The Devil Went Down to Georgia
By: Tim Miller (The Bulwark)
The president of the United States asks his supporters to overturn a free and fair election through extralegal means.
What could possibly go wrong?
Who is the more insane in the article-image?
Is it President Trump who convokes his worshipers in conditions that everyone knows are deadly dangerous.
Is it those worshipers who willingly risk death to prove their adoration?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
What could possibly go wrong?
When the defeated president of the United States holds a maskless, anti-democracy disinformation rally straight out of Vladimir Putin's dreams during the most deadly week of a 100-year pandemic you should tune in.
It's not every day that you have a chance to watch folks try to destroy the world's oldest democracy.
But in case you did not watch, this is what happened Saturday evening: Over the course of a nauseating and embarrassing evening at Heaven's Gate, President Trump claimed that American democracy is rigged with ballots coming out of ceilings and leather suitcases and that he regrets not sending the military into majority-black U.S. cities to stop imaginary fraud. In addition, the president explicitly tried recruiting Republican elected officials to go along with his ham-handed attempt to steal the election, telling them that if they break the law and help his attempt to overturn a free and fair election, then they will "go down in history as great people."
It is important to say, right here at the top, that the buffoonery is masking something deadly serious.
This is not your drunk uncle posting on Facebook after dark.
It is not a fringe congressman from some Texas district.
It's the president of the United States.
The president of the United States.
Given the gravity of the undertaking, I was not satisfied to watch only the main event. I poured a glass of wine and settled in an hour early to let the anticipation build with some of my favorite reporters and friends on YouTube.
In searching for the best outlet, a few "news" channels caught my eye. The first was " NTD America " whose mission is to "uplift and inform society by publishing quality content that embodies integrity, dignity, and the best of humanity."
I knew these would be my people when I saw that they were branding the event as a "victory rally."
When I flipped on NTD they were airing Trump supporters calling for "civil war" to save the country from the "satanic," "communist" Democrats who are stealing the election, and had a newsreader parroting Sidney Powell's fantastical claims about rigged Dominion voting machines.
The best of humanity indeed.
Between segments, NTD played this little earworm about "tyranny at our doorstep." It will haunt my dreams.
A few words about NTD and their integrity and dignity. The "NTD" in NTD America is short for New Tang Dynasty. This is a propaganda network which is part of a group of pro-Trump outlets run by the Falun Gong, including the Epoch Times . What sort of reach do they have? NTD has 935,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Not able to take "We The People" conference-call hold music any longer, I flipped over to NTD's slightly more popular counterpart " Right Side Broadcasting Network ," which has a full million YouTube subscribers.
On RSBN, the MyPillowGuy was ranting about how the election being stolen from Trump is "the biggest story in the world for the biggest corruption in world history." According to MyPillowGuy, Trump was chosen by God and this election fraud is just one more instance of the forces of evil trying to destroy him.
Powerful in their own right. Really makes you think. About buying pillows. Because while MyPillowGuy was preaching, a chyron onscreen offered 66 percent off MyPillow with offer code RSNB. Would have been super-duper cool if he'd offered 66.6 percent off. YSWIDT?
What's funny—sorry, I mean "horrifying"—is as crazy as these off-brand OANN operations sounded, they were nothing compared to what came next, from the mouth of the president himself.
Just some baseline facts before we get started: Donald Trump was schlonged by over 7 million votes. He became only the third president ever to lose the popular vote twice. His opponent won the second-highest popular vote percentage in a generation. This election wasn't close. It was a humiliating defeat.
So naturally President Trump came on stage to Queen's "We Are the Champions" and was surrounded by an adoring cult waving "Save America" placards and chanting—unironically—"Stop The Steal."
He kicked off the rally by saying "We won Georgia." Which, if you want to be a nitpicking hair-splitter, isn't true.
He said that votes came out of ceilings and leather bags (wrong), that Biden only did better than Hillary in the swing states (wrong), that "there's no way this could have happened other than cheating or a rigged election" (wrong), that Stacey Abrams was "harvesting" votes (nonsensical and also wrong), that poll watchers were thrown out in Pennsylvania (wrong), that "you wouldn't believe how many dead people" were voting (wrong), that they've caught the Democrats cold (wrong), and that "we have so much evidence but then you go to the court" and they say we don't have enough (wtf?).
This event was ostensibly about promoting the run-off campaigns of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and to be fair, the president did pause to check those boxes in his own inimitable style. He called their opponents "communistic" and said they want to "take away your religion and Christmas." (One of their Democratic opponents is a Christian minister.) He said that Kelly Loeffler opposed Mitt Romney (she was a major donor of his).
He then invited Loeffler and Perdue on stage where the latter claimed that he was still "fighting" to make sure Trump got a "fair shake" in the Georgia election that he lost and that has already been certified by the Republican governor.
After Perdue left the stage Trump made one final pitch for his coup.
He took aim at "Dominion" with some vague insinuations and then turned to the big screen where he aired a lengthy video purporting to show ballots that came from under the table in Fulton County, Georgia as aired by . . . I shit you not . . . Newsmax .
This video has, of course, already been investigated by the Georgia secretary of state , whose office determined that nothing improper happened.
Trump wound down saying once again that there was enough fraud to give him a huge victory, that "we're going to do something about it," and that state legislatures and the Supreme Court should act.
Looked at one way, this is the pathetic death rattle of a loser and crybaby who is desperate for one last gasp of adoration before he is forced into an early retirement that may be marked with legal troubles.
And it is that.
But it is also something more.
We cannot let the preposterous nature of this rally distract us from what it was, under the hood of the clown car:
It was seditious incitement against the duly elected incoming president in a manner that is without modern analogue.
It was an explicit attempt to undermine faith in our democracy and to advocate for the overthrow of an election by extralegal means.
It was an abhorrent scam that is robbing tens of thousands of Americans of hundreds of millions of dollars in order to fund the Trump family's travel and legal bills.
It was a rallying cry for the very people who before the event were telling "news anchors" that they think we need a "revolution," a "war," and a "coup."
It was a wildly irresponsible gathering during the height of a contagion that is almost certain to lead to even more unnecessary sickness and death.
Through it all, the Republican party sat silently, their souls having long ago been stolen, hoping that they could leverage all of this destruction to hold onto two Senate seats in Georgia.
As the stirring NTD America song goes, "tyranny is at our doorstep."
And Republicans don't seem to mind. Not one bit.
Tim Miller is The Bulwark's writer-at-large. He was previously political director for Republican Voters Against Trump, communications director for Jeb Bush 2016, and spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
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Trump really doesn't interest me any more.
His worshipers continue to fascinate me.
I personally hate the POS SOB, but approve of what he accomplished, or tried to.
Now, he needs to STFU and go away before he somehow fucks up the runoff elections
What did he accomplish? A huge (budget busting) tax break that benefited almost exclusively the already-rich? A few miles of futile "wall"? Halting immigration by "those" people? Turning over public land for private exploitation? Eliminating the environmental rules that protected the public?
While he did some stuff, I really cannot see anything that is should be qualified as "accomplishments".
The game is perception. It all boils down to the pre-COVID-19 economy. Without that, I doubt Trump would have had much of a base.
So while I agree that Trump is nothing special for the conservative agenda other than his judicial nominees and support for tax cuts, I must hand it to Greg for not following the pack of fools who continue to heap sycophantic praise on Trump.
Undoubtedly. That is all the more insane because the "Trump economy", exactly like the "Obama economy" before it, was far more the doing of the Fed than of the President. There isn't the slightest blip in the growth curve when Trump took office. It was in fact the "Yellen - Powell" economy.
Until, as you say, the pandemic hit...
And you are right to give a shout-out to Greg. I should have done so, too.
His actions are just about criminal by now. Period. Something needs to be done to stop this, and soon, before the whole country goes up in preventable fire.
It was done in November. Now we need to wait the time that it takes for a carriage ride from distant Maine, to the Capitol. Hey! Isn't the 18th Century wonderful?
Please stay somewhere in the neighborhood of the seed, people! Thank you.
yeah, I can see it. The losing side, preaching fear to their base, imploring for states to have their electoral college votes not follow the law of the state but to vote they way they are being asked to. As an independent this all seems vaguely familiar.
But it seems like a rather lame coup to me. Where are the troops in the streets, the midnight arrests? We have people shouting that what President Trump is doing is criminal, some have gone so far to say treasonous. Reminds me of a line from The American President.
What Trump is doing is greatly un-American. And that also applies to the millions of Trump supporters who approve of what he is doing. Its not treason, but it is definitely anti-democratic. Why do 70% of Trump voters support this ? And yes that is a question to you for you to answer if you choose.
With regards to this seed can I assume that you are talking about his not conceding the election and instead fighting to retain office? I don't see these actions as anti-democratic. I think that it's dumb that he continues to fight as the results seem fairly clear to me and I happen to think that his continued fighting the results without providing actual proof of fraud is damaging to his chances in 2024, but it's not anti-democratic to me. Al Gore didn't concede to President Bush until Dec 13th so continuing legal challenges is President Trumps right, no matter how dumb it actually is long term. We're not at a point where Biden has been turned away from the office or not allowed to take the oath of office so once again nothing is happening that is anti-democratic.
For the record I don't approve of what he is doing. I think everything has played out and it's past time to move past it and look to the future. But I don't get worked up with partisan posturing.
Al Gore had specific claims about the way the votes in Florida were counted or not counted. He wanted the courts to order that certain types of votes be counted.
Trump has nothing like that. Gore did not allege fraud, did not allege that the election was being stolen from him, did not conduct crackpot, ridiculous press conferences, did not hold mass rallies where he took to the stage and complained he was being cheated out of his rightful win, and did not ask state legislatures and governors to overturn the vote count and name him president anyway.
Donald Trump is asking governors and legislatures in specific states to ignore their vote count and instruct their electors to vote for Trump at the electoral college. Gore did no such thing.
Far far too many people in this country have given Trump the benefit of the doubt for 5 years. It is beyond absurd.
And Trump wants certain types of votes to be counted and other certain types of votes to be tossed out.
And after the 2016 election many Democrats were asking that Electoral College Voters should vote for HRC and ignore their vote count.
For the past how many years it's been all partisan politics on and on. I agree that it is beyond absurd but it's what continues to happen. And far too many people on BOTH sides continue to bitch about the other side while ignoring the same crap from their own sides. For five years you've been very vocal on your feelings for President Trump, nobody here can have any doubts about where you stand. I have no personal feelings for Trump, I don't like how he presents himself and his continued attacks on people who don't support him, but I like some of his policies and I did support re-electing him over electing Biden. But we are where we are at and I just really feel it's time to move on. But I'm sure there are many people who will continue to play as they won't be able to move on from the past four years.
Its not a matter of him "presenting himself". Donald Trump is a KNOWN pathological liar, crook, bigot, moron and cheat. He obstructed justice and he tried to bribe the president of a foreign country.
I have nothing good to say about Trump supporters who deny reality, although I do accept that some of them are good people in other areas of their lives.
As far as "Democrats" wanting the electoral college to ignore the vote in 2016, that was very minor and was not supported by Hillary Clinton or prominent Democratic politicians. Today we have the sitting president demanding that legislators from his party ignore the results of the election and name him president again regardless of what the vote showed.
Which ought to be criminal.
Trump wants to be anointed president of the United States for another four years. He doesnt care how or why , he just wants it done.
It is said that something like 70% of Trump voters feel the election was stolen from him. Why do they feel that way? Because Trump says so.
These people are anti-American.
I hope that Trump's ridiculous claims about election "fraud" (many of his and his lawyers claims have been SPECIFICALLY debunked, and none of them have been proved true) are the peak and pinnacle of the turmoil we will have to undergo to humor Donald Trump, and that we wont see violence, but we are likely still weeks away from knowing that for sure.
Trump keeps saying that he wants Georgia to do a signature match on the mail in votes.
The Georgia Secretary of State ( a Republican) said on George Stephanopolous show this morning that signatures were matched when the mail in votes were opened. He has been saying that for weeks. When is this nonsense going to end ?
It certainly feels like we have entered the ''Twilight Zone''....