With no evidence, GOP presses election fraud claims - again
Trump says Jan. 6 featured beauty and love
Also in today’s edition of ‘Regular Order’ for October 21, 2024:
The river of red ink continues for Uncle Sam.
Murkowski sticks with Peltola in Alaska.
Trump focuses on Arnold Palmer’s equipment.
FRAUD. We all know what happened after the 2020 election - when there was a steady stream of election fraud charges made by Donald Trump and many Republicans. None of those allegations panned out - despite Trump's never-ending firehose of false claims. Now with early voting now underway for 2024, we are starting to see another round of fraud accusations from the GOP.
VOTE FLIP. The first GOP claim of election fraud was a familiar one - that Dominion Voting machines are switching votes. "This is exactly the kind of fraud we saw in 2020 and it cannot be tolerated," said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) during an interview with noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
NOT SO FAST. But the incident that Greene touted from Whitfield County, Georgia turned out to be something less sinister - simple voter error. "Anyone claiming machines are flipping votes are lying," said Gabriel Sterling, a top aide to the Georgia Secretary of State. "There is no evidence of an issue."
DOMINION. Remember - we've been through these kind of charges before with Dominion Voting Systems, none of which were true. In fact, Dominion has won a series of settlements for those accusations, like a $787 million judgment against Fox News, for spreading those false charges. And the company is ready for more.
VOTING. "Dominion is closely monitoring claims around the Nov. 2024 election and strongly encourages use of verified, credible sources of info," the company wrote this weekend. "We remain fully prepared to defend our company and our customers against lies and to seek accountability from those who spread them."
LEGAL UPDATES. Dominion filed seven different defamation cases about false election fraud claims against Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, Mike Lindell (My Pillow), Newsmax, One America News (OAN), and Sidney Powell. It won’t surprise me if Dominion goes to court again after the 2024 elections.
TRUMP CLAIMS. Those false claims about election fraud by Donald Trump culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Last week, Trump called Jan. 6 a 'day of love' - ignoring all of the violence and attacks on police. In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump stood by those words, and repeated them. "There was a beauty to it and a love to it," Trump said about Jan. 6.
DEMS. Trump's own words have provided an opening for Democrats to bring up Jan. 6 more in the final days of the campaign. "I was at the Capitol on January 6th," said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL). "The Trump supporters who attacked the seat of our democracy to overthrow a fair and legal election were not acting with 'love.'"
HARRIS. At the top of the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris has been making Jan. 6 much more of the focus on her campaign's closing message. "Donald Trump claims January 6th was a day of love," said Vice President Kamala Harris. "But Americans know the truth. He is unhinged and unstable."
HOLE IN ONE. If you thought calling Jan. 6 a 'day of love' was bad, Trump pushed the envelope of bad taste over the weekend by spending a chunk of a speech in Pennsylvania on Saturday - talking about the size of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer's penis. You just can't make this stuff up.
SPEAKER. Asked on CNN about Trump's fascination with the size of Palmer's 3-wood, House Speaker Mike Johnson clearly wanted to talk about anything else. "OK, don't say it again," the Speaker said to Jake Tapper - like the word 'penis' was too much for Johnson's ears. "We don't have to say it. I get it."
JOHNSON. The Speaker never really got to the question of why Trump was talking about Arnold Palmer's dick, as he tried to steer the conversation back to positive Trump talking points. "Let me tell you that Donald Trump is doing rallies nonstop around the country," said Johnson.
RICK REILLY. Palmer died just before the 2016 election. What did he think of Trump? “Palmer did not like Trump. He hated golf cheats,” said ex-Sports Illustrated golf writer Rick Reilly - who quoted Palmer as saying, "If a guy is going to cheat you on the golf course…he's going to cheat you in business.”
APPENDIX. On Friday, we got a look at some of the evidence 'Appendix' that the Special Counsel is showing a federal judge in the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump. While there were no new blockbuster items - as most of the pages were kept secret - it was yet another reminder of how Trump tried to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
FAKE ELECTORS. The evidence included text messages involving Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Jan. 6, as Trump allies tried to get fake elector documents from Wisconsin and Michigan to Vice President Mike Pence - in hopes that he would overturn the election during a Joint Session of Congress.
GEORGIA. Another page of evidence includes the envelope which was used by Republicans in Georgia to send their own fake elector documents to Washington - also in hopes that they would be used to overturn Trump's election loss.
ALASKA. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) sent a clear message to voters in her home state this weekend that she wouldn't mind seeing Democrats keep the sole U.S. House seat from her state. It wasn't an endorsement of Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) by Murkowski - but it was pretty darn close to it.
MURK. "I’ve appreciated the great work that she has done for the state, and I hope that she’s able to continue that," Murkowski said at a weekend convention in Alaska that Peltola also attended. Peltola faces Republican Nick Begich III and two minor candidates in a ranked-choice voting race in November.
BUCKEYE STATE. We have seen a number of former elected GOP officials announce their support for Kamala Harris - but this one was different. In Ohio, a very famous GOP name from the Buckeye State has said he's breaking party lines and backing Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) for reelection.
TAFT. "Although not in agreement with Senator Brown on every policy issue, I believe Ohioans very much need a highly effective, experienced advocate in the U.S. Senate – someone who is squarely focused on both Ohio’s and America’s needs," wrote Bob Taft, a former Ohio GOP Governor.
TEN THOUSAND. For the first time since 1977, the House has made it into five digits on the number of bills introduced by lawmakers, going over 10,000 bills last Friday. H.R. 10000 this year goes to a bill from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) which presses the VA to hire sexual assault nurse examiners.
95TH CONGRESS. Oddly enough, H.R. 10000 back in 1977 also had to do with health care matters. Rep. Fred Rooney of Pennsylvania introduced a bill to examine the delivery of medical eye care services in the United States.
BILLS. Obviously, just because a lot of bills are introduced doesn't mean that it is a productive Congress. The current 118th Congress has passed 106 measures into law. In 1977-78 - the 95th Congress - lawmakers passed 633 different laws.
TRUMP TAX CUTS. Maybe the biggest issue next year for Congress and the new President will be what to do with the expiring provisions of the Trump tax law from 2017. All of the individual provisions are due to expire at the end of 2025. That means Congress must either decide what to extend and what to change. It's a big deal which hasn't gotten the attention it deserves in this campaign.
COST. One of the biggest stumbling blocks on this is the 'cost' of extending the Trump tax cuts. Many people might say - wait a second, it doesn't 'cost' anything, because you're just extending current law. But that's not how the number crunchers view it.
FISCAL CLIFF. The Congressional Budget Office recently said that just extending current tax law would cost about $4.6 trillion over ten years. That's because those tax cuts expire under current law at the end of 2025 - and snap back to what they were in 2017.
RED INK. This has been a dysfunctional Congress. And one place where that is evident is on the bottom line for Uncle Sam. The deficit for Fiscal Year 2024 was the third largest of all time, weighing in at $1.83 trillion. (2020 and 2021 - during the Coronavirus outbreak were larger.)
DEFICITS. Numbers are hard to juggle, so here's the past 12 years of deficits.
2013 - $719 billion (Obama)
2014 - $514 billion (Obama)
2015 - $469 billion (Obama)
2016 - $620 billion (Obama)
2017 - $665 billion (Obama/Trump)
2018 - $779 billion (Trump)
2019 - $983 billion (Trump)
2020 - $3.13 trillion (Trump)
2021 - $2.77 trillion (Trump/Biden)
2022 - $1.38 trillion (Biden)
2023 - $1.69 trillion (Biden)
2024 - $1.83 trillion (Biden)
RAP SHEET. A Georgia man has been arrested and charged with assaulting police on Jan. 6. Cylester Maxwell is seen in various videos joining other rioters in thrusting a giant metal 'Trump' sign at officers. Later, Maxwell grabbed several bicycle rack barricades being used by police, allowing the crowd to move closer to the Capitol building.
MUSE OF HISTORY. October 21, 1918. Just a few weeks before the end of World War I, GOP Senators unveiled a resolution barring U.S. government officials from negotiating any peace agreement with Germany. The resolution called for the war to be prosecuted 'with the utmost vigor and dispatch possible' until German forces surrendered on the battlefield.
LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM:
The House next has votes on November 12.
The Senate comes back for votes on November 12.
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1. I eagerly anticipate MTG and Alex Jones being served by Dominion. 2. How is Alex Jones still broadcasting?!
Never thought I'd read the word dick in Jamie's newsletter without the context being Nixon.