One of Donald Trump’s most famous quotes is from the 2016 campaign when he said, “I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any voters.” He seems to have convinced himself that it’s true. Despite the fact that he has been losing between 20 and 40 percent in most of the Republican primaries this year, he insists that they will all vote for him in the fall and anyway, he says, “I’m not sure we need too many.”
As recently as Super Tuesday he told Right Side Broadcasting, “I don’t need votes, we have all the votes we need.”
And why wouldn’t he say that? After all, as he told Newsmax again on Thursday night, “We won in 2016, we won even bigger in 2020, we won by a lot more,” so he’s certain to get as many votes this time. Or, at least, that seems to be his logic.
But if he was really so sure of himself you’d think he wouldn’t need to ensure that the election is going to be a nightmare that makes 2020 look placid and serene by comparison, wouldn’t you? But that looks like what he has in mind. Now that he has managed to install his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, and MAGA henchman Michael Whatley in the Republican National Committee (RNC), along with his defacto campaign manager (and underhanded operative) Chris LaCivita, then immediately purged the RNC staff to make room for loyalists, the takeover of the party is complete. And from what we hear from Lara Trump, who has been all over TV discussing their agenda, they plan a full-fledged assault on the election process in November.
Although she has said repeatedly that they planned to encourage early voting in this election, according to the Washington Post, the RNC has actually ended their “Bank Your Vote” program and replaced it with a “Grow The Vote” outreach to less likely Trump voters (which must mean white voters since they are also reportedly shutting down their minority outreach centers.) Trump has made it clear that if her father-in-law is elected, they will immediately put in place laws to return to one-day voting, with paper ballots, voter ID and requirements that the count be finished by the end of Election Day, so that’s something to look forward to.
In the meantime, they plan to train actual MAGA poll workers, apparently, something the RNC was not allowed to do for decades because of a consent decree from 1981 when they got caught intimidating minority voters as they are wont to do. (In reality, this plan was already announced last fall under the auspices of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, but like all Trumps, Lara is taking credit for others’ work.)
Lara Trump told Sean Hannity, “we have to fight fire with dynamite” and announced that they are putting “massive resources” toward a newly created “election integrity division” claiming, “We currently have 78 lawsuits out right now in 23 states across this country to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And here’s what I want to say. To anyone out there who is thinking about cheating in an election, we will go after you. You will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” (Actually, that’s already happening — to her father-in-law and his cronies.)
But you won’t believe who they’ve hired as the “senior counsel” for the new election integrity division. It’s almost as if they are trolling the media and the Democrats by putting up one of the most dishonest, hyperbolic purveyors of The Big Lie in all of MAGAworld, Christina Bobb, the author of the book Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024. Bobb is the former Trump DHS official and OAN commentator who promoted the daft idea that Trump would be reinstated after Joe Biden was inaugurated on the basis of the absurd “audits” that took place in various close states and came up with nothing.
Bobb is probably best known to mainstream America as the attorney who signed the affidavit attesting to the fact that Trump had turned over all the classified material at Mar-a-Lago which was later found to be untrue. She’s been part of the Trump inner circle since November of 2020 as an energetic election denier, as this New York Times profile from 2022 illustrates:
Ms. Bobb was present in the pro-Trump “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington before the Capitol attack, along with Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump stalwarts. She acted as Mr. Giuliani’s go-between with state officials in Arizona and helped fund-raise for a recount in Maricopa County that Republican leaders called a “sham.” She drafted a memo and participated in meetings to discuss a plan to appoint alternate slates of electors to reverse legitimate state election results. And Ms. Bobb created the computer file used to draft a proposal, never carried out, for Mr. Trump to issue an executive order for the federal government to seize voting machines.
Bobb was also sued for defamation by Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines and played a key role in the fake electors scheme.
She’s had quite a trajectory. She went to law school and then joined the Marines for two years after which she ran for office and came in last in field of 8. Then she went to DC and joined the Trump administration, then decamped to OAN where she became a “Stop The Steal” cheerleader and “a fixture at meetings” with the likes of John Eastman and Sidney Powell. She finally quit OAN and moved to Florida where she took a staff job at Trump’s Save America PAC and somehow was tapped to be the lawyer who had to sign that affidavit when the FBI came calling.
Her devotion to Trump is limitless. I saw her on Right Side Broadcasting at a Trump rally where she extolled Trump’s impeccable musical taste and fantastic dancing abilities. I’m not kidding. According to the Times, even Trump himself has recoiled at her cloying sycophancy (which, frankly, is hard to believe.) But in MAGA world she is an expert on the Big Lie and the truest of true believers. Of course they’re making her “senior counsel for election integrity.” Since all the other coup-plotting lawyers are under indictment, who else is left?
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
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We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
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