Card Deck: 54+ Top Trump Enablers

 

Joker: Former President Donald Trump:
“. . . lie and attack, win no matter what . . .”
“I’m telling you the single biggest issue, as bad as the border is and it’s horrible, horrible what they’re doing, they’re destroying our country — but as bad as that is, the single biggest issue — the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers — is talking about the election fraud of the 2020 presidential election.”      - Donald Trump, October 10, 2021 “There’s hostility to lying, and there should be.”     – Bob WoodwardLearn More

At Risk, Ivanka Eventually Comes Clean.

October 2016: Ivanka Trump: Too many Georgians ‘feel their vote has been canceled’: Donald Trump Jr, has leaned into his father’s lies and anti-Democratic conspiracy theories about the electoral process, as reports say his daughter, Ivanka Trump, has urged him to concede — while apparently considering her own political future.

Ms Trump, who quickly displayed her own political ambitions following her father’s 2016 election despite not having any government experience, has mostly stayed silent on the administration’s baseless allegations of mass voter fraud. She posted a single tweet about the issue after Election Day, as her father began ramping up his false claims surrounding mail-in voting and ballot counting: “Every legally cast vote should be counted. Every illegally cast vote should not.” June 2022: The report details how, in the final days of the Trump White House, Jared Kushner would tell anyone who'd listen that he and the wife essentially knew that Dad was a loser before it had been officially called. It's hardly a coincidence that this latest one, which could help shield the couple from any accusation that they played a role in fomenting violence at the Capitol, is emerging just as the January 6 committee is presenting them as the hearings' star attraction.  Learn More

Eric Trump ”liked” a Tweet identifying QAnon “Shaman” Jacob Chansley and the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “a staged #Antifa attack”.

 In response to such false accusations: Fox News' Jeanine Pirro Blasts Pro-Trump Capitol Rioters, Says Don't Blame Antifa: ​‘You Did It’ 

Mr. Flynn was also present at the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5 for a meeting that included about 15 people, where the discussion centered on “how to put pressure on more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results,” according to one attendee, Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska.
Among those in attendance, according to Mr. Herbster, were Mr. Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr.; Mr. Giuliani; Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; the Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie; and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and conspiracy theorist. (Boldface added)Learn More

The crab apple falls not far from the tree.

DT Junior: “There's nothing that I would do to ever endanger this country”. 

In a message two days after Election Day 2020, the president’s son conveyed a range of ideas for keeping his father in office.

January 6, 2021: Trump Jr. told the crowd to send a message to members of Congress that we are “coming for you.” The siege of the U.S. Capitol ensued. 

April 2021: Trump Jr.'s tweet about corporations opposing further [Red state voter suppression] measures comes as Amazon, BlackRock, Google, and hundreds of other companies and executives signed a statement opposing "any discriminatory legislation" that would make it harder for people to vote.

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Giuliani life lesson #1?

Blind loyalty to a demagogue never pays:

January 2021: Giuliani to insurrectionists at U.S. Capitol: "Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. If we're wrong we will be made fools of, but if we're right a lot of them will go to jail. Let's have trial by combat".  

July 2022: An Appeals Court Has Suspended Rudy Giuliani's Ability To Practice Law In D.C. July 2022: Trump Sails Away as Rudy Giuliani Drowns in Legal Bills July 2022: ​​Giuliani subject to $1.3 billion suit by Dominion Voting Systems for “a viral disinformation campaign” July 2022: Alexander Vindman sues Trump Jr. and Giuliani, alleging retaliation over first Trump impeachment proceedings July 2022: Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in 7 states August 2022: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target in Trump Election Inquiry in Georgia August 2023: Guiliani Becomes Co-Consiprator #1  August 2023: Enter Trump to Pay Loyal Rudy's Legal FeesLearn More
Meadows was told of intelligence ahead of Jan. 6 that the day could get very violent. He shared that with Trump. But Meadows rarely had any reaction or seemed surprised at all and was equally unperturbed by the violence on the day of the insurrection, according to Hutchinson. -- Meadows also participated, by phone — though he wanted to go in person — for a briefing with Roger Stone and retired Gen. Michael Flynn in the "War Room" they had set up on Jan. 5 in the Willard Hotel. Stone and Flynn were intimately involved in the "Stop the Steal" movement. There are pictures of Stone with white supremacist militia functioning as his bodyguards on Jan. 6. Stone: “F*ck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”Learn More
   
Sidney Powell:
“Did I know anything about election law?” “No” “I need six to eight pardons.”
Shining Lights Ingraham, Carlson and Murdoch:
“Sidney Power is a bit nuts. Sorry, but she is.”  Laura Ingraham  “Sidney Powell is lying.”  Tucker Carlson “Really crazy stuff.”  Rupert Murdoch  One of the most prominent lawyers advocating false claims of voter fraud and advising Mr. Trump to fight his election loss, She promised to "release the Kraken."

Powell, meanwhile, explained to prosecutors her plans for seizing voting machines nationwide and claimed that she frequently communicated with Trump during her efforts to overturn the 2020 election — though both now claim she was never his attorney.

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Poor Ted - unmanned, unprincipled, unliked, yet drowning in ambition: "The call was just one step in a collaboration [between Trump and Cruz] that for two months turned the once-bitter political enemies into close allies in the effort to keep Trump in the White House based on the president’s false claims about a stolen election. By Cruz’s own account, he was “leading the charge” to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as president." ----- On "The Beat" tonight, Ari Melber connected Trump Co-Conspirator John Eastman to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Just before midnight on January 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Eastman wrote to Pence’s lawyer to beg him to get Pence to adjourn Congress “for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.” On the floor of the Senate at about the same time, Cruz, who voted against certification, used very similar language when he called for “a ten-day emergency audit.”Learn More
Conscience-free Matt Gaetz: Ambitiously joined conspiracy to overturn 2020 election, blamed feds for Capitol insurrection & gleefully campaigned for Arizona election deniers Texts to Meadows as early as three days after Election Day 2020 show lawmakers rallying around the idea of alternate electors. As early as the first or second week of December, the White House’s own counsel was pushing back against the idea. That message was relayed to at least Perry, Jordan, and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), according to Hutchinson. By Dec. 21, a larger group was meeting at the White House with Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani, where the focus had shifted to the ways former Vice President Mike Pence could buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results. That group attending that meeting included Jordan, Brooks, Biggs, Gaetz, Greene, Gohmert, Perry, and Reps. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Hutchinson said. Gaetz, a close associate of the Freedom Caucus, but not an official member, has been one of the former president’s most vocal supporters and has spread conspiracy theories about the “feds” being behind the Capitol riot. According to testimony, Gaetz was one of several members of Congress who requested broad pardons from Trump.Learn More
            Mr. Clark caused outrage among his [Trump Justice Department] colleagues by advancing false election fraud claims and seeking to intervene in the presidential election in Georgia. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/14/us/politics/trump-georgia-indictment-key-players [Scott] Perry was deeply involved in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He connected former president Trump with Jeffrey Clark, the environmental lawyer for the Department of Justice (DOJ) who supported Trump’s claims.  Clark allegedly circulated a letter encouraging state officials in Georgia to decertify their election results. He was Trump’s pick for attorney general when William Barr declined to pursue vote fraud claims., and would have become acting attorney general if the leadership of the DOJ hadn’t threatened to resign as a group if Trump appointed him. Clark was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee in October, and refused to answer questions during a deposition. Clark was reported to have invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times when he testified again in February, according to CNN. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jeffrey-clark-jan-6-panel-seeks-make-trumps-man-doj-famousLearn More
Ken Cuccinelli, again Emerging as Public Face, and Irritant, of Homeland Security 2025? If the White House adviser Stephen Miller is the architect of Mr. Trump’s effort to restrict both legal and illegal immigration, Mr. Cuccinelli has emerged as its public face. As a state senator, Cuccinelli introduced a proposal that would have sheltered employers who fired employees for not speaking English. Learn More

The New York Young Republican's Club? A combative young Republican group in the state, firmly on the right and Trump-friendly, the club’s 29-year-old president, presiding.

Mr. Wax's kindred spirit? Vish Burra, the director of operations for Representative George Santos, the New York Republican whose long history of lies has been festooned with a nascent embrace of right-wing political positions. In December 2023, Mr. Wax made headlines after he made remarks at a gala in Manhattan — attended by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Stephen K. Bannon, both noted Trump allies — suggesting the Republicans should wage “total war” against the Democrats.

The radicalization of some New York Republicans vaulted Carl Paladino, a western New York Republican, to the 2010 ballot for governor. Mr. Paladino’s history of racist, sexist and homophobic comments did not stop him from carrying the Republican banner.

Last year, Mr. Paladino made a bid for a House seat and quickly won the endorsement of Representative Elise Stefanik, the “Ultra MAGA” upstate congresswoman and the third-highest ranking Republican in the party’s House majority.

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“There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy, Republican-California, said, according to a recording of the 15 June 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Representative Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.Learn More
  "John. C. Eastman, a key legal architect of the effort to keep Mr. Trump in power using bogus slates of Trump electors in swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr."  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/14/us/politics/trump-georgia-indictment-key-players.  John Eastman drafted the memo laying out a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results.  https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/trump-indictment-sidesteps-details-unearthed-jan-6-panel/

The convergence of someone who took part in the legal attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power with those who were central to bringing the force of a crowd to bear as Congress was certifying the election results was a powerful reminder of how many mysteries remain where Jan. 6 is concerned. But Mr. Chesebro hinted at those connections in an email exchange with John Eastman . . . . In late December 2020, the two lawyers discussed how to get a case before the Supreme Court. Mr. Chesebro told Mr. Eastman as they discussed filing a legal action that in terms of the highest court, the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/kenneth-chesebro-jan-6-trump

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Ward, chair of the Arizona G.O.P., fought to overturn President Biden's electoral victory in Arizona, and was a part of a bogus slate of electors, which she celebrated on YouTube at the time: “We believe that we are the electors for the legally cast votes here in Arizona,” she said in a video posted Dec. 15, 2020.

“Ward participated in a scheme to send spurious electoral votes to Congress, a scheme that the committee describes as ‘a key part’ of the ‘effort to overturn the election’ that culminated on Jan. 6,” the two judges wrote.

They added that Ms. Ward had invoked her Fifth Amendment rights when the committee sought to question her. “Having attempted the less intrusive method of asking Ward directly,” the two judges wrote, “the committee has a strong interest in pursuing its investigation by other means.”

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Beyond his vote not to certify electors on January 6, Rep. Paul Gosar plotted with Trump to overturn the 2020 election and was a ringleader in that plot. In December after the 2020 election, right-wing political activist and organizer Ali Alexander said that he, Gosar, Biggs, and U.S. Representative Mo Brooks were "planning something big": a "mob" to pressure Congress into rejecting the election results. Then Rep. Gosar then voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Gosar has a long history of collaborating with white nationalists and far right extremists, and several of his own estranged siblings have referred to him as a “traitor to his country” and called for his removal from the House. He was the keynote speaker at an America First Political Action Conference, organized by white nationalist Nick Fuentes, whom the Department of Justice in a court filing calls a “white supremacist” and who marched in the deadly Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. 
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Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, former QAnon follower, conservative activist, wife of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas:
  • texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory,
  • Pressed lawmakers in Arizona and a second battleground state, Wisconsin, to overturn state electoral votes for Biden,
  • attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, and
  • wrote to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) denigrating the House select committee’s investigation of the attack on the Capitol. 
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Together with Steven Bannon, Peter Navarro developed a plan to block the Electoral College vote count, called the 'Green Bay Sweep' . Its purpose? To pressure Vice President Mike Pence to misuse his role as the person officially counting electoral ballots and instead reject them, delaying Congressional certification of Biden’s victory in order to give give Republican-controlled state legislatures time to overturn the election through baseless assertions of voter fraud.Learn More
2000: During a deposition of Scott in 2000 concerning faud allegations relating to Scott’s stewardship of Columbia/HCA, which he founded and served as CEO, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment 75 times.[37] In settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies. In all, civil lawsuits cost HCA more than $2 billion to settle; at the time, this was the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history.[40][41] 2016: In the 2016 Republican primaries, Scott endorses Trump after Trump won the Florida primary.[95]Scott chairs a pro-Trump super PAC in the 2016 election.[95][96] 2022: In a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump made a personal pitch to Senate Republican campaign chief Rick Scott. “You should run for Senate majority leader,” he told the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to a person familiar with the exchange.Learn More

The so-called "election integrity" committees of the RNC and its state counterpart (the RSLC) are filled with election deniers (members who backed the false conspiracies about the 2020 election) and who have publicly called for some of the most severe voting restrictions.

On the RNC committee, Drew McKissick, the Republican chair in South Carolina, tweeted false accusations by the Trump campaign in November about dead voters and vans full of Biden ballots.

Lenar Whitney, a RNC committee member from Louisiana, repeated conspiracies about Dominion voting machines at a party meeting.

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Kenneth Chesebro, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, striking a deal in which he will avoid jail time and agreed to provide evidence that could implicate other defendants, including Trump himself.

The charge relates to Chesebro’s role organizing slates of pro-Trump electors to meet in seven states where Joe Biden had won. According to details of the amended indictment read in open court, prosecutors allege several other co-defendants were a part of that conspiracy: Trump, four other lawyers including Rudy Giuliani, and one campaign operative. Chesebro signed the amended indictment, though it was not clear if he had offered prosecutors evidence related to the alleged role those other defendants played.

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“Johnson was also integral to Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, . . . and touted Trump’s conspiracy theories about election fraud.” “The newly elected House speaker has ties to the far-right New Apostolic Reformation — which is hell-bent on turning America into a religious state.” ,/em> Outside his district office in the Cannon House Office Building is a flag white which “symbolize[s] a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America.Learn More
“I don’t even know if she believes the Big Lie. But she is absolutely responsible for propagating a lie that will undermine our democracy.” - Margaret Hoover, a center-right commentator who worked with Stefanik at the Bush White House and now hosts PBS’s Firing Line. Stefanik says she ‘would not have done what Mike Pence did’ on Jan. 6. Steve Bannon, the far-right activist and alleged fraudster, who was Trump’s campaign chair and White House strategist and remains a close ally, told NBC Stefanik was “at the top” of the running-mate race.        
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. Sept. 2013: Bondi, as Florida attorney general, drops probe into Trump University days following $25,000 donation from the future president. July 2016: Bondi gives a speech at the Republican National Convention, during which she led "Lock her up" chants directed at the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.[39] Nov. 2019: Bondi hired by the Trump administration to help the White House during Trump's first impeachment proceedings, being given special Government employee status, allowing Bondi to continue working for the Arab lobby.[40][41][42] Her position was described the following month as being to "attack the process" of the impeachment inquiry.[43] Jan. 2020: Bondi named as part of Trump's defense team for the Senate impeachment trial. Nov. 2020: “We’ve won Pennsylvania,” Bondi asserted. Trump’s campaign did not win Pennsylvania. Nov. 2023: Bondi to lead new state chapter of new America First Policy Institute    Learn More
America’s most prominent conservative gathering, founded on ideals of personal liberty and limited government, convened in Budapest in 2021 to celebrate a European leader accused of undermining democracy and individual rights. CPAC Goes Full Orbán:  The right launders its support for Putin through the Hungarian autocrat. CPAC's opening 2021 conference "included look at 'failed' states — PA, GA, NV, oh my! [states President Biden won] and 'successful' states, likely drawing attention to the spate of restrictive voting laws state Republicans are advancing in dozens of states. "Learn More
Key Takeaways on Heritage's False Cry of Election Fraud 1. Heritage's “Election Fraud Database” is a sham, providing zero evidence of voting fraud changing election outcomes. 2. That sham claim is, in turn, the basis for Heritage Action's “Factsheet,” the acknowledged blueprint for the new vote-suppressing laws adopted in 19 Red states, disingenuously promoted as ensuring “election integrity” .  Forty years ago, Paul Weyrich, who helped establish the Heritage Foundation, admitted, “I don’t want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”Learn More
Cleta Mitchell, a Republican election lawyer, is at center of Republican-backed dark money groups to enact new voting restrictions in time for the 2024 elections. She is now working through the “Election Integrity Network” (part of the Conservative Partnership Network) to persuade Red states to drop the proven ERIC system of voter validation and adopt a wholly untested private system ("Eagle AI") prejudicing voters who have recently moved, which wrongly disenfranchises voters (including  college students in swing and other states) having recently moved. According to Axios, Trump authorized a $1 million donation from his PAC to support Mitchell’s work. Mitchell seeks to disenfranchise 

Mitchell advised Trump on his 2020 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in whichTrump tried to get Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votesand flip Georgia’s electoral college votes to him.

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Newsmax founder Ruddy became a full-time Trump functionary, cashing in on the demand for pro-Trump news, building up his TV network, dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and watching his revenue rise. “He made his pact with the devil,” as Leamer put it. “He knew what Trump was.” Newsmax went all in as Trump sought re-election (Ruddy made another former National Enquirer editor, David Perel, the editorial director) and Newsmax TV gave credence to every lie told by Trump up to and including speculation that Biden was “cognitively impaired” and that the election was stolen through chicanery involving Dominion Voting Systems. While the January 6 Capitol riots were under way, Newsmax initially reported that it was only “6 to 10 people” breaching the building and speculated that they were antifa, later providing uncritical airtime to a Trump rioter who declared “this is our house, and we have the right to be here.”Learn More

Vivek Goes Full Tinfoil Hat With New Taylor Swift Election Conspiracy

The former GOP hopeful thinks the NFL might be rigged to help secure a win for Joe Biden. Seriously.

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Scalise is seemingly less aligned with the hard right on these issues than Jordan, who leads the House GOP’s “weaponization” subcommittee and has spun elaborate conspiracy theories.

But Scalise has echoed much of the same rhetoric:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/11/speaker-scalise-ukraine-government-shutdown/
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If there is a madness, slight or otherwise, in Kennedy’s bid, it is not confined to his hubris. He is roiling with conspiracy theories: S.S.R.I.s like Prozac might be the reason for school shootings, vaccines cause autism. There are many. To prepare for the conversation, I listened to some of Kennedy’s podcast sessions with the likes of Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and Joe Rogan. I watched his marathon announcement speech and tuned in to all the hosannas he was getting from a peculiar amen corner that includes Steve Bannon, Jack Dorsey, and Tucker Carlson. In his 2021 book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy accuses Fauci, who was then the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, of helping to carry out “2020’s historic coup d’état against Western democracy.” (The book has blurbs from Carlson, Naomi Wolf, Alan Dershowitz, and Oliver Stone.) https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-alternative-facts-of-robert-f-kennedy-jrLearn More
  • Huckabee:“The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.” 
           June 29, 2017 Press briefing in response to a question.
  •  Trump: “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell .... I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."
          Feb. 2016 Cedar Rapids, Iowa rally.
  • Trump, inciting the insurrectionists: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And, if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” 
          Jan. 6, 2021  “You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional." - Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administrationLearn More
  • 2017: Promoting Trump’s false ‘voting fraud’ narrative: “Well, I won't reveal private conversations with the president, Judy, but I will tell you that what the president is talking about is registration and voter rolls. He knows there are dead people registered, there are illegal people registered, and he wants to get to the bottom of that without an election on the horizon.   
  • 2021: “Alternative facts”: Conway praised Trump for his response to the U.S. Capitol riots.
  • The very next day: President Trump appoints Conway to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy.  

“You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional." - Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administrationLearn More

 Rupert Murdoch doesn’t believe Trump was cheated. But he’s letting Fox personalities spin tales that could permanently harm America.

Murdoch tries to have it both ways and it’s time for Fox to dispense with the bad-faith, bifurcated approach to the truth it has used for years.

His news operation — the one Trump tweets angrily about — has told its viewers that Trump lost the election and that his complaints about voter fraud are made up. 

But in the morning, and at night, Fox allows its most popular stars – Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, the Fox & Friends crew - to peddle lies to its audience under the guise that they’re merely offering their opinions. ​

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​November 2021: Jared Kushner advising Trump to 'pursue his legal remedies' to the election.

June 2022: Next was Mr. Kushner. In his video he was pressed by Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, about whether he was aware that the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, had been threatening to resign because Mr. Trump was making increasingly outlandish efforts to stay in power.

He added that he knew that Mr. Cipollone and “the team were always saying, ‘Oh we are going to resign, we are not going to be there if this happens, if that happens.’ So I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.”

Ms. Cheney: “Whining,” she said. “There’s a reason why people serving in our government take an oath to the constitution. As our founding fathers recognized, democracy is fragile. The people in positions of public trust are duty bound to defend it, to step forward when action is required. 

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Attorney Habba is also a senior advisor for MAGA Inc, the political action committee supporting Mr Trump's re-election. According to ABC News, she has been paid over $3.5m for her work for the group.
The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
- Charles DickensLearn More

On Tuesday, the committee announced 10 new subpoenas that seemed to expand the aperture of the inquiry even further, seeking information from top officials in Mr. Trump’s White House including Stephen Miller, his senior adviser . . . .  In its order to Mr. Miller, the committee said that he had helped to spread false claims of voter fraud in the election, and to encourage state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors in an effort to invalidate Mr. Biden’s victory.

 

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After the 2020 election, Flynn, a high-profile figure in the QAnon community, said that President Trump should deploy the military to 'rerun an election' in battleground states that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.  In late May 2021, the disgraced former general reportedly voiced his support for a Burmese military-style coup scenario to return Trump to power. Just weeks before the November 2022 election, a group backed by Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Flynn and Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne is challenging the eligibility of tens of thousands of Georgia voters . And today former national security adviser is fusing deranged political ideas with a mangled version of the Christian faith.Learn More

Six days after major news organizations declared Donald J. Trump the loser of the 2020 presidential election, his allies were applying a desperate full-court press in an effort to turn his defeat around, particularly in Georgia.

The pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell went on television claiming that there was abundant evidence of foreign election meddling that never ultimately materialized. Another lawyer, L. Lin Wood, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the certification of Georgia’s election results.

That same day, Nov. 13, 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, made a phone call that left Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, immediately alarmed. Mr. Graham, he said, had asked if there was a legal way, using the state courts, to toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/us/lindsey-graham-trump-georgia.

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How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable April 30, 2022 Nicholas Confessore https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News — and Became Trump’s Heir April 30, 2022 Nicholas Confessore https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-fox-newsLearn More
Alt-right radio host Jesse Kelly, adoring Trump booster, and frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s former prime-time Fox News show, agreed with a Twitter user's suggestion that “Weimar problems eventually lead to Weimar solutions." Kelly's tweet? America “needs a dictator.”Learn More
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a far right conspiracy theorist who was part of the January 6 plot to over throw the 2020 election and now serves on the Homeland Security And Oversight Committees... In addition to her other conspiracies, racist remarks, and wild accusations, Greene relentlessly spread lies about the 2020 election being “stolen” and was a key figure working in Congress to overturn the results in Donald Trump’s favor…. Jan. 6 committee testimony revealed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked Trump for a pardon, but she denies this. She faced a lawsuit in her home state of Georgia where she was forced to testify on her involvement in the effort to overturn the election. She often said she couldn’t recall key moments and meetings.

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Rubio dismisses Trump’s NATO comments: ‘Zero concern’

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) attempted to defend Trump’s comments at a rally on Saturday, where the former president said he warned a foreign leader that if that country didn’t contribute enough to the alliance, then Russia can “do whatever the hell they want."

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Not content with his highly reported attempts to overturn the results of several 2020 state elections, which supported Biden, Hawley also supported the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, giving an arm-raised fist salute to the somewhat-deluded people who stormed the Capitol in hopes of stopping the certification of state’s election results.

In April 2021, Hawley, a leading Big Lie advocate, said Georgia's controversial new voter suppression law is like his own attempt in January to get millions of votes thrown out of the 2020 presidential election. 

After voters in the 2022 midterm elections signaled "thumb-down" to GOP election denier candidates, Hawley played the blame game.  He fingered Minority Leader McConnell, who early on signaled consternation over election deniers running as GOP candidates. McConnell  was right.

 Former Senator Danforth views his prior political support of Josh Hawley as ​"the worst mistake" of my life".

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Ingraham: Two Tales of A City (under Siege): 

As the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol unfolded, Meadows received texts from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, as well as Hannity, according to the newly released communications.

“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham wrote. “This is hurting all of us."

Ingraham’s private missives, however, differed starkly from what she said on her show later that evening, when she began whitewashing the violence of the day and claiming the attacks were “antithetical” to the Trump movement. 

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CPI: "Breeding ground for the next generation of Trump loyalists," an engine of voter suppression
  • Funded by?  The Council for National Policy (CNP), also known as the “Secret Hub of the Radical Christian Right." 
  • Founded/directed by?  Jim DeMint, CNP member & former president of The Heritage Foundation.
  • Led by? Trump enabler & co-conspirator Mark Meadows, CNP member & former Trump chief of staff.
  • Founder and funder of? Election Integrity Network (EIN), voter suppression masquerading as election integrity,
  • EIN's leader?  CNP/CPI member & Trump voter-suppression attorney, Cleta Mitchell.
  • Opposed: "For the People" Act, the elections reform bill that would undo Voter ID laws, support mail-in ballots, enact automatic voter registration, and shine light on dark money.
  • Partners with: Jan 6. enabler Turning Point USA, which played a major role in the January 6th Capitol riots.
  • Funding: Mark Meadows' mission "to create more members [of Congress] like Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley," via CPI’s new State Freedom Caucus Network.
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"It was Mr. Meadows’s critical failure to tell the president what he didn’t want to hear that helped lead to the country’s greatest political scandal, and his own precipitous fall." -  Chris Whipple, the author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.

Mark Meadows Spills to Special Counsel About Trump’s Election Lies: Report

Mark Meadows has reportedly testified before a federal grand jury impaneled by Special Counsel Jack Smith in exchange for immunity from prosecution in the Justice Department’s election interference case against Donald Trump.  

According to ABC News, the former White House chief of staff has testified under oath at least three times, twice before the special counsel’s office and once to a grand jury, regarding the investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Meadows reportedly testified that he had told the former president the election was lost and, according to sources, testified to the DOJ that “obviously we didn’t win.” 

As previously reported by Politico, Meadows’ testimony to Georgia prosecutors has provided hints that he may be prepared to flip on Trump there, as well.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mark-meadows-flips-trump-spills-jack-smith    Learn More
McEnany on the Big Lie and the Capitol Insurrection - All In: December 2020: An increasing number of Republicans and now even President Trump’s own Justice Department have undermined the White House’s baseless claims of massive voter fraud. So Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Tuesday night with a defiant message: This evidence is real, it’s from real people, and we’re not backing down.
  • Except the appearance only reinforced the true lack of evidence that the Trump team has produced.
  • Hannity asked McEnany two questions, and in each case, she responded with a talking point that has been roundly debunked for weeks. 

Jan. 6, 2021:

Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany:

“Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.”

Replied  McEnany:“Love that. That’s the playbook.” 

Yet in public McEnany remains adamant about her baseless claims of massive voter fraud and Trump's role in instigating the U.S. Capitol riots.  Hannity too.
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“Marble Freedom Trust is Leonard Leo’s billion-dollar slush fund to erode democracy”
In 2018, during a live event, Justice Clarence Thomas joked about how honored he was to be sharing the stage with Mr. Leo, calling him “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.” In 2020, Leo left the leadership of the conservative Federalist Society to become chairman of a company called CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits. In 2021, Leo became “a kingmaker in conservative big money politics” as the trustee and chairman of the new $1.6 billion Marble trust,  a political non-profit organization, created and funded by a 90-year old electronics manufacturing mogul, effectively giving Leo “the power to shape elections and political fights.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.htmlLearn More
On the Hill, the different ideological factions inside the Party were known as the Five Families; the most unruly of these was the House Freedom Caucus, a group of thirty-three hard-line anti-institutionalists. The closest the conference came to a proactive message was its vow to investigate Joe Biden and to fight the scourge of the federal bureaucracy.  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/economy-default-2022-republican-midterm-elections/671707/ On January 2, 2021, Jordan led a conference call with Trump to discuss how they could delay certifying the election. One of the ideas was to encourage Trump supporters, via social media, to march on the Capitol on January 6th. Jordan spoke routinely with the President by phone during the next few days, including twice on January 6th, and he texted Trump’s chief of staff with advice on how to get Vice-President Mike Pence not to count electoral votes. Hours after the insurrection, Jordan stationed himself next to the House floor to whip votes against certification. Before leaving office, Trump gave him the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jordan, Trump has said, “is a warrior for me.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/jim-jordans-conspiratorial-quest-for-power      Learn More

​​Guilfoyle’s leaked text messages show her bragging about having raised $3 million for the rally that fueled the Capitol riot and, per ProPublica, “represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family circle were directly involved in the financing and organization of the rally.” 

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Noem, a presidential aspirant, clinging closely to the Trump playbook, was adamant that widespread fraud existed in the 2020 election, despite the lack of concrete evidence.  After Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Noem tried to deflect blame from the president, blaming the Capitol insurrection on lack of civics education while making no mention of President Donald Trump’s role in the attack that sent Congress into hiding.Learn More
Mr. Clark, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Perry all played roles in the effort to keep Mr. Trump in office, according to extensive evidence gathered by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House select committee that is looking into the events of Jan. 6. The men also each had direct dealings with Mr. Trump, meaning the inquiry could ultimately lead to the former president. Mr. Perry was instrumental in pushing Mr. Trump to appoint Mr. Clark as his acting attorney general over the objections of several other top officials at the Justice Department. At one of its presentations, the House committee released text messages in which Mr. Perry repeatedly pressured Mark Meadows, then Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, to reach out to Mr. Clark. Perry, a five-term congressman who last fall became chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is known both for his vigorous support of Trump and for his history of promoting baseless conspiracies on issues that range from terrorism to the coronavirus to the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.  Learn More
It all comes home to roost for Sean Hannity. Dec. 2, 2020: Hannity tears into mainstream media for 'totally, completely' ignoring election fraud claims: 'We will remain independent. We answer only to the truth,' the 'Hannity' host told his viewers

Jan. 6, 2021: Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.” 

August 25, 2022: Dominion’s legal complaint lays out how Fox repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the company’s purported role in a plot to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump, and argues that its business has suffered considerably as a result. Those falsehoods — including that Dominion was a pawn of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and that its machines were designed with a feature that allowed votes to be flipped from one candidate to another — aired night after night as Fox hosts like Mr. Hannity and Mr. Dobbs allowed guests to make them on their shows, and in some cases vouched for them.  
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Under the guidance of Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, the “Election Integrity Network” has built what it calls “permanent election integrity infrastructure in swing states staffed with people fully committed to election conspiracies. After recruiting thousands of election workers and poll watchers in the 2022 cycle, Election Integrity Network coalitions are now mobilizing far-right activists to advance restrictive voting policies in key states. Mitchell supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including joining the infamous call when the president urged Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes. The Nework is the progeny of  the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the $45 million MAGA institution led by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. In states like Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, CPI’s Election Integrity Network has organized coalitions of election conspiracy theorists, drawing from national groups like Tea Party Patriots and Heritage Action, as well as a range of fringe state-based groups, like Audit the Vote PA and Stand Up Michigan, and with support from local, state, and national GOP officials and entities.Learn More
2016: During the 2016 campaign Coulter wrote a book-length endorsement of her preferred candidate, "In Trump We Trust.”  January 6, 2021: Coulter breaks ranks: "Who are these people still supporting Trump and this nonsense ‘stop the steal’? "I don’t understand why. Why are you doing this for Trump when he doesn’t give a crap about you?"

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In 2021, DeSantis endorsed President Donald Trump’s fight to hold onto his job, floating the idea that GOP-controlled legislatures in battleground states won by Democratic nominee Joe Biden could appoint Trump electors and override the popular vote.
In a playbook Republicans across the country are using after President Joe Biden’s decisive victory, DeSantis announced his support for new restrictions on voting by mail and on ballot drop boxes, needed, he claims, to clean up election nightmares that have plagued the state's reputation since the neck-and-neck George Bush vs. Al Gore fight in 2000.
 As a state governor he has campaigned for election deniers, after bragging before the 2020 presidential election.that he had removed local election officials and even in the middle of the pandemic had not expanded mail-in voting.  More from mentor Trump's playbook?  In 2022 DeSantis wrongly arrested Black voters . . . for voting. And now this . . .  NYTimes: Today’s Top News: DeSantis Acknowledges Trump’s 2020 Loss, and More
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Spending hundred of millions, so much dark money backing long-debunked lies about Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, and supporting campaigns to derail direct democracy efforts in multiple states
Who benefits?
Trump and Trump enablers CPI, the Election Integrity Network, The Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, Mark Meadows,  Steven Bannon, MTG and many more
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2020: Steve Bannon sought to overturn the certified results falsely alleging illegal voting, mail-in ballots and voting machines.

He and Peter Navarro authored a plan "to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to misuse his role as the person officially counting electoral ballots and instead reject them, delaying the certification of Biden’s victory and giving Republican-controlled state legislatures time to overturn the election."

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"Law-and-order" Republicans:  It was a “normal tourist visit."  FBI: “The Capitol [is] essentially a crime scene”. Capitol Insurrectionist: “We wait and take orders from our president.”  Insurrectionist Lonnie Coffman of Alabama brought to the Capitol a truckload of weapons and a Texas man was convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol with a holstered handgun, helmet and body armor. Cassidy Hutchinson, ​​former White House aide: The president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. Mr. Trump:  Planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the Jan. 6 committee revealed.Learn More
Following the 2020 election, Trump’s handpicked RNC chair, Ronna Romney McDaniel, pledged to go to state legislatures to “make sure that what we saw in this election never happens again,” regurgitating President Trump’s debunked claims of illegal votes and voting procedures. The RNC mobilized Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election, shepherding a new wave of Red state vote-suppressing laws designed to disenfranchise voters with opposing views. It deployed a so-called national "election integrity" committee (and state counterparts) to usher in these laws in 19 states.  The committee is filled with members who backed Trump's falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.          Learn More
The Dershowitz Double Standard for Impeachment (one part bravado, two parts chutzpah, shaken, not stirred):
  • 1998: Dershowitz on the impeachment of Bill Clinton: “It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime if you have somebody who completely corrupts the Office of the President and who abuses trust and poses a great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.  
  • 2020: Dershowitz on the first impeachment of Donald Trump: “And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." 
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Trump’s ‘deep-state’ warrior
Trump has repeatedly blasted an alleged “Deep State” in the intelligence community, repeatedly accusing career officials of seeking to undermine his administration from the inside despite no evidence to back up his claims. In between his turns in government, Grenell had a public affairs consulting firm called Capitol Media Partners. One of the firm’s clients, according to the financial disclosure that Grenell filed when he became an ambassador, was Arthur J. Finkelstein, the late Republican political consultant whose international clients included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.Learn More
"And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Tommy Tuberville, it’s that he’ll never let what’s good for Americans, including his constituents, stand in the way of what’s good for him and his political party."
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This Texan bends a knee to dictatorial Donald Trump: 
[x] Abbott "has certainly been very loyal to former President Trump, so he has that going for him". [x] "[T]here is very little chance that Abbott would try to outshine Trump." [x] "[H]e has acted like someone positioning himself for national office." [x] "He has almost quixotically staked out support for school vouchers — catnip for national Republican voters — even though Texas lawmakers largely are opposed." [x] He has recently "journeyed to the Middle East  to show his support for Israel." [x] Abbott has been governor for a decade, and it is difficult to say what he has succeeded in doing to improve the lives of his constituents. His legacy consists entirely of keeping a few people out, at fabulous expense.Learn More
Alt-right radio host Jesse Kelly, adoring Trump booster, and frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s former prime-time Fox News show, agreed with a Twitter user's suggestion that “Weimar problems eventually lead to Weimar solutions." Kelly's tweet? America “needs a dictator.”Learn More

“There’s hostility to lying, and there should be.”

– Bob Woodward

 

“Shame . . . focuses attention . . . and this provides a deterrence instrumental in sanctioning vicious or unjust action.”

– Marlene K. Sokolon, author of Political Emotions: Aristotle and the Symphony of Reason and Emotion

 

“Rule will not be morally legitimate unless it proceeds from the will of a moral individual. Legitimacy of exercise in the discourse of virtue politics must spring from a desire of a political leader to be and to do good.”

– James Hankins, author of Virtue Politics

 

“The institutional Republican party knows exactly how unfit Donald Trump is and how dangerous are the forces he has unleashed. They simply refuse to say so publicly, due to a combination of vanity, avarice, and cowardice.”

– Jonathan V. Last