The unfortunately necessary debunkery of Donald Trump and his GOP’s various embarrassingly desperate efforts to steal the election from Joe Biden continues on today’s BradCast, even as the U.S. Secretary of State manages to shock with an extraordinarily offense comment and Republicans are now turning on their own in Georgia to appease the soon-to-be-former President. [Audio link to show is posted below this summary.]
Among the too-many stories covered on today’s show…
- Even Fox ‘News’ is beginning to refuse to air the White House’s “voter fraud” BS. It’s not the first time Fox has refused to play along with GOP “voter fraud” lies since Election Day;
- Mitch McConnell supports Trump’s right to legal challenges in the election (and so do we, as we explain);
- Sec. of State Mike Pompeo makes a wildly unfunny, dangerous and un-American “joke” from the lectern at the Dept. of State about a “smooth transition to a second Trump Administration”;
- Corporate media continue to do a rather competent job of quickly debunking the endless and so-far evidence-free claims being made by duped Trump supporters and shameless Trump attorneys in court regarding “voter fraud”. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan deserves special credit for one of his reports taking on Trump supporters directly at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania, with facts to debunk their false conspiracies regarding “Trump ballots being burned in bags” (they weren’t), vote totals being inflated overnight for Joe Biden (they weren’t), and much more;
- Separately, CNN also debunks Trump’s latest Twitter tantrums regarding his evidence-free claims of fraud in Pennsylvania (no, GOP observers were NOT prevented from watching the ballot count), Nevada (no, 3,000 voters did NOT vote unlawfully from other states), Georgia (no, Trump did not “win on Election Night”) and Wisconsin (no, Trump’s campaign is not “looking very good” in the state they appear to have lost by more than 20,000 votes);
- Team Trump files yet another embarrassingly lame lawsuit in Arizona, falsely charging that 180 voters (out of 155,860) who cast Election Day ballots in Maricopa County (Phoenix) improperly had their ballots rejected as overvotes;
- Democrat Cal Cunningham concedes his U.S. Senate race in North Carolina to the very unpopular incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, in a race that Democrats should have won (and that his progressive primary opponent Erica Smith — featured as a guest on our show earlier this year — arguably might have);
- Short of an unlikely shocker in the still-uncalled Alaska U.S. Senate race, the last chance for Democrats to take back majority control of the U.S. Senate will now be in Georgia’s two U.S. Senate runoff elections on January 5th. They will have to win both of them. And now, both of the state’s Republican U.S. Senators, Kelly Loeffler (who is running against Rev. Raphael Warnock) and David Perdue (who is running against Jon Ossoff) are sucking up to their demented sore loser President by turning on GA’s Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, hilariously “citing no evidence” in calling for his resignation.
Longtime listeners of The BradCast will recognize Raffensperger as the corrupt dope who purchased the state’s new, wildly-expensive, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Rube Goldberg voting systems made by Dominion Voting and forced on every county in the state for first time use this year. That, instead of a cheaper, verifiable, hand-marked paper ballot system urged by cybersecurity and voting systems experts alike.
Republicans have been falsely accusing Dominion in recent days of being controlled by Democrats and responsible for “stealing” the election from Trump in Michigan and Georgia. While there is no evidence to support their claim, I have invited those Republicans worried about Dominion to join me in my call for getting the company out of Georgia’s critical U.S. Senate runoffs altogether by turning to all hand-marked paper ballots to be publicly hand-counted in both races. The statewide election will feature just two races, with only two candidates in each, so hand-counting them on Election Night would be very simple and completely transparent.
While my invitation to Republicans has become quite popular on Twitter, so far they have failed to join the effort to prevent the “Software from hell!” that folks like Eric Trump are pretending to be the cause for his father’s humiliating re-election loss. Sad!
While Raffensperger says he will not resign, a comment from former Republican Sec. of State turned illegitimate Governor Brian Kemp, along with an article from the far-right Federalist, suggests that state Republicans may try and move to ban mail-in voting altogether for the runoffs, despite the spiking deadly pandemic and the requisite reliance on unverifiable Dominion voting systems at the polling place, in hopes of returning to their years-long glory days of GOP voter suppression in the Peach State;
- Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report filled with (almost all) actually good news for a change, in the wake of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ apparent election victory last week…
CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…
[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman-PompeoUnderminesDemocracy-TrumpVoterFraudDebunkery-GOPTurnsOnGASoS_111020.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Brad, my friend, I know you are not a fan of all-mail voting, and you have clear sensible reasons why, such as following the ballots through a mail system not being eyes-on, but I have to say, the alternatives as practiced in the US really have been terrible, especially this election.
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, six U.S. states had or were implementing a state-wide mail-in ballot system. Oregon was the first to roll out in 2000, followed by Washington (2006), Utah (2012), Colorado (2014), California (2018,) and Hawaii (2020).
Of those states, how many of them are Trump and his Republican henchmen challenging? None of them!
I live in Washington. The voting was a breeze. As usual, we were all mailed ballots automatically. We could mail them back postage free or use one of the nearly 200 drop-boxes around the state. Most people were within 3 miles of one. All went very smoothly, in spite of the fact that we had a record number of votes cast.
The chaos now being caused in many states has not hit any of the mail-in states. This election has convinced me more than ever that this method works best for us all.
Brad,
I see that the Georgia Sec of State is calling for a hand recount of all 5 million ballots cast. Isnt that impossible because Georgia is using the new non-verifiable touch screen systems that you mention?
Susan @ 1:
Well, to be fair here, of the 6 states you mention, NONE of them are swingstates. 5 were definitely gonna blue, and the other (Utah) was almost certainly going to go red (and it did.) So what could even HE challenge in any of those states?
Of course, very happy to hear that it went smoothly! But that, in and of itself, is not a good reason to not make in-person voting a breeze as well! (At least after the pandemic, in any event.)
During a deadly pandemic, I am happy to agree with you! 🙂
Adam @ 2:
Today’s BradCast is made to order for you, sir! Enjoy!