Fact, Fraud, & Feeling

Trump Moves on Georgia Like a Bitch; Gets Rejected

Good morning Mr. and Mrs. America, and (as Walter Winchell put it) all the ships at sea. Today, Jan. 6, is Attempted Coup day in Washington, when the GOP radicals and their Pround Boy street cohort threaten to block the electoral college from voting. If they succeed, civil war. Have a nice day! 

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* The fraud about election fraud is over. The recounts are done. The ballots are certified in every state. There was no fraud. To focus on the one most obvious example of many, in Georgia, all of the following have been alleged, and are now completely disproven: dead voters, illegal immigrant voters, out of state voters, foreign voters, absentee ballot fraud, voting machine hacks, Chinese vote tabulations, secret suitcases, lunch van ballot burying and commandos raiding CIA computers in Germany. All have been promoted by the D-list crazies who surround Trump now. All of them are false, and “easily disproven,” according to Georgia election officials. The reality-based Republican Secretary of State in Georgia just certified that, after careful scrutiny, well over 99 percent of absentee ballots were legitimate. There was not a single vote by those under 18, nor any evidence of illegal votes across the entire categories of fraud suggested by Trump lawyers. 

But there was election fraud. As the stunning phone call released Sunday by the Washington Post shows, Trump was the fraudster. He unambiguously pressured and threatened the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” they exact number of votes Trump needed to win. He wasn’t looking for votes in general, or fraud, or the truth—“I just want to find 11,780 votes…which is one more than we have.” Aside from his usual grammatical gibberish, the intention is clear: steal me enough, no more. 

This is criminal. I’m usually in favor or reconciliation, and de-escalating political feuds. But the fact that Trump’s clear violation of election laws probably won’t be prosecuted is deeply dangerous to our democracy. We are letting the barriers to authoritarianism slip away. On his way out the door, Trump is setting fire to our elections. 

* It’s useful to look back at predictions, if only to be reminded how bad we humans are at predicting. For example, Republican politicians predicted confidently that Trump would accept the election results. 

Over a month ago, Ross Douthat, the nominal conservative voice of the New York Times columns, gave an honest, if naive, response to Trump’s election conspiracies. Douthat started by acknowledging the elephant in the room: the real issue was not that the election was stolen, but rather the “sheer scale of the belief among conservatives that the election was really stolen…” 

But Douthat then put his naive cap on. He insisted that once Trump was gone, rational Republicans would prove that “populism can provide a foundation for conservatism.” He suggested that “if” Trump’s legal arguments failed to produce genuine evidence of fraud, then conservatives would (“should”) abandon him. 

Nah. Polling indicates that about 70% of Republicans now say the election was stolen from Trump. More than 100 GOP elected officials currently support efforts to overturn the presidential election—even Representatives who won election on the very same ballots they now claim are fraudulent. 

More pointedly, Douthat describes the “validation” that conservatives get from claiming there was election fraud: it balms their loss, blames it on a narrow, unjust conspiracy, and further isolates them in an epistemological bubble where the only reality is stuff you figured out on the internet for yourself. The experts are liars, the evidence is fraudulent, the news is fake. David Brooks once called Trump “the Einstein of confirmation bias,” and today’s Trumpian conservative is conducting a QWERTY search for confirmation of his beliefs.

Of course, this is the problem itself. The right is merely recapitulating “the closed-circle problems of the official knowledge it rejects.” Unmoored from reality, it is free to continue shooting off into fantasy lands.

*Sorry Ross, the facts will not be enough. They are plain: Joe Biden won election by 7 million votes, and easily took the Electoral College. Trump probably knows, deep down, that he lost. But his fantastical lies help create plausible deniability, or its cousin, plausible assertability. When the president asserts that 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia, he isn’t concerned with the facts (the actual number of dead people voting was..yes…two). The constant lies create a feeling that somebody, somewhere, stole an election, or cheated, somehow. It has become entirely about emotion. FoxNews anchors have said repeatedly in recent weeks that it feels like Trump won, and that enthusiastic rallies made them feel like they had more support, and that even if there was no actual election fraud, conservatives are justified in pursuing it because they feel like all of society is “rigged” against their values. Ex Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said Republicans  “have long felt that there was voter fraud in elections.” The Constitution mentions nothing about feeling that you won election. Douthat correctly notes how the ruse works: “Trump is providing validation for the belief that something might be true…”

* There is currently no penalty in America for deceiving people this way—not economically, not socially, and, given the GOP's strong showing in state and local races, not politically. (Georgia notwithstanding.)  On the contrary, conspiracy thinking has been a boon for ideologues, lobbyists, grifters, idiots, psychopaths, and podcasters. They make clicks, likes, and $$$ by pretending that our anti-racism protests were a communist plot, that narrow victories for Democrats were rigged, that liberals proposing an economic “reset” are Berkley Bolsheviks ready to seize their guns, trucks, bank accounts, and patio furniture. Trump lost the popular vote twice, by large margins, and catastrophically mismanaged the pandemic. But it’s easier to feel that the Georgia election was stolen, and that, as one Trump supporter shouted at yesterday’s rally, “Joe Biden is a communist agent!” 

Some powerful voices, like the Murdoch-owned New York Post and Wall Street Journal, have now stated plainly that Trump lost the election, there was no fraud, and that continuing to say so is disgraceful. 

But Trump never had shame, and neither do many of his followers. Those who don’t sit on editorial boards, or pundit from Zoom, are sticking with the fantasy. A month ago, Douthat was predicting a “reset” among conservatives, once the facts about voting came in. The facts are in, but there’s scant evidence of that realism, and there won’t be. 

The entire purpose is being unrealistic. In my experience overseas, claims of a stolen election are routine, and deeply wounding to a democracy.  Venezuela had a disputed election in 1948 — which erupted in savage violence, and continues to justify political violence today. 

So cutting off the supply of genuinely fake news—the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, or FoxNews pundits, or OAN, or NewsMax—won’t change that.  Douthat himself points out that the belief in an election conspiracy is driven by demand, not supply. Right-wing media and pundits and QWERTY warriors are serving a market that wants fantasy over reality. This collective social delusion is convenient for some people, so they maintain it. 

* Speaking of markets, I finally learned why the ultra-rightist TV network NewsMax keeps pushing Trump and his conspiracy theories so hard. A big media company like Fox can afford to have a “news division” and also flame-throwing pundits like Carlson/Hannity/Ingraham. Fox tops the ratings, usually, and mints money. But NewsMax is a money-losing operation with an absurdly tiny reach (as few as 14,000 people may tune in for some of their shows, nationwide.). But the NYT media columnist Ben Smith finally explained their racket: NewsMax is merely the media arm of a much larger, more successful grift marketing nutritional supplements and high-cost financial products and other forms of snake oil to their elderly, vulnerable, and sub-literate viewers. The purpose of the NewsMax conspiracies is to generate more customers for these products, which are often the main advertisers on the channel. Trump is a vehicle for making more cash. 

Trump himself is angling to open the wallets of those suckers. His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, described in New York magazine how Donald is expecting to turn his voters into his customers. With 90 million followers on social media, Trump is positioned to move them into paying customers, either at live rallies, or via a subscription TV service. If only a fraction of his devoted followers—say 20 million—fork over $4.99 a month for TrumpTV, that comes to $1.2 billion a year. “It’s all a shameless con job,” Cohen says. “He sees his claims of fraud as driving up donations — there’s nothing behind it beyond greed. Trump is using the moment to raise money.”  It is the NewsMax model on steroids, so to speak. 

Hurting democracy is profitable. Trump will continue ranting for money, with every incentive to keep throwing bombs, filing law suits, fabricating conspiracies, insulting people, and making a nuisance of himself. 

We are going to learn a lot more about Trump’s crimes and conspiracies, but don’t expect that to change anything. You and I make get a break from Trump, but for years to come, he will be there for his flock, the televangelist asking for one more donation.  

* It’s a new year. The Georgia election is positive. Be happy. Get some rest. Then start fighting again, for the rest of your lives.