"During the Trump Administration, officials were protected from congressional subpoenas by Trump’s claims of executive privilege. Those claims no longer apply since Donald Trump is no longer president."
"The subpoenas are a hint of things to come. There might eventually be public testimony from the people who have been named so far and we can also expect more subpoenas for other Trump Administration officials in the near future. Donald Trump himself might even be subpoenaed before the show is over."
There's been arguments that current Presidents should respect past Presidents' wishes when it came to respecting the confidentiality of their papers. The argument roughly runs that some level of confidentiality is needed to engage in effective decision-making where ALL options (popular and not) can be heard and debated to arrive at a popular policy decision. I was sympathetic to that view for most of my life, but with the crap Trump pulled, I think it's time Biden throws that tradition to the curb moving forward and assists the House in compelling testimony for the Jan. 6 insurrection in the form of providing or declassifying anything they ask for.
The old understanding was helpful when we had reasonable people occupying the White House. Given that we've broken with THAT tradition, and it looks like the electorate is such that it's willing to tolerate yahoos in the Oval Office, not only do we need this deference to past administrations' wishes to go away to account for the first violent transition of power in our nation's history, but to also put current and future Presidents on notice that just because they can use claims of executive privilege to cover for stupid, immoral, and self-serving crap during their current term, but that opacity won't extend past their term, so they need to be prepared for the sunlight to shine onto their actions and choices eventually. In addition to that, I'd also empower the National Archives and Records Administration to file suit against any administration official - including the President - for the destruction of documents and other records that would prevent a review of the current administration's actions in subsequent administrations, with some actual penalties for violations and hefty rewards for whistleblowers identifying non-compliance.
We have to decide if we really want to be a nation of presidents accountable to the people or 4-year kings only accountable to their reelection prospects. Without more transparency into these processes and actions, our current tendency to be able to pick and believe what's convenient to our respective tribes is only going to make things worse.
"The old understanding was helpful when we had reasonable people occupying the White House."
So the despicable, demented old moron, Joe Biden, is reasonable and can be counted on to fairly assist the House in their latest attempt to smear Mr. Trump. I know the response on this site will be that Trump deserves any smears that come his way. I do not claim the man is perfect but we would have a better government if he were in charge instead of Joe Biden.
Steve scolded me a few weeks ago when I questioned the impartiality of The Racket. He said the primary goal was factual analysis. He further said that if money were the object, they could just make it a never-Trump site and get more subscribers. Well, there may be three Trump tolerant individuals, including me, who read and comment here. One has been threatened with a ban. I've seen three others who are objective most of the time.
Also to be clear, I'm no longer counting any of our current or future Presidents to be "reasonable" men, and that includes Joe Biden.
And as for a "better" gov't, that dog doesn't hunt given how many of Trump appointees were caught with their hands in the public cookie jar, the reign of "Acting" appointees by the end of it all, and the gross abuse of executive privilege during his tenure. We've seen what kind of gov't Trump ends up heading, and it's just as sketchy as the makeup of his companies. No thank you.
Hands in the cookie jar? All I remember in policy making roles were travel excesses (Tom Price), dining room table (Ben Carson, a good man), and something about rent (Zinke). All standard fake scandal rumors pushed by both parties depending on who is in charge. Acting appointees were the only choice Trump had in many cases since he could personally work only 19 hours per day. Compare that to the three or four hours Biden is available for prep and medications and wiping his butt.
If you insist, I'll be happy to catalog the incidents where Trump and his appointees attached themselves to the public teat to enrich themselves privately. From Trump's many jaunts to Mar-a-Lago, where taxpayer money went directly into the Trump Organization's coffers, shenanigans around Secret Service protection, the Pompeos using State Dept. employees as personal servants, Tom Price's litany of lapses, the Trump Hotel in Washington being used by foreign and domestic actors to curry favor, Mnuchin's abuse of military jets for his travel, Carson's nepotism and self-dealing with his family, and so forth.
Let's not pretend - as fellow taxpayers - that these are appropriate uses of the funds that we send to Washington each and every year (and quarterly for me, as a small business owner). There was nothing "fake" about the Trump Administration's abuses and squandering of public trust. (And while I think that Biden has been better on this front, he hasn't been as good as he could be with Hunter running around trying to monetize his familial relations. That crap needs to stop yesterday.)
As for the acting Cabinet members, the revolving door of appointments in the administration was hardly a function of Trump's fictional 19 hour a day schedule, and more a function of folks being washed out through ethical scandals - see above - and well-meaning people who thought that they could help steer the ship in a reasonable direction, and found that their well-meaningfulness paled to the chaotic way Trump functions as a manager. Many of them were not hired for the experience or expertise that they brought to the job, but instead to serve as confirmatory mouthpieces as Trump crafted policy via Twitter. Many of them made the reasonable call to bail out as President Dunning-Kruger[1] made their jobs impossible, and many were pushed out when ordered to act in manners that went contrary to the expertise and experience that they were nominally hired for in the first place.
Let's not pretend that's any reasonable way to run an institution as large and as influential as the United States government.
And before I close this comment, let me be 100% clear that my criticisms of how Trump ran the gov't and the people he chose to accompany him are in NO way intended to be a personal criticism of you. You were not part of the Administration (as far as I know) and you were not the one engaged in the ethical lapses and crappy management that plagued Trump's time in office. I just want to state that outright, because I'm detecting a bit of defensiveness in your comment above about the impartiality of The Racket and its tolerance of Never-Trumpers like me.
In my own circle or friends and family, there's something about Trump (that he cultivates and encourages) that convinces his supporters that a criticism of him AUTOMATICALLY is a criticism of them personally. I can't stop people from interpreting things however they choose, but I want to be clear that I'm criticizing him and his cronies, not you or any of the other folks who still think he would have been a better choice than Biden in the last election. (I may think you're mistaken, but it's in the same way you think my choice of Biden is mistaken in a manner we can both nod at and continue on as reasonable human beings.)
I enjoy our exchanges here (as much or more so than with the folks who agree with me), and I wanted to be 100% clear here that I think that The Racket would end up a worse publication and community if folks like you weren't here to hold our feet to the fire in the same way I'm trying to do here. I already have the "always Never-Trump newsrag" spot covered on my Internet Bingo Card with The Bulwark (and to a lesser extent, The Dispatch), and I keep coming back here not because of the people I agree with most of the time, but for the folks like yourself with whom I disagree on some big things (such as Trump's management of the gov't) who do a good job keeping me honest. I don't know to what extent this attitude is shared by our hosts and the motley crew who comes here to comment day after day, but I'm pretty sure that it's not just me.
To get the easy stuff out of the way first. You will have to find someone who gives a rat's rear about Trump's temporary appointments. I don't care. He could have simply hired advisors to write policy statements and orders for him and then sign them in his free time.
On the "cookie jar" stuff. If I thought the indiscretions were done with criminal intent, I would favor banning the miscreants, and I believe that was done in some cases. Having worked with a number of Fortune 500 execs (and wishing I had the right stuff to be one of them), I believe they get used to being kowtowed to and getting perks that others don't. They are tone deaf to things that are weaponized by political enemies and that upset the commoners. I never held an executive position but even in a mid-level management position, I could expect people I recommended to have a better chance of getting hired or not getting cut in the next downsizing.
Finally, what I mean by "better government" is outcomes - not all the messy stuff in the middle. I am results oriented and consider Joe Biden's first eight month's to be an unmitigated disaster with no redeeming qualities. And I do really try to find something believable in arguments to the contrary. Nothing has popped up so far.
I think where our core disagreement probably lies in two questions: Was Trump as competent as he liked to tell everyone? And was Trump as generous with his time and resources as some folks like to agree?
The disagreement on his competence is probably what fuels our disagreement on the better government and appointments issue. If you honestly believe that Trump is the most competent member of the executive branch on everything that the executive branch covers (which is A LOT these day, given how Congress shirks its job), then having a Senate-confirmed Cabinet is more ritual than value in the governing process. If Trump knows better than his underlings and acts on his own knowledge and ignores the mistaken underlings, then it doesn't matter who's there providing the window-dressing for everyone else. Similarly, if the structures that we've enacted around hemming in lesser men (such as the Administrative Procedure Act) are impediments to Trump taking the optimal actions for the American people, then hewing to the fine points of our system of government (evolved over more than two centuries) becomes more standing on ceremony than actually working for the betterment of the American people.
Does that sound like a fair encapsulation? If so, then I can see where you're coming from. And hopefully, you can see that if someone like me DOESN'T have that faith in a President (substitute Biden for Trump in your mental picture), why someone skipping over the guardrails might be a big issue (as Biden's done plenty of times over the past couple of months).
As for the generosity vs. self-enrichment question, it's similar in that the outcomes one arrives at diverge GREATLY whether you think people are accidentally blundering into the scandals or doing their best to extract as much personal value before getting caught. (Note that the outcome is the same, if you're outcome-oriented.) Trump liked to claim that he could be making more money outside the Oval Office than he did occupying it. He donated his annual salary to a number of worthwhile causes. If you believe that Trump is acting in a giving spirit, then the "cookie jar" stuff becomes easier to "mulligan". Similarly, if you're not convinced that Trump would have been as successful outside the Oval Office and that his fluke election to the Presidency was the best thing to happen to the businesses he declined to divest (breaking tradition), then it's hard to look at his tenure as anything more than the Trump Organization attaching itself as a parasite on the US gov't and sucking out as much as it can, given that its real-estate fortunes were dwindling and it was declining as an actual business that created and sold value to folks on the market. As a fellow who believes that President of the United States is the *last job* that anyone should get to hold, my opinion of Trump was cast in the days before he ascended to the Oval Office and declined to jettison the Trump Organization as a potential conflict of interest.
Given our two sets of differing perspectives and opinions, I'm skeptical that any amount of arguing or persuasion is going to budge either of us from our respective stances, but I'm okay with that (and have reached a similar detente with others in my life). Thanks for providing the bits I needed to decompose the disagreement into (what I hope are) its elementary components. I still do have some questions for you about the appropriateness of the Eastman memo, but don't have time this weekend to get into it further, and I suspect that this past week won't end up being the last time it's a topic of discussion.
What I'm saying is that post-January 6th, especially with the release of the Eastman memo, that there's no meaningful check on a determined President who wants to subvert our Constitutional processes, and mess around with the transfer of power. Consequently, since we can no longer count on Presidents to vacate the White House when they lose an election, their actions must be more transparent, so there's at least the threat of their malfeasance remaining hidden after they leave office. Trump's administration should be an open book now, Biden's should become an open book after he leaves office, and so forth for any future President. They lost the privilege to exercise any sort of post-office privacy or discretion with respect to their papers and actions after January 6th.
Yeah, I know, but you mostly try to have a basis for your opinions. It's a lot of hard work just to have your never-Trump aroused by the slightest provocations that come dozens of times daily because of you reading habits.
Sep 24, 2021Liked by Chris J. Karr, David Thornton
Arizona was for many years a solid red state. It always voted to the right of the national average by a substantial margin. It wasn't at all a competitive state for Democrats until Donald Trump came into the picture. It was still a very light red state as of 2020, as even as Biden won by 0.3 percent, AZ still was 4.15 percent more Republican than the average. But key to Biden's win was him winning Maricopa County, as it has more than three-fifths of the state's population. If you lose Maricopa, then you are almost certain to lose statewide. In Biden's case, he was the first Dem Presidential candidate to win Maricopa since Harry Truman in 1948. By peddling electoral fibs, these Arizona Republicans seem like they want to turn AZ into a blue state through their own efforts. Outside of the MAGA base, most other voters really don't like #StoptheSteal. What kept Maricopa County red in the past, was the then heavily GOP suburbs of Phoenix. They've rapidly turned purple in the Trump era, and the Republicans in AZ risk turning these suburbs blue, and put the state out of reach for them.
Senator Mark Kelly is up for election in 2022 for a full Senate term in his own right(The 2020 election was only to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. John McCain's term). Biden is unpopular and in a swing state with a light red lean, this would normally be a ripe opportunity for the GOP to pickup the seat. The Senate is going to be much harder for the Republicans to win in 2022 than the House. In order to do so, they need to run the tables in all the competitive races. With the Arizona GOP still stuck on #StoptheSteal mode, they could very well help re-elect Mark Kelly, and potentially cost the GOP in winning back the Senate majority. In other states, pushing electoral trutherisms could hurt GOP candidates in competitive races.
Obviously we are a long ways away from Nov. 2022. But it is possible that the Democrats may manage to retain the House and Senate and even potentially gain seats even if Biden remains unpopular, should Republicans keep trying to relitigate the 2020 election like what is going on in Arizona. Play stupid, win stupid prizes.
Sep 24, 2021Liked by Chris J. Karr, David Thornton
Just to note: the cost of the audit also includes the now-compromised voting machines from Maricopa County that now need to be replaced, which is ~$3mil.
Now you're joining the conspiracy theory crowd. The voting machines can be shown to be compromised or not by performance testing. If they are not connected to an external network, any flaws can be corrected.
I'm not allowed to read the link, just the headline. I realize the county has decided to replace the machines but that's their call in cahoots with the Secretary of State.
Thank God we finally got the proof, there was an effort to "steal the election." The fix was in, or at least it was attempted. I would never have thought i would be saying trump was kind of right. After all these months those stealthy ninja's have uncovered what trump was bemoaning; they did try to steal it, the only part they got wrong was it was on trump's behalf, not the other way around. The audit proves it. Kudos to Karen Fann for staying on top of this and finally proving once and for all it was crooked.
"During the Trump Administration, officials were protected from congressional subpoenas by Trump’s claims of executive privilege. Those claims no longer apply since Donald Trump is no longer president."
"The subpoenas are a hint of things to come. There might eventually be public testimony from the people who have been named so far and we can also expect more subpoenas for other Trump Administration officials in the near future. Donald Trump himself might even be subpoenaed before the show is over."
There's been arguments that current Presidents should respect past Presidents' wishes when it came to respecting the confidentiality of their papers. The argument roughly runs that some level of confidentiality is needed to engage in effective decision-making where ALL options (popular and not) can be heard and debated to arrive at a popular policy decision. I was sympathetic to that view for most of my life, but with the crap Trump pulled, I think it's time Biden throws that tradition to the curb moving forward and assists the House in compelling testimony for the Jan. 6 insurrection in the form of providing or declassifying anything they ask for.
The old understanding was helpful when we had reasonable people occupying the White House. Given that we've broken with THAT tradition, and it looks like the electorate is such that it's willing to tolerate yahoos in the Oval Office, not only do we need this deference to past administrations' wishes to go away to account for the first violent transition of power in our nation's history, but to also put current and future Presidents on notice that just because they can use claims of executive privilege to cover for stupid, immoral, and self-serving crap during their current term, but that opacity won't extend past their term, so they need to be prepared for the sunlight to shine onto their actions and choices eventually. In addition to that, I'd also empower the National Archives and Records Administration to file suit against any administration official - including the President - for the destruction of documents and other records that would prevent a review of the current administration's actions in subsequent administrations, with some actual penalties for violations and hefty rewards for whistleblowers identifying non-compliance.
We have to decide if we really want to be a nation of presidents accountable to the people or 4-year kings only accountable to their reelection prospects. Without more transparency into these processes and actions, our current tendency to be able to pick and believe what's convenient to our respective tribes is only going to make things worse.
"The old understanding was helpful when we had reasonable people occupying the White House."
So the despicable, demented old moron, Joe Biden, is reasonable and can be counted on to fairly assist the House in their latest attempt to smear Mr. Trump. I know the response on this site will be that Trump deserves any smears that come his way. I do not claim the man is perfect but we would have a better government if he were in charge instead of Joe Biden.
Steve scolded me a few weeks ago when I questioned the impartiality of The Racket. He said the primary goal was factual analysis. He further said that if money were the object, they could just make it a never-Trump site and get more subscribers. Well, there may be three Trump tolerant individuals, including me, who read and comment here. One has been threatened with a ban. I've seen three others who are objective most of the time.
Also to be clear, I'm no longer counting any of our current or future Presidents to be "reasonable" men, and that includes Joe Biden.
And as for a "better" gov't, that dog doesn't hunt given how many of Trump appointees were caught with their hands in the public cookie jar, the reign of "Acting" appointees by the end of it all, and the gross abuse of executive privilege during his tenure. We've seen what kind of gov't Trump ends up heading, and it's just as sketchy as the makeup of his companies. No thank you.
Hands in the cookie jar? All I remember in policy making roles were travel excesses (Tom Price), dining room table (Ben Carson, a good man), and something about rent (Zinke). All standard fake scandal rumors pushed by both parties depending on who is in charge. Acting appointees were the only choice Trump had in many cases since he could personally work only 19 hours per day. Compare that to the three or four hours Biden is available for prep and medications and wiping his butt.
If you insist, I'll be happy to catalog the incidents where Trump and his appointees attached themselves to the public teat to enrich themselves privately. From Trump's many jaunts to Mar-a-Lago, where taxpayer money went directly into the Trump Organization's coffers, shenanigans around Secret Service protection, the Pompeos using State Dept. employees as personal servants, Tom Price's litany of lapses, the Trump Hotel in Washington being used by foreign and domestic actors to curry favor, Mnuchin's abuse of military jets for his travel, Carson's nepotism and self-dealing with his family, and so forth.
Let's not pretend - as fellow taxpayers - that these are appropriate uses of the funds that we send to Washington each and every year (and quarterly for me, as a small business owner). There was nothing "fake" about the Trump Administration's abuses and squandering of public trust. (And while I think that Biden has been better on this front, he hasn't been as good as he could be with Hunter running around trying to monetize his familial relations. That crap needs to stop yesterday.)
As for the acting Cabinet members, the revolving door of appointments in the administration was hardly a function of Trump's fictional 19 hour a day schedule, and more a function of folks being washed out through ethical scandals - see above - and well-meaning people who thought that they could help steer the ship in a reasonable direction, and found that their well-meaningfulness paled to the chaotic way Trump functions as a manager. Many of them were not hired for the experience or expertise that they brought to the job, but instead to serve as confirmatory mouthpieces as Trump crafted policy via Twitter. Many of them made the reasonable call to bail out as President Dunning-Kruger[1] made their jobs impossible, and many were pushed out when ordered to act in manners that went contrary to the expertise and experience that they were nominally hired for in the first place.
Let's not pretend that's any reasonable way to run an institution as large and as influential as the United States government.
And before I close this comment, let me be 100% clear that my criticisms of how Trump ran the gov't and the people he chose to accompany him are in NO way intended to be a personal criticism of you. You were not part of the Administration (as far as I know) and you were not the one engaged in the ethical lapses and crappy management that plagued Trump's time in office. I just want to state that outright, because I'm detecting a bit of defensiveness in your comment above about the impartiality of The Racket and its tolerance of Never-Trumpers like me.
In my own circle or friends and family, there's something about Trump (that he cultivates and encourages) that convinces his supporters that a criticism of him AUTOMATICALLY is a criticism of them personally. I can't stop people from interpreting things however they choose, but I want to be clear that I'm criticizing him and his cronies, not you or any of the other folks who still think he would have been a better choice than Biden in the last election. (I may think you're mistaken, but it's in the same way you think my choice of Biden is mistaken in a manner we can both nod at and continue on as reasonable human beings.)
I enjoy our exchanges here (as much or more so than with the folks who agree with me), and I wanted to be 100% clear here that I think that The Racket would end up a worse publication and community if folks like you weren't here to hold our feet to the fire in the same way I'm trying to do here. I already have the "always Never-Trump newsrag" spot covered on my Internet Bingo Card with The Bulwark (and to a lesser extent, The Dispatch), and I keep coming back here not because of the people I agree with most of the time, but for the folks like yourself with whom I disagree on some big things (such as Trump's management of the gov't) who do a good job keeping me honest. I don't know to what extent this attitude is shared by our hosts and the motley crew who comes here to comment day after day, but I'm pretty sure that it's not just me.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Thanks!
To get the easy stuff out of the way first. You will have to find someone who gives a rat's rear about Trump's temporary appointments. I don't care. He could have simply hired advisors to write policy statements and orders for him and then sign them in his free time.
On the "cookie jar" stuff. If I thought the indiscretions were done with criminal intent, I would favor banning the miscreants, and I believe that was done in some cases. Having worked with a number of Fortune 500 execs (and wishing I had the right stuff to be one of them), I believe they get used to being kowtowed to and getting perks that others don't. They are tone deaf to things that are weaponized by political enemies and that upset the commoners. I never held an executive position but even in a mid-level management position, I could expect people I recommended to have a better chance of getting hired or not getting cut in the next downsizing.
Finally, what I mean by "better government" is outcomes - not all the messy stuff in the middle. I am results oriented and consider Joe Biden's first eight month's to be an unmitigated disaster with no redeeming qualities. And I do really try to find something believable in arguments to the contrary. Nothing has popped up so far.
I think where our core disagreement probably lies in two questions: Was Trump as competent as he liked to tell everyone? And was Trump as generous with his time and resources as some folks like to agree?
The disagreement on his competence is probably what fuels our disagreement on the better government and appointments issue. If you honestly believe that Trump is the most competent member of the executive branch on everything that the executive branch covers (which is A LOT these day, given how Congress shirks its job), then having a Senate-confirmed Cabinet is more ritual than value in the governing process. If Trump knows better than his underlings and acts on his own knowledge and ignores the mistaken underlings, then it doesn't matter who's there providing the window-dressing for everyone else. Similarly, if the structures that we've enacted around hemming in lesser men (such as the Administrative Procedure Act) are impediments to Trump taking the optimal actions for the American people, then hewing to the fine points of our system of government (evolved over more than two centuries) becomes more standing on ceremony than actually working for the betterment of the American people.
Does that sound like a fair encapsulation? If so, then I can see where you're coming from. And hopefully, you can see that if someone like me DOESN'T have that faith in a President (substitute Biden for Trump in your mental picture), why someone skipping over the guardrails might be a big issue (as Biden's done plenty of times over the past couple of months).
As for the generosity vs. self-enrichment question, it's similar in that the outcomes one arrives at diverge GREATLY whether you think people are accidentally blundering into the scandals or doing their best to extract as much personal value before getting caught. (Note that the outcome is the same, if you're outcome-oriented.) Trump liked to claim that he could be making more money outside the Oval Office than he did occupying it. He donated his annual salary to a number of worthwhile causes. If you believe that Trump is acting in a giving spirit, then the "cookie jar" stuff becomes easier to "mulligan". Similarly, if you're not convinced that Trump would have been as successful outside the Oval Office and that his fluke election to the Presidency was the best thing to happen to the businesses he declined to divest (breaking tradition), then it's hard to look at his tenure as anything more than the Trump Organization attaching itself as a parasite on the US gov't and sucking out as much as it can, given that its real-estate fortunes were dwindling and it was declining as an actual business that created and sold value to folks on the market. As a fellow who believes that President of the United States is the *last job* that anyone should get to hold, my opinion of Trump was cast in the days before he ascended to the Oval Office and declined to jettison the Trump Organization as a potential conflict of interest.
Given our two sets of differing perspectives and opinions, I'm skeptical that any amount of arguing or persuasion is going to budge either of us from our respective stances, but I'm okay with that (and have reached a similar detente with others in my life). Thanks for providing the bits I needed to decompose the disagreement into (what I hope are) its elementary components. I still do have some questions for you about the appropriateness of the Eastman memo, but don't have time this weekend to get into it further, and I suspect that this past week won't end up being the last time it's a topic of discussion.
What I'm saying is that post-January 6th, especially with the release of the Eastman memo, that there's no meaningful check on a determined President who wants to subvert our Constitutional processes, and mess around with the transfer of power. Consequently, since we can no longer count on Presidents to vacate the White House when they lose an election, their actions must be more transparent, so there's at least the threat of their malfeasance remaining hidden after they leave office. Trump's administration should be an open book now, Biden's should become an open book after he leaves office, and so forth for any future President. They lost the privilege to exercise any sort of post-office privacy or discretion with respect to their papers and actions after January 6th.
"there's at least the threat of their malfeasance remaining hidden"
should be
"there's at least the threat of their malfeasance becoming fully public"
It's been a long day for this Never-Trumper.
Yeah, I know, but you mostly try to have a basis for your opinions. It's a lot of hard work just to have your never-Trump aroused by the slightest provocations that come dozens of times daily because of you reading habits.
I'm worn out today because I was abusing chatbots. Not too much political reading today.
I believe the Eastman memo came from Mr. Eastman, a lawyer, not from Mr. Trump.
Arizona was for many years a solid red state. It always voted to the right of the national average by a substantial margin. It wasn't at all a competitive state for Democrats until Donald Trump came into the picture. It was still a very light red state as of 2020, as even as Biden won by 0.3 percent, AZ still was 4.15 percent more Republican than the average. But key to Biden's win was him winning Maricopa County, as it has more than three-fifths of the state's population. If you lose Maricopa, then you are almost certain to lose statewide. In Biden's case, he was the first Dem Presidential candidate to win Maricopa since Harry Truman in 1948. By peddling electoral fibs, these Arizona Republicans seem like they want to turn AZ into a blue state through their own efforts. Outside of the MAGA base, most other voters really don't like #StoptheSteal. What kept Maricopa County red in the past, was the then heavily GOP suburbs of Phoenix. They've rapidly turned purple in the Trump era, and the Republicans in AZ risk turning these suburbs blue, and put the state out of reach for them.
Senator Mark Kelly is up for election in 2022 for a full Senate term in his own right(The 2020 election was only to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. John McCain's term). Biden is unpopular and in a swing state with a light red lean, this would normally be a ripe opportunity for the GOP to pickup the seat. The Senate is going to be much harder for the Republicans to win in 2022 than the House. In order to do so, they need to run the tables in all the competitive races. With the Arizona GOP still stuck on #StoptheSteal mode, they could very well help re-elect Mark Kelly, and potentially cost the GOP in winning back the Senate majority. In other states, pushing electoral trutherisms could hurt GOP candidates in competitive races.
Obviously we are a long ways away from Nov. 2022. But it is possible that the Democrats may manage to retain the House and Senate and even potentially gain seats even if Biden remains unpopular, should Republicans keep trying to relitigate the 2020 election like what is going on in Arizona. Play stupid, win stupid prizes.
Just to note: the cost of the audit also includes the now-compromised voting machines from Maricopa County that now need to be replaced, which is ~$3mil.
Now you're joining the conspiracy theory crowd. The voting machines can be shown to be compromised or not by performance testing. If they are not connected to an external network, any flaws can be corrected.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/07/14/arizona-audit-maricopa-county-spend-2-8-m-replace-voting-machines/7965882002/
I'm not allowed to read the link, just the headline. I realize the county has decided to replace the machines but that's their call in cahoots with the Secretary of State.
You're into election integrity, but not worried about the actual voting machines.
You're such a tool.
He's not worried about his side cheating. He hopes they cheat and he covers that up by calling EVERYONE who isn't exactly like him "un-american".
Are you and SG a tag team?
They better put some bite into those subpoenas. Because you know these criminals will just ignore them until someone gets thrown in jail.
Thank God we finally got the proof, there was an effort to "steal the election." The fix was in, or at least it was attempted. I would never have thought i would be saying trump was kind of right. After all these months those stealthy ninja's have uncovered what trump was bemoaning; they did try to steal it, the only part they got wrong was it was on trump's behalf, not the other way around. The audit proves it. Kudos to Karen Fann for staying on top of this and finally proving once and for all it was crooked.