Trump's months-long planning to steal the election: "Episode 1: A premeditated lie lit the fire"

[highplainsdem]

Tweet from NY Magazine's Jonathan Chait about the Axios article and what he finds "especially incriminating":

Link to tweet

Link to the Axios article:

-snip-

As Trump prepared for Election Day, he was focused on the so-called red mirage. This was the idea that early vote counts would look better for Republicans than the final tallies because Democrats feared COVID-19 more and would disproportionately cast absentee votes that would take longer to count. Trump intended to exploit this — to weaponize it for his vast base of followers.

His preparations were deliberate, strategic and deeply cynical. Trump wanted Americans to believe a falsehood that there were two elections — a legitimate election composed of in-person voting, and a separate, fraudulent election involving bogus mail-in ballots for Democrats.

-snip-

Trump had spent a bellicose summer and early autumn railing against mail-in ballots. After a toxic Sept. 29 election debate with Biden, Trump's internal poll numbers nose-dived. He started choreographing election night in earnest during the second week of October, as he recovered from COVID-19.

His former chief of staff Reince Priebus told a friend he was stunned when Trump called him around that time and acted out his script, including walking up to a podium and prematurely declaring victory on election night if it looked like he was ahead.

-snip-

[malaise]

1. Get thee to the greatest page

RFN.

[SoonerPride]

2. He is a sociopath and the greatest threat to our democracy

And he isn’t done yet I’m afraid.

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. Priebus should get both a senate and DOJ subpoena, his testimony establishes Trump's intent. Nt

[dalton99a]

4. His whole presidency is based on lies and treason

[frazzled]

5. Also, very stupid

Self-declaring victory doesn't make it so. That he thought this could work as a means to retain office, you have to laugh: it's like something a 7th-grader would dream up.

On the other hand, it did turn out to be extremely dangerous: because his minions believed the laughable lies. It turned into an excuse to ransack the very seat of our government and led to 5 deaths as well as damage to the halls of Congress.

[GusBob]

6. All his lies paid off previously

Or he got away with them

But this time he set them up

In September he refused to commit to a peaceful transition, actually said there wouldn't be a transition and talked about throwing out ballots in a news conference

Like the Capital riot, this fire was predictable

Great article though thanks for posting. The funniest parts are about getting Fox to change the results in Arizona.

What gets me though is his inner circle, how they believe his lies