It is true that the President repeated the charges that he had made at previous rallies that fraudulent activity in key battleground states had stolen the election. He read from a teleprompter a whole litany of charges that detailed this activity.
At the top of his list was the charge that a judge in Pennsylvania had unconstitutionally violated the state’s own law in allowing late ballots to be counted. His list included thousands of ballots mailed to dead voters, and thousands of ballots cast by people living out of state. There were so many more items on his list that the President feared that he would bore the crowd with the recitation. He even referred to a poll that appeared in Wisconsin on the day before the election showing him losing by 17 points, an obvious attempt at voter suppression.
At the end of his speech the President calmly asked the crowd to walk down Pennsylvania Ave. to the Capitol where Congress was about to count the votes of the Electoral College. It was his hope that at this late date Congress would send the votes back to the states for re-certification. He even called on Vice-President Pence to show courage and stand up for what is right. *
As we all know a small minority of the protestors got out of hand, stormed the Capitol, got through police lines, and even entered the inner chambers of Congress. Inevitably, the President was blamed for inciting the riot and now members of Congress are preparing articles of Impeachment even though there are less than two weeks to go in his term.
For years we have repeatedly been told that rather than blame protestors, we should try to understand the reasons for their anger and actions even when they turn violent.
As recently as the riots last summer in major American cities, we have been told that most of the rioters were just peaceful protestors and that the causes of their discontent were in social and economic inequality. Democratic politicians in these cities even praised and encouraged the protestors when they attacked federal and state buildings. One author even published a book entitled, “In Defense of Looting.”
Anyway, what is the underlying reason behind the huge demonstration in Washington that unfortunately turned into violence? Thousands of people marched on Washington from all over the country. Even though the TV cameras refused to show the crowd, the President claimed it was the largest he had ever seen. Why did they come? I believe that most felt that not only had President Trump been robbed in the November election, but also that they had been robbed.
They had turned out in record numbers to vote for the President only to discover that their votes did not count and that they probably would never count in the future. The President had gotten 63 Million votes in 2016 and his advisors had told him that if he could get 66 Million in 2020, he would win in a landslide. He got 74 Million votes but lost because of narrow defeats in key battleground states.
How could this have happened without fraud in those states? Pre-election polls showed that states like Ohio, Texas, and Florida were in
play, but the President won easily. Ohio had been close in 2016 but the President gained an easy victory in 2020. Are suburban housewives different in Ohio than in other states? Are Blacks and Hispanics different in Cleveland than in Detroit or Milwaukee?
Election data analysts have noted significant irregularities and anomalies in the tabulation of votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. There were, for example, vote spikes “where a numerical amount of votes are processed in a time period that is not feasible or mechanically possible under normal circumstances.” There were massive dumps of votes in the wee hours of the morning all overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. Here is a link to a brief video on irregularities in Pennsylvania.
Another vote anomaly occurred in Georgia where 100000 votes could not be read by the computer and so had to be interpreted by an adjudicator to determine the intent of the voter. The process of adjudication took only one day, a physical impossibility. In other states, mail in ballots were counted as received even before they were mailed out. Democrats admit clerical errors in reporting votes, but all the clerical errors seemed to work out for Biden.
It is true that courts have thrown out the President’s charges of voter fraud and that media sources, even the esteemed Wall Street Journal, routinely claim there is no evidence for these charges. But do they ever investigate these charges themselves? A few years ago the Houston Astros won the World Series and sports writers were lavish in praise of the Houston system. Only later did we discover that they had cheated.
Efforts to suppress or ignore these stories will only lead to greater suspicion and anger. Just the other day, President Trump’s Twitter account, practically the only way, given a hostile media, that the President could communicate with the American people, was banned. Is that any way to make people less suspicious or angry?
It is true that the web is full of conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, suppression or censorship of unfavorable ideas has become so prevalent that it is no wonder that people are suspicions, and even angry.
Democratic politicians and their allies in the media have incessantly attacked the President even before his inauguration in 2016. They have even refused to call him President and still claim that his victory was fraudulent and that his presidency was illegitimate. Many of them still believe the conspiracy theories about Russian collusion for which the Mueller and other investigations could find no evidence.
The opposition to President Trump, often bordering on hysteria and hatred, bears much of the responsibility for last week’s riot.
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*Note: I do fault the President for calling our Vice-President Pence in his remarks. It is inconceivable that he had not discussed the matter with the VP privately, and so he must have known what he intended to do. The Vice-President’s opinion of his role in the counting of Electoral College vote count was also featured in the op-ed section of the WSJ.
I’m shocked! Shocked. Claude Rains in Casablanca.
CP comments from DC.
ReplyDeleteIn the past we often have not agreed on political and Covid-19 issues, and this is one more time when I can absolutely not agree with you and your reasoning. You clearly have not had any experience in dealing with large angry crowds. Although I have not dealt with crowds of thousands of angry people, I have dealt with hundreds. It does not take much to instigate an angry crowd to action. In this case the crowd was already angry and extremely hyped up. They needed only a small push to get them going, and they got that from Trump and the other speakers that day. He specifically told them to go to the Capitol. He said it was not a time for weakness. They obeyed. Yes, he did say “walk,” and they did walk to their destination, but when they got there they did not stop. They entered and what they did was seen all over our country and the world. Trump’s later statements to the crowd were delivered in a monotone with no urgency in his voice or manner. Therefore, they had no impact. The result was shameful. Trump brought the results and consequences on himself. He has done irreparable damage to our country and to the Republican Party.