US Elections: Donald Trump’s Wavering Strategy to Reverse Results

The failed attempt by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to hold on to office after voters decided to impeach him has led the country to a dark and fictional place.

According to the falsehoods told on his behalf and accepted by him, the US elections were rigged by the intrigues of a dead Venezuelan strongman, by a computer system capable of changing Trump’s votes to Joe Biden’s across the country, and by something strange happened in Germany. . If that’s not enough, the communists are coming.

None of this happened. None of that is true.

But Trump and his legal team are making poisonous accusations in hopes that Republican state lawmakers will break the fundamental procedures and traditions of American democracy and nullify the will of the voters.

While this is happening, President-elect Joe Biden continues to be denied the briefings and facilities that are provided during presidential transitions. A growing number of Republican lawmakers say they should get that cooperation, but they have done nothing to make that happen.

From last week:

Tweets

TRIUMPH: “I WON THE ELECTION! … I won the election! … I WON THE ELECTION!” – tweets Sunday, Monday and Wednesday.

THE FACTS: No, Biden won the election.

Biden was victorious in key states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, surpassing the 270 electoral vote threshold to take the presidency with room to spare.

Biden also won Georgia after a hand count last week. That gives him 306 electoral votes, a total that Trump called “overwhelming” when states handed him that number in 2016 (Trump ended up with 304 electoral votes because two voters defected).

Trump’s allegations of massive voter fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and disproved by state election officials and a Department of Homeland Security arm of his own administration. Many of his campaign lawsuits have been dismissed.

A coalition of state election officials and the Trump administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have declared the election the safest in history. Trump responded by firing his agency director Chris Krebs.

Trump legal team press conference

SIDNEY POWELL, Trump’s attorney: “President Trump overwhelmingly won.”

THE FACTS: Two fabrications in a short comment.

Biden won. Needing 270 electoral votes to prevail, he has 306 and Trump has 232.

There was no landslide. Trump’s 306 electoral votes in 2016 were not a landslide victory, and Biden’s victory was not overwhelming either. But it was a comfortable and unassailable victory. And while it doesn’t matter in the result, Biden also leads the popular vote by nearly 6 million. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by about 3 million.

POWELL, in Dominion Voting Systems voting software used in many states: “One of the most distinctive features (of the software) is its ability to change votes. It can set up and run an algorithm that was probably run across the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and deliver them to President Biden.”

THE FACTS: That did not happen. “There is no evidence that any voting system has eliminated or lost votes, changed votes or been compromised in any way,” the federal agency that oversees electoral security said in the statement accompanied by state and election industry officials.

Against that, Powell offered the unfounded claim that he “probably” did.

POWELL: “The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes into other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chávez to ensure that he never lost one election after another. Constitutional. The referendum went the way he didn’t want it to go. “

POWELL: “Smartmatic has partnered with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chávez, which is openly hostile to the United States.”

THE FACTS: To be clear, Chávez is not in charge of the Venezuelan government because he is dead. He died in 2013.

Additionally, Dominion has no ties to Venezuela, according to Eddie Pérez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit nonpartisan election technology research and development organization. Dominion was founded in Canada. The company says it is a competitor of Smartmatic, not a partner.

Smartmatic is incorporated in Florida by Venezuelan founders. The company declares on its website that it is not associated with governments or political parties of any country.

POWELL: “What we are really dealing with here and discovering more every day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and probably China and the interference with our elections here in the United States.”

THE FACTS: No communist ruse has been discovered. The election security branch of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security said the elections were secure against foreign interference and all forms of mass manipulation.

POWELL, on reports that a US voting server is in Germany: “That’s true, it’s somehow related to this, but I don’t know if the good guys got it or the bad guys.”

THE FACTS: No, that’s not true. Powell refers to a fictional story that a server hosting evidence of voting irregularities in the November 3 US election was in Germany.

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas circulated this month a rumor that “the forces of the United States Army” seized a server from a Frankfurt office, although he acknowledged it was something he saw on Twitter and “I don’t know the truth”. The Army said the claim was false.

Still, Powell presented the false story as fact.

Republicans in Congress may be calculating that once Trump has exhausted his legal challenges to the election, he will face defeat to President-elect Joe Biden, but the president certainly hasn’t arrived yet.

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal fight continues.