It no longer matters, and in fact it’s likely that it never mattered at all, what the facts around the 2020 presidential election are. No matter how many of ex-President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories are shot down by election officials, Democrats, Republicans, vote tabulating machine companies, and postal service employees, he will never admit that he lost the election. Fact-checkers, however, will always have a job.
The Arizona vote audit has achieved its goal of producing false charges of election fraud, which then become part of a Trump speech – none of it is true. https://t.co/sZ24zf3usb
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) July 25, 2021
On Saturday, Trump made a stop for a rally – for what reason, no one knows, as he certainly hasn’t announced a 2024 run officially at this point – in Arizona. Since Arizona was a red state for Trump in 2016 but flipped blue in 2020, the ex-president insists it’s one of the places where election fraud surely took place. Ballots in states where Trump won are totally legitimate, and ballots in states where Trump lost are still accurate in any seat where a Republican won. It was the same old trope, and one has to wonder when the die-hard Trump fans will grow bored with it.
According to the Associated Press:
‘Over nearly two hours, Trump revisited his touchstones of grievance, leveling allegations of fraud that election officials and judges have systematically refuted or brushed aside. It was Trump’s most explicit effort to insert himself into the widely discredited Arizona audit as he tries to increase the pressure on other states to embark on similar efforts.’
"Trump's list of supposed irregularities that he spouted in a speech, which was often incoherent, made very little sense. … But the impact on American democracy… is deeply corrosive."
The goal is not to make sense. The goal is to undo democracy.https://t.co/Amy2xOOb9R
— Jocelyn Benson (@JocelynBenson) July 25, 2021
Trump revisited familiar themes, mentioning “destroyed” and “deleted” ballots and a refusal by election officials (those that are Republican, according to Trump, are just RINOs determined to cheat him out of his win) to turn over evidence as proof of his accusations.
‘The county has also refused to provide the authority for the information. We want the information needed to access vote tabulation devices. To top it all off, they’ve refused to hand over the all-important chain of custody documentation for Maricopa County ballots. They don’t want to give it. Why don’t they want to give it? Why?’
None of this is true. Election officials have shown repeatedly that nothing has been deleted, and nothing has been withheld.
During a rambling two-hour speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday night, Trump bizarrely mused about how basketball player LeBron James could get sex reassignment surgery to compete in women's sports.https://t.co/3fBX8qMYSE
via @GoogleNews
— Okami Wolfen (@okamalita) July 25, 2021
Just as he once insisted that there were “servers” kept from the FBI and hidden in Ukraine for years to protect his first political rival, Hillary Clinton, now Trump is throwing around another word he’s learned about internet equipment: routers. He insists that Maricopa County is refusing to turn over routers with secret information about how the election was stolen from him.
‘The county has, for whatever reason, also refused to produce the network routers. We want the routers, Sonny, Wendy, we got to get those routers, please. The routers. Come on, Kelly, we can get those routers. Those routers. You know what? We’re so beyond the routers, there’s so many fraudulent votes without the routers. But if you got those routers, what that will show, and they don’t want to give up the routers. They don’t want to give them. They are fighting like hell. Why are these commissioners fighting not to give the routers? How simple could it be? That will tell the truth. What are they trying to hide?’
The problem with this claim is that there are no routers to turn over. According to the Maricopa County Election Department’s “Just the Facts” website, which became necessary after Trump continued to spread the Big Lie, the county “uses an air-gapped system in its tabulation room, meaning the ballot counting equipment is never connected to the internet and is completely separated from the Maricopa County network. There are no routers connected to the tabulation system and there never have been.”
Trump gave a speech at a rally in Arizona this week, of which these words are a partial transcript.
And I stare at this, and am obliged to remember the relentless hater clownshow that was the four years of his Presidency & it is a miracle that anyone survived at all, holy god. pic.twitter.com/RPa7WIrUB9
— Van Badham (@vanbadham) July 25, 2021
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
