Nothing Trump revealed in his speech comes anywhere close to his own treasonous attempts to thwart our elections
...including his efforts last night.
Trump produced no evidence that any foreign entity, in any way, manipulated votes or registration records; nothing which would change the outcome of the 2020 election.
U.S. intel collectively concluded, in a bipartisan report, that that no foreign governments controlled voting equipment or manipulated vote totals, including conspiracists' favs, Venezuela and China. The claims he made about Venezuela were about their efforts in Venezuelan elections, not in the U.S.; and China bought voter info that's available for free to any American at any time, and Trump called that espionage.
Despite saying early in the speech that he wasn't trying to discourage anyone from the polls, he looked to be laying the groundwork to try just that by inflating the foreign threat to possibly declare some kind of national emergency in which his federal agents would then seize certain states and localities' ballots or voting machines and breaking the chain of confidence in the tallies.
There's also the prospect of sending ICE to the polls to defend against the overinflated threat from undocumented immigrants they say registered to vote; producing no more evidence that they actually voted than they have by showing us a handful of 'red' state voter rolls and complaining that 'Democrat' state didn't fork over their voter info to the president who was convicted of fraudulent conduct in connection with a previous election.
Think about the hyper-concern about protecting the vote coming from the president and administration which dismantled so many of the protections against the things Trump was gaslighting Americans about last night.
...from the Brennan Center:
Early in the second Trump administration, meanwhile, the FBI quietly shuttered a task force dedicated to investigating foreign deception operations and sharing information with state and local officials and social media companies. The first Trump administration had created the task force after Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election.
The current administration has also shed staff at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who focused on foreign disinformation. The agency, which coordinates and advises on the security of election infrastructure as well as of other critical infrastructure sectors, has lost about a third of its workforce, and hundreds more positions have been reassigned. (Trump’s newest budget proposal would further shrink the agency.) Reportedly among the positions jettisoned were more than a dozen Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency staffers who monitored foreign disinformation campaigns in elections. Meanwhile, the State Department closed the Global Engagement Center, another group established to coordinate responses to foreign propaganda and misinformation from Russia, China, and Iran. (That center is not focused exclusively on election falsehoods).
The dismantled teams, slashed staff, and reduced expertise mean that the federal government is underprepared to respond in an election cycle where Iran, China, and Russia are especially incentivized to try to influence results.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-administration-cuts-make-elections-more-vulnerable-foreign
And consider this as you reflect on the absolutely banal gaslighting about China buying voter info that's already public and readily available. As part of Trump’s efforts to expand federal control over the country’s historically state-run election infrastructure, his DOJ is presently demanding copies of states’ complete voter registration lists, including voters’ highly sensitive data like birthdates, partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.
The foreign actors he's warning against may well have taken advantage of his own deliberate fecklessness in giving attention to forces Trump believes to be against him in that election, or don't like him as he whined like a baby last night; or his acquiescence to those who opposed Biden.
But the very reports he's citing - the intel reports he was made aware of, despite claiming that 'deep-state' agents kept something or the other from him - say that China did not launch any large scale effort to influence the 2020 election, nor did any other country.
The ONLY evidence of any significant effort to defraud that election was in HIS OWN 34-COUNT INDICTMENT for his attempted defrauding that election, including his incitement of his supporters to assault the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification by Congress of votes already cast.
Nothing Trump revealed in his speech comes anywhere close to his own treasonous attempts to thwart democracy in our elections; including his efforts last night.
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