Every dictator in the world is rejoicing, watching the tragi-comedy playing out in America. They are the certain winners of this election.
7) XKCD!
8) This worries me deeply. It means the Republican Party feels ready to completely subvert democracy.
One could see soldiers about to go to war being trained to meet violence with greater violence, but it is impossible to see this as an appropriate way to train police officers in the United States.
... unless one is preparing a police state...
The relationship between America and China was VERY different then than it is now. And let's not forget this: "[Biden[ has called Xi a “thug” and vowed to lead a campaign to “pressure, isolate and punish China...” I don't think anyone can blame China for their formality, until Biden DOES "....take a more measured and multilateral approach."..