When Rudy Giuliani tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized in Washington (12/6) it may have been the final blow to Donald Trump’s plan to get Republican state legislatures to set aside the popular votes in their states and select electors who would push Trump past the 270 needed to win re-election.
Giuliani, the head of Trump’s legal team, has been contemptuous of pandemic safety measures like masks and social distancing. He has largely ignored those measures in recent weeks while flying all over the country to promote lawsuits seeking to overturn the US elections on Trump’s behalf, “Hunter” noted at DailyKos (12/7). Now legislators he had contact with in the week before he tested positive, when he may have been infectious before he showed symptoms, may be forced to quarantine, at best.
Giuliani spent the better part of a day with hard-right Arizona lawmakers (11/30) in an event promoting Republican conspiracy theories about election fraud. The day after, he privately met with Republican leaders in the state House and Senate.
The next day (12/2) Giuliani was in Michigan, where he regaled the Republican-held House Oversight Committee with election conspiracies. He wore no mask.
The following day (12/3) Giuliani was in Georgia for another maskless rally/conspiracy event with state allies. Georgia state Sen Elena Parent (D) is among those blasting Georgia Senate leaders for holding a hearing with Rudy and his coconspirators, telling CNN via email that it was “reckless and irresponsible” to have “willingly endangered all of us to pander to Trump.” The Washington Post reports that state Senate staffers who attended the hearing “have been instructed to work remotely until they get tested.”
“The obvious question, then, is whether Giuliani spread the gift of Trump-supporting COVID-19 to at least three Republican-governed state legislatures, or whether it was the mask-condemning Republicans of one of those three states that gave the virus to him for further dispersal around the country,” Hunter wrote. “So far, Team Trump is vigorously insisting that Giuliani put none of the three statehouses at risk, claiming that he ‘tested twice negatively immediately preceding’ the trip.
“The problem with that statement, of course, is that the Trump White House and Trump campaign infamously lie about everything, all the time. We only learned after Donald Trump’s hospitalization for COVID-19 that his White House physicians hadn’t been testing him at all for the virus, after months of White House claims that he was being tested daily or near-daily or at least frequently—they simply lied, brazenly, about the testing. We can infer absolutely nothing from their similar testing claims here.
“In the end, we will know who exposed who because the virus will tell us. Between zero and three Trump-allied statehouses will be experiencing a new pandemic outbreak, depending on when exactly Giuliani himself became infectious. It’s impossible to feel much sympathy for any of these people; these state Republicans have been doing their level best to promote the spread of the virus and conspiracy theories both, and are only practicing the same contempt for safety that they advocate to their citizens.”
TRUMP LOSES GA. FOR THIRD TIME. It’s official: President Donald Trump lost Georgia three times in one election after he pressured the state’s Republican leaders to ignore an earlier recount and launch yet another, Lauren Floyd noted at DailyKos (12/7). State election officials completed that count and are re-certifying President-elect Joe Biden as the winner, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Monday during a press conference (12/7). “It’s been a long 34 days since the election on Nov. 3,” he said. “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remained unchanged.”
Raffensperger bragged about strengthening signature matching, moving toward an auditable paper ballot system, and requiring each vote-by-mail applicant to provide a photo of a driver’s license. He also said he’s outlawed ballot harvesting, which would’ve allowed third parties to collect and deliver completed ballots.
Floyd noted the irony that Raffensberger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp are being criticized by Trump for allowing the vote to be counted, but they have been criticized repeatedly by Democrats for notoriously suppressing the vote of Black and brown Georgians to serve the Republican Party.
When Kump was secretary of state, he purged nearly 700,000 voters from the rolls before the gubernatorial election in which he defeated Stacy Abrams by about 55,000 votes. Kemp also allowed more than 200 polling places across the state to be shut down, mostly in poor communities of color. The closings prevented an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters from casting ballots, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported )12/16/19).
Raffensperger has announced that he “launched an investigation” into at least four grassroots organizations working to turn out voters for the Jan. 5 election. That, of course, includes Abrams’ New Georgia Project, which many have credited with helping flip Georgia blue in the recent presidential election. Raffensperger said the state has 250 open cases claiming violations of election law.
The New Georgia Project nonprofit registered more than 500,000 people from underrepresented communities in Georgia. But instead of applauding the organization’s work, Raffensperger accused it, along with a group called Operation New Voter Registration Georgia and nonprofits America Votes and Vote Forward, of “repeatedly and aggressively” seeking to register “ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters” before the Senate runoff.
The New Georgia Project called Raffensperger’s claims “tired and false.” “More than one million Georgians have registered to vote since the 2018 voter registration deadline, and over 846,000 have requested an absentee ballot for the upcoming runoff election on Jan. 5th,” the nonprofit said. “The New Georgia Project will continue its mission to register eligible voters in advance of the Dec. 7th deadline, so that Georgians can have their voices heard at the polls and freely and fairly cast their ballots for those who would represent them.”
Trump still wants Kemp to further disenfranchise Georgians. “The Republican Governor of Georgia refuses to do signature verification, which would give us an easy win. What’s wrong with this guy? What is he hiding?” Trump tweeted (12/7).
POSSIBLE MOVEMENT ON PANDEMIC STIMULUS IN CONGRESS. In the first real Senate movement toward another stimulus package since the CARES Act in March, Mitch McConnell participated in actual talks, a half-hour call with Nancy Pelosi (12/3), aimed at finding relief measures to stick into a government funding package (authority to fund the government runs out on 12/11). Because it takes time to translate negotiations into legislation, Congress might pass a one-week continuing resolution on funding, giving time to negotiators to settle the deal, David Dayen reported at Prospect.org (12/7) .
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said on Fox News Sunday (12/6) Donald Trump would sign the $908 billion bipartisan “Gang of 8” package, which Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden have already endorsed as a starting point for negotiations. Both sides said there was a lot of work to do but that failure was not an option.
The big reason why McConnell is coming to the table after all these months is easy to see: his control of the Senate could depend on passing relief. The latest poll in the Georgia runoffs, from a pollster that nailed President-elect Biden winning the state, has both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock leading their races. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are running on delivering a relief package, and if they don’t, it’s open season on them with a few weeks to go. It’s in every Republican’s interest to keep their little gavels and nice offices, and moreover, red states are suffering the biggest revenue shortfalls, so the state and local aid in the package will help as well.
However, McConnell is insisting that the package include a broad liability protection for corporations that expose workers or customers to coronavirus for five years. And according to sources close to the negotiations, at least three Senate Democrats—Mark Warner (D-VA), Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)—are willing to go along with the McConnell language, which would not just fundamentally change the ability for individuals to sue over COVID infections, but could permanently safeguard corporations from the consequence of their own negligence.
TRUMPITE GANGS BRING GUNS, THREATS TO ‘STOP THE STEAL’ PROTESTS WHILE NUMBERS SHARPLY DECLINE. Right-wing demonstrations protesting the presidential election results on Donald Trump’s behalf began winding down in numbers the weekend of Dec. 5-6 — but decidedly picked up intensity in the violence and threatening rhetoric that accompanied them through November, thanks mainly to the presence of armed paramilitary groups such as the Proud Boys and various “militia” groups, David Neiwert noted at DailyKos (12/7).
The pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” protests seemed to lose some momentum, with just over a dozen such rallies recorded. However, what they lacked in numbers they made up for in ugliness: A demonstration in Olympia, Wash., on Saturday (12/5) turned into a running series of brawls, culminating in gunfire, though no one was seriously injured. And in Michigan, a couple dozen armed protesters showed up at the home of the secretary of state during the evening as she was finishing up Christmas decorations and shouted threats at her and her family.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), the total number of demonstrations, including those against COVID-19 pandemic health measures, declined this week. The majority of protests were Stop the Steal events, though both the numbers of the rallies and the numbers of participants declined sharply.
However, the data collected by ACLED also showed a significant increase in participation by paramilitary groups:
Among the continuing pro-Trump demonstrations, militia groups like the Proud Boys and III%ers are increasingly visible. For example, the III%ers participated in a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in Georgia, while the Proud Boys organized similar rallies in Illinois, California and Oregon. ACLED data indicate that militia groups were present in more than a quarter of all reported ‘Stop the Steal’ demonstrations last week.
These same elements played a significant role in the violence that broke out in Olympia when a couple hundred pro-Trump thugs, including Proud Boys and “III Percenters,” none of them from the city, came to protest Trump’s large-margin loss at the ballot box in Washington State. A much smaller group of antifascists turned out to oppose them and wound up engaged in a number of brawls.
The most significant of these occurred when a small group of antifascists attempted to burn an American flag and were assaulted by pro-Trump protesters who beat them with flagpoles. Videos of that assault were widely circulated and applauded on social media by such right-wing figures as Dinesh d’Souza and Andy Ngo, who portrayed it as justifiable violence in retaliation for the flag burning.
Most pro-Trump protesters arrived armed and brandished the weapons around the city’s downtown for most of the day. At one point, as a brawl broke out, one of them drew out his handgun and pointed it at antifascists, eventually firing once. The person he was aiming at reportedly was only grazed by the bullet and did not seek medical attention or file a complaint with police, who issued a statement asking the victim to work with them.
Police arrested a 27-year-old man named Christopher Guenzler, who was charged with first-degree assault, a crime that carries a minimum 20-year sentence in Washington. Guenzler’s Facebook page is mostly filled with photos of him driving his pickup truck adorned with a Confederate flag.
Police said the largest brawl involved about 200 people armed with guns, bats, bottles, rocks, and chemical sprays. It broke out near The United Churches of Olympia, whose pastor, Rev. Tammy Leiter Stampfli, was shoved to the ground during the altercation.
Leiter Stampfli posted about it on Facebook: “Yesterday I was knocked down in the church parking lot by (a) Trump supporter,” she wrote. “This was after being screamed at for being a pastor of ‘such a Church.’ I had stopped with another member to use the bathroom. There had been a full on brawl between antifa and Trump supporters. People were beating each other, spraying chemicals in each others eyes, yelling, screaming obscenities.”
The Michigan protest outside Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home similarly featured threatening behavior against perceived enemies. “As my 4-year-old son and I were finishing up decorating the house for Christmas on Saturday night, and he was about to sit down and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas, dozens of armed individuals stood outside my home shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns in the dark of night,” Benson said in a statement.
According to MLive, the 20 to 30 protesters were openly carrying guns. Participants posted livestream videos of the rally showing protesters demanding election audits and chanting, “Stop the steal.”
“They shouted baseless conspiracy theories about the election, and in videos uploaded to social media, at least one individual could be heard shouting ‘you’re murderers’ within earshot of her child’s bedroom,” Michigan Attorney Gen. Dana Nessel and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a joint statement on Sunday (12/6). “This mob-like behavior is an affront to basic morality and decency.”
The rally was a threat against not only Benson and her family but also Michigan voters, Benson said in her statement:
“The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening. They targeted me in my role as Michigan’s Chief Election Officer. But the threats of those gathered weren’t actually aimed at me—or any other elected officials in this state. They were aimed at the voters.”
Threats against public officials by Trump-oriented armed gangs have been on the rise since October, when federal and state authorities announced they had arrested 14 suspects accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Six men were arrested by the FBI on federal charges of conspiracy to kidnap the governor and eight others were arrested on state charges ranging from threats of terrorism to gang membership and firearm violations.
In April, Trump urged protesters to “liberate Michigan.” On the day the governor’s alleged attackers were charged, Trump lashed out at Whitmer, complaining that she’s done “a terrible job” and is “doing is a horrible thing to the people” of Michigan. He added that the governor failed to sufficiently thank him for the Justice Department’s role in thwarting the planned attack. At a rally in Michigan 10 days after the arrests, Trump downplayed the seriousness of the plot, telling his followers, “I guess they say she was threatened.”
Another Michigan lawmaker posted voicemails saying she should be lynched. One caller told state Rep. Cynthia A. Johnson, D-Detroit, that she should be “swinging from a … rope.” Another call received by Johnson, who is Black, predicted the lawmaker would be lynched, among multiple voicemails Johnson posted on her Facebook page, Bob Johnson noted at DailyKos (12/6).
There were similar Stop the Steal protests also featuring armed participants and threatening rhetoric around the country this week:
• In Georgia, where rallygoers were urged not to participate in the Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections in the state as a way to protest the state’s Republican leadership for having affirmed Trump’s loss in the election.
• In Wisconsin, where a smallish crowd gathered in Appleton to demand a recount for the state. “I think it’s pretty evident that there is a legitimate concern [that] people have about what is going on,” said Matt Albert, the Outagamie County Republican Party chairman. “Today is not about believing whether it’s true or not. Today is about believing it could be true, and if it could be true, why don’t you figure out if it’s true, and that is important for both sides.”
• In Pennsylvania, where a gathering of several dozen pro-Trump protesters at the state Capitol in Harrisburg demanded a recount in their state as well. “You are not gonna steal this election from us!” one protester shouted. A speaker at the rally proclaimed: “It’s gotta be America First, or it’s going to be America Last!”
• In Colorado, a similarly small gathering of protesters demanded a recount in those swing states outside the Capitol in Denver. “Our goal was to show solidarity with the states where the fraud is rampant,” a Republican organizer told KDVR-TV.
A Georgia election official, Gabriel Sterling, pleaded with President Trump to denounce death threats received by a voting machines contractor in Gwinnett County who was accused of treason and found a noose outside his house. The man’s family members also received death threats, Sterling said (12/1).
“You need to step up and say this ... stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence,” Sterling said, addressing the president. “Someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed, and it’s not right.”
REPUBS MOVE TO STYMIE BIDEN AT FCC. Republicans plan to rush a new appointee onto the Federal Communications Commission to leave the agency at a 2-2 deadlock when Chairman Ajit Pai steps down Jan. 20. President Trump nominated Nathan Simington, a Republican in favor of greater government control of speech on the internet, and the Senate Commerce Committee (12/2) voted to advance the nomination to the full Senate.
Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (12/6) that Simington help draft Trump’s Executive order to try and rescind Section 230. This move would unconstitutionally turn the FTC and FCC into the arbiters of free speech on social media platforms.
If the Republican Party can hold off challenges in the Georgia Senate runoff (1/5), they will potentially be able to block any FCC choice new President Joe Biden makes for chair to replace Pai.
“To realize how unqualified and radically fascistic Simington’s position is on government overreach into First Amendment issues, even Republican Mike O’Reilly, a staunch conservative figure on the FCC and not a friend to the American consumer, warned that the First Amendment was what was at stake with Trump and Republican pressuring to rollback Section 230,” Einenkel noted.
“The Republican Party, in any other less toxic iteration, would have just stalled out and not even considered Simington’s nomination during this lame duck session, but then conservative and big business think-tankery reminded McConnell and others that they could slow down regulatory progress by speeding through even the most incompetent nominee. I mean, McConnell’s been rubber-stamping incompetent ultra right wing judges for the last four years. Any chance at re-installing some consumer protections via net neutrality, with a FCC interesting in doing its job, disappear if McConnell can block any Biden nominee.”
TRUMP FAILED TO SECURE ENOUGH PFIZER VACCINES. Instead of the 300 million or so doses of vaccine that were supposed to be delivered immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020, as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 to 40 million doses, the Washington Post reported (12/5). As planning accelerated for distributing supplies, the government began to further lower expectations. To make sure supplies don’t run out and leave some people only partially immunized, the government said it would stagger deliveries to ensure that states have enough supply for the second shot, required 21 days later for the Pfizer vaccine, which is expected to be first to gain approval.
Maine saw its allotment fall from a previous estimate of 36,000 to just 12,675 doses, officials in the state said. “This is far less than what is needed for Maine and proportionally for other states as well,” Gov. Janet Mills (D) said at a news conference. The gap reflects the disconnect between Trump’s campaign promises, as well as the optimistic estimates from some drug companies, and scientific and manufacturing realities.
Few officials seemed to know exactly why they are receiving fewer doses. “There has been some lack of clarity in terms of what states are going to get,” said Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s health secretary and president of the state health official association. “We’re not crystal clear.” The initial supply “will not even touch all of our hospitals,” said Mandy Cohen, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. “We knew this was going to be a process, and we’ve tried to set expectations on the front end.”
Charles P. Pierce noted at Esquire.com (12/7), “to some extent, everybody is winging it, because nobody has faced this exact situation before. (The only comparable public health disaster was the 1918 flu pandemic, and the first flu vaccine didn’t come on line until 1938. Dr. Jonas Salk was involved in its development, and Salk used that experience to develop his breakthrough polio vaccine in 1952. The parallel in that case is that, just as researchers are doing now, Salk produced the polio vaccine while the polio epidemic was still active.) But this administration has faced this monumental task and repeatedly fallen into a ditch. And this has left health professionals and state politicians holding the bag. God, given the mess he’s being handed, if Biden makes it to the 2022 midterms without completely losing his mind, it will be a considerable triumph.”
TWO TRUMP HENCHMEN NAMED TO PENTAGON ADVISORY BOARD. The Trump administration installed loyalists on a Pentagon advisory panel (12/4), naming former Trump campaign figures Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie among the new appointees to the Defense Business Board. The appointments were announced along with the removal of other members, at least some of whom were dismissed. Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, appointed to his job in November following the firing of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, said in a statement that he was “proud” to welcome each of the new members ... “These individuals have a proven record of achievement within their respective fields and have demonstrated leadership that will serve our Department, and our nation well,” Miller said in a statement.
Charles P. Pierce noted at Esquire.com that “Bossie’s field was ratf*cking, plain and simple. He once broke in on a desperately ill woman in a hospital room to harangue her about whether her daughter had committed suicide because of an unhappy affair with Bill Clinton. His ratf*cking reached its apotheosis when he got poor, dim Anthony Kennedy to help him decriminalize influence-peddling in the Citizens United decision. Lewandowski’s “field” is being the political equivalent of a hockey goon. So, yeah, I guess the two of them do excel in their “respective fields.” And Sweeney Todd was a helluva stylist.”
Politico reported that this 11th hour raspberry to good government was handled with the humanity characteristic of the way things are run in Camp Runamuck.
“The firings came as a shock to the board members, who had not received any negative feedback or warning prior to their termination. One former board member lamented the move, noting that the board ‘has never been political, ever.’ ‘You are talking about 15, 20 executives, business leaders, government leaders, who are giving their time to serve the nation and not even a thank you note,’ said the person, who asked not to be named. ‘It’s just about simple gratitude and appreciation for people.’”
Pierce noted, “Dude must be from out of town.
“Luckily, these appointments are to unpaid positions and they are unlikely to survive the change in administrations. But if there are rats to be f*cked on the way out the door, these are just the men to do it. Politically, they are human source-point pollution.”
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2021
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