2020 Election Campaign

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Former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 US election because of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and his dishonesty, a post-election autopsy has revealed. Politico obtained a 27-page document from Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio that showed the reasoning behind why voters in 10 key states voted the way they did in November’s 2020’s presidential election.

Mr Fabrizio’s report is based on analysis of exit polls from five states won by Mr Trump - Florida, Ohio, Texas, North Carolina and Iowa - and five lost by him - Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The autopsy was completed in December 2020 and was distributed to some of Mr Trump’s top advisers just before he left office on 20 January. It is unclear whether the former president has seen it..

Trump lost election because of his dishonesty and mishandling of pandemic, his pollster’s autopsy claims | The Independent

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Although the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach last month it is the real time response of Donald Trump to the rioters that yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite this historic insurrection. Trump failed promptly to call off his followers or summon timely assistance to beleaguered Capitol police, despite pleas from fellow Republicans caught in the mayhem. And his own final words that day connect his inflammatory claims about a “stolen election” to the storming of the Capitol by his followers.

As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to eyewitnesses, Trump did not demand that the rioters immediately leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who fearing for their lives, desperately tried calling him with no response. “We are imploring the president to help, to stand up, to help defend the United States Capitol and the United States Congress, which was under attack,” said Republican Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, no coward, but a former professional football player. “We are begging, essentially, and he was nowhere to be found.”

We know that Trump did call newly elected Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama because he mistakenly reached him on the phone of Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. He called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer help, but to plot strategy for objecting to the electoral vote count. When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce the riot and call upon his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet that attacked his vice president and doubled down on grievances about a stolen election, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.”

The most incriminating “smoking gun” tweet came just after 6pm that day and was later deleted by social media. Trump wrote, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever!”

In his own words Trump admitted that violent protest was a likely consequence of grievances over a supposedly stolen election that thwarted the will of patriotic Americans. But it was Trump himself who ginned up these grievances with a two-month drumbeat of lies about the election that culminated in the fiery rhetoric of his January 6 rally. 

Here is the smoking gun evidence to back impeachment of Donald Trump | TheHill

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As the Senate prepares to vote on Donald Trump’s impeachment trial today, fresh evidence has emerged of the former president’s support for the insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol last month. During a desperate phone call while rioters were hunting down members of Congress, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy attempted to convince Mr Trump to call them off, CNN reported. GOP lawmakers briefed on the call said Mr Trump refused to do so and told Mr McCarthy: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” The revelations come on a day in which a large enough number of Senate Republicans are expected to ignore the overwhelming evidence of Mr Trump’s role in the insurrection and successfully vote to acquit him instead.

Trump impeachment - live: Ex-president ‘privately sided with mob’, GOP lawmakers say as Senate prepares vote | The Independent

In a further warning sign for Trump’s legal team, Cassidy—who has emerged an 11th-hour swing vote—raised a subsequent question that homed in on a disclosure this week from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who says he told Trump that Pence had been removed from the Senate chamber. “Senator Tuberville reports that he spoke to President Trump at 2:15 p.m. He told the president that the vice president has just been evacuated. I presumed it was understood at the time that rioters had entered the Capitol and threatened the safety of senators and the vice president,” Cassidy wrote in his question.  Cassidy, in his question, then noted that Trump subsequently tweeted that Pence “lacked courage,” and hadn’t at that point called for law enforcement back up. “The tweet and lack of response suggests President Trump did not care that Vice President Pence was endangered or that law enforcement was overwhelmed,” Cassidy continued in his question.

Questions build over Trump's knowledge of Capitol attack | TheHill

• Trump was aware of the storming of the Capitol and the fact that Pence had to be evacuated but refused to intervene, enjoying the 'show' instead..
  

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Nevada is among the battleground states where supporters of President Donald Trump have concocted a narrative that President-elect Joe Biden's victory was due to widespread fraud. In the hope of making their case, Trump supporters asked Rex Briggs — a Nevada resident who specializes in data analysis — to investigate that state's election returns. But when Briggs conducted an investigation as they requested, their claims fell apart. He ended up debunking their arguments, rather than finding proof for them.

Trump allies wanted a data expert to find fraud in Nevada's election — but he debunked their claims instead - Alternet.org

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Another Twitter user also recalled the Obama administration's involvement in the peaceful transfer of power for Trump's administration saying, "The outgoing @BarackObama and @JoeBiden administration even instructed and trained the @realDonaldTrump administration how to handle a pandemic...Trump sacked all his advisors who attended the workshop."

Kayleigh McEnany gets entangled in another Trump lie -- and this viral video just debunked it - Alternet.org

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His feedback loop, according to several new and forthcoming studies, has become a leading threat to the integrity of political debate in the United States, with an impact that to date appears far more damaging than the efforts of Russian operatives or other foreign adversaries. A study released Thursday by the Election Integrity Partnership, a consortium of misinformation researchers, found that just 20 conservative, pro-Trump Twitter accounts — including the president’s own @realDonaldTrump — were the original source of one-fifth of retweets pushing misleading narratives about voting..

Trump’s viral megaphone fueled by Twitter army in lead-up to election - The Washington Post

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Nevertheless, having declined to recall the Senate to hear the impeachment case while Trump was still in office, McConnell voted not to convict him on the grounds that Trump was now out of office.

Trump impeachment: divided reaction in US after former president acquitted – live updates | US news | The Guardian

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Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, known for expansive movies on quintessential American subjects like "Jazz" and "Baseball," said in a new interview that former President Donald Trump and his allies have damaged the country by promoting the "big lie" of widespread election fraud — and worse yet, they've made money off of it. Burns said the media environment allows people to make significant amounts of money off of false public comments, and he contrasted such misinformation with his accurate and complex stories about major events and themes of American history.

"There are a lot of people out there making lots of money on [lies], and it's being exploited — and the big lie is part of the combination of that," says Burns, whose new three-part film "Hemingway" premieres on April 5. "If you look at the big lie, the ex-president's team raised something like $250 million between the election and the inauguration to just support something that is just factually not true," he adds.

He cited the defense made by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in a court filing last week that "no reasonable person" could believe her false statements about the supposed role of Dominion Voting Systems in election fraud. Dominion is suing Powell, ex-Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Fox News for defamation over assertions that the voting machine company rigged the election for President Joe Biden. 

Ken Burns: People are making lots of money off ‘the big lie’ of US election fraud

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According to the Press-Enterprise, the private "auditors" behind the Arizona GOP's controversial recount of ballots in Maricopa County have been forced to admit their claim about sensitive elections server data was a lie after being publicly blasted by the Republican county recorder. "Auditors hired by the Arizona state Senate backtracked Tuesday from claims that a key database had been deleted from Maricopa County's elections servers — admitting in a hearing held by the Senate Republicans overseeing the audit that the data is intact and they'd been looking the wrong way," reported Eric Bradner. "The blunder was the latest embarrassment for state Senate President Karen Fann and the Republicans who sought the audit, which is being overseen by a company called Cyber Ninjas."

Arizona GOP election auditors suffer embarrassing setback after GOP official blows up their latest false claim - Alternet.org

• How can this even be a surprise??
  

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Since hours after Trump supporters surged up the steps of the Capitol; pushed, punched, beat, and bear sprayed their way past police; smashed open windows; shattered doors; and streamed into the building to a chorus of "Hang Mike Pence," there's been one consistent story told about the events of January 6. That story is that it was a "intelligence failure." Again and again, police and military officials have testified that they either didn't get the word that Trump supporters were coming to town with the intent of committing violence, or that word failed to get to the right people. The memo didn't get out of the basement. Or if it did, the right people never saw it. Or if they saw it, it didn't say anything new. Or …

Except none of that seems to be the case. As NPR reported on Tuesday, a report from the former heard of the New York Police Department makes it absolutely clear that … everyone knew. Everyone knew that the Trump campaign was deeply entangled with white supremacist militias. Everyone knew that they were coming to Washington D.C. with the intention of committing violence. Well before January 6, the FBI, and agencies up and down the chain at Homeland Security had compiled stacks of evidence showing that Trump's event was going to bring violent people with violent intent. It's just that, having collected this information, all those agencies refused to act on it. "Intelligence collection did not fail," says the report. The failure was that "senior government officials" failed to "issue warnings based on that intelligence."

Intelligence agencies gathered the information predicting violence on Jan. 6 — then DHS sat on it - Alternet.org

• Now why would they just sit on information like that..