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Those Complicit in Trump’s False Story about the Election Are Willingly Damaging This Country

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Trump is telling a story — a false story — about his loss. The story, by itself, is not enough to overturn his resounding loss, and because of that, a host of people are treating the story-telling as relatively harmless. That’s a mistake, not least because Trump may intend this story-telling to justify other activities, such as a crack-down on people who protest his actions. He may even intend to make this country ungovernable — and in that, he may well succeed. Because of that, every single person who is complicit in telling that story bears direct responsibility for what comes next, including violence and potentially an attempt to thwart the will of voters.

I’d like to look at two kinds of story-telling that are complicit with Trump’s efforts, using this WSJ story, by Rebecca Balhous and Rebecca Davis O’Brien, as an example (though there are a slew of other possible examples).

First, there are Trump’s advisors, many of whom are described as recognizing that Trump’s claims of voter fraud won’t reverse his overwhelming loss.

Trump advisers have grown more vocal in conversations with Mr. Trump in recent days that they don’t see a path to victory, even if his legal efforts meet some success, a White House official said, though some advisers have continued to tell the president he still has a shot. An official said Mr. Trump understands that the fight isn’t winnable but characterized his feelings as: “Let me have the fight.”

One potential strategy discussed by Mr. Trump’s legal team would be attempting to get court orders to delay vote certification in critical states, potentially positioning Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors who would swing the Electoral College in his favor, according to people familiar with the discussions.

It isn’t known how seriously the campaign has considered this idea, one of the people said.

Many of the advisers and lawyers said they doubt the effort would succeed and say it is aimed largely at appeasing Mr. Trump, who believes the election was stolen from him and expects his legal team to keep fighting.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and lawyers said there isn’t an overarching legal theory or coordination behind the campaign’s efforts. The legal battle likely will conclude with Mr. Trump claiming the election was rigged against him and that he fought the outcome, the White House official said.

These people are willing to tell a story — one claiming that Trump’s legal challenges are meant to be serious legal challenges and not theater designed solely for story-telling — just to “appease” Trump. These people are all admitting that they are willing to damage the country just to allow a narcissist to claim he didn’t lose because a majority of the country, even a majority of people in states that make up an Electoral College victory, rejected him, but instead to claim he lost because over half the country did something illegitimate. These people are participating in Trump’s efforts to rebrand the act of casting a vote against Donald Trump as cheating.

No one making those admissions should be given anonymity, because they are willingly doing damage to the country.

Worse still, these anonymous sources are described as not really knowing how far Trump intends to go with the story. If they don’t know how Trump intends to use this effort, then they cannot rule out the possibility that they are telling a story that Trump intends to lay the groundwork for some kind of violent or extralegal effort to refuse to hand over power. Presumably, given that these people recognize how elections work, none of these people would willingly participate in a coup. Except they may be doing just that, by helping Trump tell a story that delegitimizes Joe Biden’s resounding win.

If this fight is not winnable, as these sources acknowledge, then participating in it can only serve to harm the country.

But it’s not just these anonymous sources who are complicit in the damage Trump is doing to this country.

This story treats the outcome of the election as a both-sides issue, one that pits Democrats against Republicans. For example, it notes that “officials in each state” have said there were no problems with the election. But then it only quotes Democrats, and labels each one as a Democrat.

Officials in each state have defended their voting processes as fair and free of major problems. Democrats said they would fight any effort to stop certification of the vote.

[snip]

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said the Michigan lawsuits were aimed at preventing the state from certifying results in hopes that the Republican Legislature would send Congress electors for Mr. Trump. “We are prepared to combat that,” she said on a conference call Wednesday.

[snip]

A spokeswoman for the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, certifies the electors selected by the popular vote.

A spokeswoman for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said the office is confident it will certify election results on time. “Arizona’s courts have plenty of experience handling and expeditiously resolving election-related lawsuits within the very strict statutory deadlines,” said spokeswoman Sophia Solis. [my emphasis]

It is, frankly malpractice to treat these claims as a partisan issue, and even bigger negligence to not quote any of the numerous Republicans who have also said the votes conducted in their states were fair, such as Georgia’s Geoff Duncan, or other Republican experts saying the same, such as Ben Ginsberg or Karl Rove.

Truth is not a partisan issue, but Balhous and O’Brien are treating it as such.

This story also treats claims that have been debunked or that are meaningless as credible.

In Michigan, it has offered affidavits from Republican election challengers who say they were harassed, forcibly excluded from absentee ballot-counting facilities and witnessed tampering with scores of ballots.

[snip]

In Pennsylvania, the campaign’s lawsuit contends the state didn’t give observers enough access to ballot counters and gave voters in Democratic leaning counties more opportunities to correct deficiencies in their mail-in ballots.

It would take about ten minutes of reporting to explain how these claims misrepresent the legal guidelines surrounding official poll challengers or exploit Democrats’ far wider use of mail-in voting this year to suggest disparate treatment. There are multiple court transcripts now where Republican lawyers have admitted this.

And yet, instead of doing that reporting, these journalists treat these bogus claims as if there is some dispute about them. There is not. The facts show these claims are without merit, and including the claims without clearly noting that is irresponsible.

Finally, having spent thirty paragraphs treating these election claims as if they are serious, in spite of the overwhelming evidence they are not, the WSJ admits that they are instead intended to accomplish other objectives.

Republican leadership in Congress has supported Mr. Trump’s legal battle. Some advisers see the efforts as a way to keep the Trump base energized ahead of the runoff elections in Georgia in January that will determine control of the Senate.

The suits also offer Republicans a greater platform to draw attention to any potential voting irregularities. And they provide an opportunity for political payback by Mr. Trump, who has long complained that the special counsel investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia in the 2016 election was a way for his opponents to delegitimize his victory that year.

Responsible reporting would start with this admission. It would make the lead of the story that Republicans are lying about the viability of their challenge but are willing to do so, with all the damage that will do, to score payback because Trump was investigated for crimes he committed. But instead the WSJ buries it in the last lines, hiding their own complicity and that of Republicans they inexcusably grant anonymity where few will ever read it.

The story that Donald Trump is telling is doing tangible harm to our country. If you are complicit in telling that story — whether you are an anonymous enabler or a both-sides reporter — you also are doing tangible harm to this country.

Trump’s Blame the Governors Strategy and Rural Roulette

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The other day, I laid out how, even if Trump wants to open the country back up by Easter, at least fifteen governors may prevent him, including OH’s Republican governor Mike DeWine, who in the wake of Trump’s comments tweeted out defending his approach again. The WaPo did a similar piece this morning, confirming that the governors aren’t on board with Trump’s hopes.

That said, it’s clear that Trump plans to pressure governors, not just to do his bidding, but also to demand fealty before he heeds their pleas for help. Ultimately, it may be a bid to blame the upcoming crisis on the governors — disproportionately Democrats — struggling most directly with the crisis.

And that could work.

Though I doubt it, for a number of reasons. As US numbers continue to spike, it’s likely the governors who’ve taken more aggressive stances (with the possible but very notable exception of Andrew Cuomo, largely because of NYC’s density) will be able to show significantly better outcomes than those states that have adopted a hybrid approach, shutting down affected cities but not the entire state, to say nothing of those who were doing nothing (this Politico piece shows what each state has done or, in the case of OK and MS, not done at all).

Right now, almost all the identifiable clusters are in big cities, with both the international travel and density that would lead to early exposure. But some (not all — Detroit is an exception) of those cities actually have relatively low levels of the preexisting conditions that make the population more susceptible to the virus and more likely to have an extreme case if they get it. By contrast, much of America’s more rural areas have a higher instance of those pre-existing conditions. And those rural areas don’t have the hospital beds, much less ICU rooms, to treat seriously ill patients. This map, from an MIT project, shows where current outbreaks are and where particularly vulnerable populations are for the country as a whole.

That means in states where governors have not imposed state-wide stay at home orders, there’s a significant risk that clusters will arise in areas that are less prepared to deal with an outbreak. Effectively, the governors who’ve adopted such an approach are playing “rural roulette,” assuming that a focus on the cities will mitigate the biggest risks, even though the rural areas would be easily overwhelmed even with a smaller number of infections.

And that may have an important dynamic given the election. A number of the key swing states — MN, WI, MI, OH — have instituted full state stay-at-home orders. But many of the rest — PA, FL, NC, CO, GA, TX — have not. And in some of the states where that decision is riskiest — GA, FL, and AZ — there’s a Republican governor adopting those strategies in part to adhere to Trump’s views.

Take Georgia. It has had an outbreak in the more rural southwest part of the state, and municipalities are trying to force Governor Brian Kemp to impose a state-wide shutdown.

But the rest of the state has high incidences of some of the preconditions that make the population particularly susceptible to infection. In other words, while Atlanta has the medical resources (including CDC) to respond to the medical crisis, Georgia is already exhibiting an atypical pattern of rural spread in ways that might make Kemp’s refusal to do a state-wide order particularly costly. (As I was writing this, Kemp announced that schools will remain closed through April 24, which suggests he may be budging on a state-wide approach.)

Then there’s Florida.

Jim here.

As the New York Times notes, the municipalities of Miami and Miami Beach have stay home or shelter in place orders that went into effect this week. Also, Alachua, Leon, Orange and Pinellas Counties have stay home orders. Note that while Orange County holds most of the Orlando metro area, Pinellas is only the St. Petersburg portion of the Tampa Bay region. Tampa is in Hillsborough and the population stays fairly high going north into Pasco and south into Manatee and Sarasota Counties.

A very interesting aspect of the Alachua County stay home order, which went into effect here at 12:01 am Tuesday, is that, as noted in the Gainesville Sun, “Non-medical businesses may only allow one customer inside per 1,000 covered square feet, per an Alachua County emergency order.” Here is the line outside a grocery store Tuesday morning in the Sun’s photo accompanying the article:

As the Tampa Bay Times notes, despite multiple public health authorities pleading for a statewide shutdown, DeSantis has instead been listening almost exclusively to business interests, and their message to him has been exactly the one Fox News and Trump have been flogging:

The Florida Chamber of Commerce have spoken frequently with the governor and his staff, urging him not to take drastic measures that might shut down the state’s economy. The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association has been asking for ways to help their industries stay afloat.

Their message: don’t let the cure be worse than the disease.

But this is ignored:

Public health experts say that a three-week limit on public movement is required to stop the spread of the virus, and they point to a statistical model that shows that Florida may have only one week to act before hospitals become overwhelmed.

Instead, he hears a Republican telling him just how responsible he is to ignore the public health requests:

Sen. Tom Lee, R-Thonotosassa, said DeSantis was under “a tremendous amount of pressure,” but the idea he’s making decisions based on politics — and not public health — was “irresponsible.”

“He’s hearing from a lot of self-interested actors right now who are acting out of self-preservation,” Lee said. “With every executive order, there’s another industry being impacted. Those people are pretty aggressive and pretty vocal, and I think he’s done a pretty good job of ignoring all that.”

What could go wrong?

/Jim

In Florida, on top of the vacation traffic that DeSantis only belatedly shut down, it has significant numbers of seniors and its rural, more vulnerable communities do not have the beds to treat patients in if an outbreak happens (the gray circles here are senior facilities).

To make things worse, DeSantis is not sharing information about which senior facilities have had positive cases, which is likely to lead to clusters outside of locked down areas that lead to community infection. So on top of the rural/urban mix, DeSantis has the likelihood of a breakout at senior facilities.

It’s not just Republican governors who’ve adopted a hybrid strategy though: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf  locked down PA’s major counties without imposing stay at home in their more rural areas. PA is going to experience the community spread of the Eastern Seaboard; it’s a real question what happens as the virus spreads west from the Philadelphia metro area. Plus, it also has a concentration of senior facilities (the family member I’m most worried about now is stuck in one until April 1 fighting several other preexisting conditions).

In bmaz’s Arizona, something that has the possibility of being worse is happening: Republican Governor Doug Ducey is using his authority to prevent cities from imposing more stringent stay at home orders. Thus far, this order strives only to impose a state-wide standard for what amounts to essential businesses (something that has led to confusion even in states with full state-wide orders). Most of his businesses match those adopted by state-wide orders. His order specifically includes golf courses (but not their restaurant facilities) as essential businesses, which I this is reasonable, in AZ, in the name of exercise; bmaz says that the crowds on urban hiking trails, which are also exempted, are far worse. Ducey’s order could override school closures.

Or, the order as a whole could suggest he’s being pushed closer to where other states are, full stay at home orders.

Arizona faces a particular rural challenge, but one Ducey can’t manage: the Native American reservations, which already have cases and which have a real dearth of health resources. But they’re sovereign.

North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is another person who is having to be pressured to impose a more stringent state-wide stay at home order.

If states can access adequate testing, it’s still unproven whether state-wide or city-by-city orders will be most effective (though the testing is clearly not there yet).

What is clear, however, is that there will be at least as much political pressure on the states that have incomplete stay at home orders as those with statewide orders. And that just happens to include many of the states where November’s election will be decided.

Update: Trump has just sent a letter to governors suggesting the Feds are going to roll out new standards for identifying high and low risk counties, suggesting he wants to adopt the piecemeal shutdowns of the states discussed here. Such a regime will make orders like Doug Ducey and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves’ orders standardizing shut-downs at the state level dangerous in a way they aren’t now, because both cite Trump’s guidelines for protective measures.