Trump, Voter Fraud and a Tale of Three Lawyers
November 24 2020: What can we learn about this unfolding shit show from the characters who are starring in it?
Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani flanked by Sidney Powell (L) and Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis at a press conference on Nov 19, 2020. (Source)
Does it not say all we need to know about the dominant media narrative that, in a press conference laying out the legal grounds for overturning the 2020 US election based on widespread legal fraud, the main headline for many was Rudy Giuliani’s unfortunate bad hair dye day?
Rudy doesn’t need me, or anyone, to defend him, obviously. He is the former Mayor of New York, left with the task of consoling a city left reeling in the aftermath of the 9/11 ‘terrorist attacks’, who in his former life as a prosecutor helped to take down the Mafia, after all. You’d think the media might show people of this stature a bit more respect, is something I might have once thought. But such a convenient opportunity to de-legitimise the whole hour-plus press conference was clearly too tempting for them to resist.
This whole situation is ridiculous. I have had several exchanges on Medium with people who still simply refuse to acknowledge that there is even remote validity in these claims.
May I suggest (and have): GET (ideologically) OUTSIDE A BIT MORE PEEPS. The Epoch Times is one site I follow to get a more accurate understanding of the on-the-ground legal issues playing out: it is without a doubt aligned with the political right and is unmistakably pro-Trump, but in doing so provides a necessary correction to the narratives that abound on most media sites.
Aside from this, as a necessary counter-balance from Medium, I mainly follow right leaning/conspiracy pages on Twitter: and the evidence and testimony of voter fraud here is literally impossible to avoid. People are absolutely pissed that their electoral process, which they considered to be sacrosanct(ish), has been so horribly compromised. They are almost as pissed that both major parties — in cahoots with the media and complying world leaders — now appear to be closing ranks again to sweep it under the carpet like it never happened: taking the chance to finally rid themselves of this unpleasant orange cancer that has threatened to spread throughout their body.
For these pissed-off Americans, it is passed the point of whether voter fraud impacted the election outcome; it is now a debate between the cynics who are resigning themselves to the fact that the election was stolen, and the optimists who are still holding on hope that Rudy and co can somehow bring things home in one of the great political underdog stories ever.
Maybe, maybe not. It would be a brave person who declares that 2020 isn’t still saving its craziest plot twist for last. Who better to stage it than Rudy, who may as well be a character straight out of The Godfather.
If I could identify the key factor that I think is being overlooked by those who assume the legal cases being made by Trump’s team are frivolous and desperate, it is the groundswell of bipartisan public support that appears to be lining up behind them.
The cases that are still being prepared, likely to end up at the Supreme Court, will not ultimately rely on technical arguments about seemingly irregularities in the voting process: suspicious blue spikes in voting tallies; more people (including the deceased) voting than registered voters in many counties; gaping holes in the chain of custody of ballot handling; voting software ‘glitches’.
What is happening behind the scenes it seems, and why this legal process is taking longer to bring forward than seems advisable (and leading many to conclude that there simply is no evidence to support it), is the arduous task of bringing together multiple and various whistleblower testimonies. These are people, whether Democratic, Republican or neutral, who have decided to risk their reputations, livelihoods (and, if we are going to go full conspiracy mode, even their lives) to come forward and testify in court about what they have witnessed in their roles as gatekeepers of the most important democratic act people in America have left available to them.
It will be these personal stories, if they are indeed flooding in like Trump’s team suggest, that will win legal challenges, sway the opinion of the general public and ultimately change the election result. This is probably the ‘Kraken’ that Sidney Powell promised had just been unleashed: an avalanche of testimonies from real people who are sick of this garbage and have chosen to engage in the battle because they finally have leaders willing to lead the fight for them.
This is also why Powell, so far the most vocal lawyer in this process, was apparently ‘dumped’ from the Trump legal team in the last few days. As she clarified on Twitter, she was never actually being paid as a legal counsel by Trump, and will now be free to pursue without constraints whatever avenues she chooses. In this context, the surprising move also seems like a deliberate effort to distance Powell in a political sense from Trump, distinguishing her as someone representing the people of America rather than any politician or party.
Such distinction is a necessity, given the almost certainty that the cases she will be bringing will also be targeting complicit Republicans. It’s another reminder that — from my vantage point anyway — this isn’t going to ultimately play out as a battle of Democrats vs Republicans, or of the left versus right, but of a disenfranchised public potentially bringing down the whole political class.
This lady is a bad-ass, I don’t get what anyone else has to say. If she succeeds, it will give rise to similar movements around the world, and perhaps even give other nations a nasty shock about just how controlled our own electoral processes are. Bring it on, I say: what better year than 2020 for our vision of how the world really works to finally become clear.
A final observation on one of the lesser lights on Trump’s legal team, Jenna Ellis.
One fascinating sub-plot to this unfolding story has been the resurfacing of her previous ‘unkind’ views towards Trump.
What I find interesting about these views is that they reflect the exact criticism you will now hear many other well-meaning people make of Trump. Really, she could not have better described 4 years ago the current prevailing sentiment towards the Orange Man. She ticks all the boxes: attacking his intelligence (“an idiot”); his character (“boorish… arrogant… a bully”); his attitudes towards women (“disgusting”); his spiritual hypocrisy (“not a real Christian”); and his ultimate danger to the world (an “American fascist”).
And yet, here she is, this former acute sufferer of Trump Derangement Syndrome, representing him on the frontline, putting her whole reputation and career on that line to win what most have already decided is a lost cause.
How does she justify it? The cynic will simply say she has sold her soul, and represents the worst kind of moral shamelessness that is widely associated with Trump supporters. That’s one hell of a sweet deal she must have been given, knowing full well that this is how she will ultimately be seen by many when she took on this role. When she tweeted out her justification for her shift, she would likewise have been fully aware just how vicious the comments against her would be (seriously, go have a look). These are her words:
“For everyone posting my comments from five years ago, I’m glad you saw those. It shows how media is absolutely lying to you about President Trump, and when you know the truth, your opinion will change. Mine did.”
So what is she: a shameless psychopathic sell out, or a true come-to-Donald, born-again believer?
I know which way I am leaning. My most outstanding TDS memory, in a former life when I was still captured by the spell of liberal talk show propaganda that still leaves me with a dirty feeling, was at a study circle, when we were discussing the worthiness of showing unconditional love and kindness to every individual who might cross out path. Fair enough in a general sense, I said, but probably not for Trump — that’s a bit of a stretch, to show such virtues to someone (I was convinced was) so entirely lacking in them. Such is the power of TDS, it can cause one, almost without hesitation, to circumvent their own spiritual beliefs for this one unique case.
That’s why I have and will continue to use a term like TDS to bring awareness to the way people have been conditioned to react in an emotionally negative manner to anything associated with Trump. It’s also why I’ll keep saying that the flaws in Trump’s personality are by this stage largely irrelevant.
Ellis probably still finds many aspects of who Trump is personally distasteful. I’m sure she doesn’t automatically dismiss outright all of the sexual assault claims that have been made against Trump, as politically motivated as some of them may well be. In an ideal political climate, she would almost certainly choose a person of a different character (and gender) to be the ‘leader of the free world’. I would agree with her on all of those points.
In 2016, Trump managed to win the election through what still seems like a miracle: securing a large enough vote of hardcore patriots, apocalypse-seekers, shit-voters, but perhaps most importantly self-described ‘deplorables’: those people who may have actually voted for Trump because of some of his worst qualities.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that after 4 years of showing his true colours, voters have rightfully turned on him. I tend towards a different conclusion: that after 4 years of seeing the tricks that the Democrats and media have been pulling — culminating in the still ongoing pandemic propaganda the shows no sign of abating — they have stopped caring about the person that Trump is: who he is, that is, aside from someone with the unwavering self-belief to see out this fight against the establishment to the very end.
They have also stopped caring about what other people think of them for showing their support.