The most embarrassing thing about Trump's answer to the subpoena from the House.
Donald Trump's answer to the upcoming subpoena from the House select committee looking into the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was exactly what you would have expected.
There are two times each of the words "hoax" and "radical left." (Or, "Radical Left" if you want to use Trump's strange capitalization rules.) It says "Russia" four times. Trump's weak attempt to change the name of the committee was to write "Unselect" three times. "Illegal" five times.
But "fraud," which shows up 10 times, is the winner. This is Trump's ace in the hole: the evidence of fraud is so clear and widespread that it should have been looked into instead of the violent attack on the Capitol.
"You haven't gone after the people who made the fraud, but rather great American Patriots who questioned it, as is their right under the Constitution," the letter says. "These people's lives have been ruined while your Committee sits back and basks in the glow." This is such a strange mix of metaphors that it makes you stop and think. What is it that is shining?
Trump can't really say much because there wasn't a lot of fraud in the 2020 election. After almost two years of desperate digging and countless tennis matches of debunking and rebunking, this is now so well-proven that it doesn't need to be looked at in depth. If you're interested, here's what I always say about the lack of proof of fraud. If, at this point, you still don't want to accept that reality, that's because of your own choices, not because of reality.
Even so, Trump didn't let this stop him from putting in several pages of supposed proof to back up his claim that the election was stolen. He chooses five "swing states" to focus on. I don't want to use the word "analysis" because that implies careful thought. Why did he flail? That makes more sense. In each case, what he says is a mix of claims that have been disproven for a long time and claims that have nothing to do with the topic. Necessarily, because if there were real proof, we would have seen people in handcuffs and heard Trump talking about it to any microphone within four feet. All he has are rumors and false claims, and that's all he's ever had.
Take a look at his list of claims about Michigan, which is mostly a swing state because he barely won it in 2016 and lost it by a large margin four years later. There were six states where the margin of victory was smaller than in Michigan, but he always likes to include it because he won it in his first race and, let's be honest, because he can play on stereotypes about Detroit and Detroiters.
But when I read his presentation, I felt something in my gut. It's nonsense from beginning to end, and it's the same nonsense as two years ago! I wrote on it, put it up on the wall, and took a picture of it.
Like so.
Maybe my notes on the paper are too short or my handwriting is hard to read. So let me quickly back up what I've written with real links and discussion, which is what people who want to share accurate information do.
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"In Detroit, officials illegally blocked Republican challengers' access to the polling place, covered the windows, called the police, and turned down legal challenges so they could count the ballots in private."
Here's an article from 708 days ago that explains why the windows were covered and "poll watchers" (often just protesters) were not allowed in. Instead of breaking the law, the goal was to follow the rules: To protect privacy, only the media are allowed to film the process of counting ballots. Also, there were a lot of Trump supporters inside. His complaint confuses the fact that more supporters couldn't get in with the fact that all supporters couldn't get in.
No matter what, there is no proof and no reason to believe that this had any effect on the actual vote count. The implication is that something shady must have happened because this claim suggests something shady did happen. Putting on a smoke machine is like saying there must be a fire.
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"Affidavits and videos show that at 3:30 a.m. on Election night, thousands of ballots were brought in through the back door of what was then called the TCF Center. In their report about the 2020 Election, the RINOs in the State Senate also confirmed this. They said that a "large number" of ballots were sent to the TCF Center without a chain of custody. These ballots came from drop boxes."
Sure. It's true. Votes were put in boxes, and workers picked them up and brought them to be counted. Okay?
Trump calls these people "RINOS," which stands for "Republicans in Name Only." They are the members of a state Senate panel that made a report that disproved Trump's claims about fraud in the state. Here is the part of their analysis that is important for these votes, with the phrase "large volume" highlighted.
Does that mean something bad took place? No, it says that changes should be made so that no one will think something bad is going on. It basically says that if you make some changes, people won't be able to say bad things about the election results.
It was on purpose for Trump to say that the ballots come from drop boxes. He is trying to show wrongdoing by using the fact that most of his supporters don't trust ballot drop boxes because of claims made in a recent movie that aren't backed up by evidence. Again, no actual evidence. This is just a hint.
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"Matt DePerno found that voting machines had been hacked and could be accessed from far away. In Antrim County, 7,048 votes for Joe Biden were changed.
Matt DePerno, who is now running for attorney general in the state as a Republican backed by Trump, didn't find anything like that. He said that he had found that voting machines could be accessed remotely. We can judge this claim by quoting from the state Senate report: "The Committee closely followed Mr. DePerno's efforts and can confidently conclude they are demonstrably false and based on misleading information and illogical conclusions." In fact, DePerno is being investigated for a crime because he tried to "prove" election fraud.
Then there's the thing about Antrim County. It's clear what happened: The people in charge of the elections added a candidate to the ballot, but they didn't change the scanning system to reflect that. So when a group of ballots were scanned and the votes were tabulated, or added to a table, some votes were put in the wrong columns. The mistake was quickly found, mostly because Antrim is always red and the first count showed Trump losing. Soon after, the correct totals were announced.
All done. That's what happened. It's been shown in six different ways. But because it's an example of a voting machine putting Trump at a disadvantage, even if only for a short time, it's become a key part of his claims. Even though there were no other problems anywhere else in the state.
See, though, how long all of that took? The point is that. Trump knows that his fans won't look into this. Or, he knows that even if you disprove 999 things, the 1000th thing will still be there to make them doubt. He also knows that putting up page after page of "election fraud" will have the same effect as putting up page after page of real evidence: Just the idea that he did something wrong is enough to set him off, just as the idea that covering windows was wrong is enough to set off an alarm.
For a good-faith actor, it would be embarrassing to keep saying the same nonsense that has already been disproven. It would be embarrassing if every part of your claim fell apart when it was looked into.
But Trump doesn't care at all. He doesn't care if all of this is wrong any more than he cares about calling it the "Russia hoax." He knows that all he has to do is show this document to his allies, and they will just skim it and agree. And he knows that angry people who work for The Washington Post will print it out and write on it, making it clear to people who are close to reality that his arguments don't make sense.
He doesn't care about this at all.