“Look what you’ve done!” cried the Wicked Witch of the West. “I’m melting! Melting! Oh what a world, what a world!”
But that’s just reel life. You want to see someone melt in real life? Here’s Donald Trump on Twitter: “They are finding Biden votes all over the place – in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!”
The beauty of what’s happening right now is that hour by hour, this poseur’s tinpot presidency is dying. A landslide humiliation would have been the most appropriate punishment, but there’s something to be said for torturing Trump in slow motion before administering the coup de grace – perhaps in Nevada or Pennsylvania or even Georgia.
Did they teach election law at Trump University? Because apparently that’s where he got the idea that counting all the votes is somehow a nefarious pursuit. In truth, the election workers in those key states are “finding” legitimate mail ballots that were legally cast by prudent citizens who were loath to risk exposure to Trump’s deadly pandemic.
Flailing as he melts – what a world, what a world! – he’s currently demanding that Arizona should count all the votes, Wisconsin should recount all the votes, but that Michigan and Pennsylvania should stop counting all the votes. Got it. Meanwhile, at one point yesterday, the little king decreed on Twitter: “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania…the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina…Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan…”
Yeah, right. And I hereby claim the Philadelphia rooftop penthouse condo that I’ve been eyeing for weeks, regardless of what the real estate laws say, because I am hereby claiming it.
States are not his to “claim.” The voters will make that decision. I recall learning that in fourth grade.
Trump is flooding every court he can find with preposterous lawsuits, in the spirit of his dead mentor Roy Cohn, whose infamous motto was “F–k the law. Who’s the judge?” He’s claiming to be a victim of “major fraud,” but there is no evidence of fraud in the ongoing ballot count – at least not the dictionary definition. Trump’s definition is much simpler: all mailed Biden ballots are fraud. But, alas, judges generally demand that fraud allegations have some basis in objective fact.
As law professor Justin Levitt rightly points out, “A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee.”
Lest we forget, Trump has been doing his “fraud” shtick for a long time. Back in May, when his pandemic death toll was 94,000, he realized that a lot of health-conscious Americans would probably prefer to vote by mail. Fearing that mail balloting would expand the size of the electorate, he became unhinged: “(Voting by mail) is a very dangerous thing. They’re subject to massive fraud…tremendous illegality and fraud…It’s not a fair situation…A lot of things can happen…Common sense tells you massive manipulation can take place.”
It’s fun to put the words Trump and common sense in the same paragraph. But I digress.
Now comes the requisite paragraph where I’m compelled to point out that mail ballot fraud is exceedingly rare. The states with universal mail balloting (including Republican Utah) have demonstrably clean records. And according to one national study, hundreds of millions of votes were cast by mail between 2000 and 2012, yet the total of nationwide prosecutions for mail ballot fraud was 491. Voting experts at the Brennan Center for Justice have concluded: “It is more likely for an American to be struck by lightning than to commit mail voting fraud.”
Trump sent some apparatchiks, including Rudy Giuliani and son Eric, to Philadelphia yesterday, to rant about the mail ballots that are currently being counted. Rudy said that, for all he knew, these ballots could’ve come from “Mars” or “Canada” or dead people. Did he have any evidence? Nope. He also said that, for all he knew, “Joe Biden could have voted 50 times or 5,000 times!” Joe Biden isn’t a Philadelphia voter. Does he have any evidence that anyone has voted by mail “50 or 5,000 times”? Nope.
The MAGA team is merely throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that something sticks, hoping against hope to infect the vote-counting process with a deadly pathogen. Just as we knew Trump would do in a desperate bid to forestall the inevitable.
How addled is this guy? This morning, he tweeted: “STOP THE COUNT!” Works for me. If they stop the count in Nevada and Arizona, where he’s losing, then Biden is president.
Granted, he’s inspiring some cultists to fume at some vote centers that the election is being “stolen.” But, broadly speaking, the nationwide process has been smooth and peaceable, all evidence of “fraud” appears to be confined to the voices in Trump’s head, sane Americans are tuning him out, the inexorable tallying of ballots continues apace, and, all told, he is little more than a bystander to democracy in action.