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Tag: 2020 election
Ronna McDaniel

Rove: RNC Chair 'In Trouble' Over 'Highly Inappropriate' Call With Trump

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel “is in trouble” after she was recorded on a phone call with former president Donald Trump pressuring two Michigan electors to change their votes certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to GOP strategist Karl Rove.

Speaking with Fox News’ John Roberts, Rove was asked about recent reporting from the Detroit News about “a recorded phone conversation between former President Donald Trump, the RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and two Wayne County Board of Election officials.”

Roberts notes the Detroit News reporters described a conversation “about certifying the 2020 presidential election,” in which Trump is quoted “as saying ‘We’ve got to fight for our country. We can’t let these people take our country away from us.'"

In the recording, McDaniel tells the election workers, “If you can go home tonight do not sign it, we will get you attorneys.”

“We will take care of that,” Trump adds, according to the Detroit News.

The election workers subsequently “tried to rescind their votes,” Roberts notes.

“I think the former president’s got a problem with this,” Rove said. “They had voted to certify the election, he attempted to force them to change their decision, which they tried to do. I think this is what we would call ‘election interference.’”

Rove noted that same behavior got Trump “into trouble in Georgia.”

“This is a problem, the former president should not have been doing this,” Rove said.

“This is not a good move if accurate and if this tape is true,” he added. “The former president’s created another problem for himself.”

Asked if it creates “a problem for Ronna McDaniel,” Rove said the RNC chair could be in hot water because of the leaked phone call.

“I think it is, I think the chairman is in trouble here,” Rove said, calling the conversation “highly inappropriate.”

Watch the videos below or a this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Jack Smith

Smith: Trump Intelligence Officials Unanimously Rejected His Election Claims

In a new documents filed Saturday night,Politico reports Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's team argues "intelligence officials unanimously rejected the idea that foreign governments penetrated any systems that counted votes or could have altered the election tally itself" — which undermines ex-President Donald Trump's claim.

Per the report, "The filing was part of the special counsel's opposition to a bid by Trump to access a broad swath of classified intelligence as part of his defense against charges that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters, culminating in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump has argued that foreign governments fueled his supporters’ concerns about election integrity and that some classified evidence revealed potential meddling that justified his own professed fears about fraud."

Senior assistant special counsel Thomas Windom writes in the filing, Trump "tries to create a 'false impression' and 'manufacture confusion' by citing these 'irrelevant network breaches' and conflating them with potential changes to the vote total."

Alleging this "new legal effort" by Trump "is just an extension of his election lies," prosecutors say "intel officials documented some breaches of state voter registration databases that permitted various influence campaigns but were not capable of causing the vote-stealing scheme of which Trump has long sought to convince his followers."

Smith's team interviewed "more than a dozen of the top intelligence officials in Trump's administration — from his director of national intelligence to the administrator of the NSA to Trump's personal intelligence briefer — about any evidence that foreign governments had penetrated systems that counted votes in 2020."

Windom writes in the filing, "The answer from every single official was no."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kevin McCarthy

With McCarthy Quitting In Weeks, Democrats 'Must Be Prepared To Act'

The American voters sent 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats to the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections, the exact same margin, but flipped, as the 2020 election. But today, with the announcement that ousted, former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is not only not running for re-election but is quitting Congress at the end off the year, Republicans have a big majority crisis — because of their now tiny majority.

It’s no longer 222 to 213.

After McCarthy’s exit, and with the recent expulsion of now-former Congressman George Santos (R-NY) Republican Speaker Mike Johnson will have a very slim majority.

“The party’s margin in the House fell to three seats from four with the expulsion of Representative George Santos of New York last week,” The New York Times explains. “That leaves almost no wiggle room for Mr. Johnson, who is already dealing with a revolt from the far right for working with Democrats to keep the government funded and faces another pair of shutdown deadlines in mid-January and early February.”

“When the House returns in January,” The Washington Post adds, “Republicans can lose only two votes from their ranks to pass any legislation at a time when the chamber faces major decisions on government spending and foreign aid. That dynamic could force Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who assumed the post after a tumultuous three weeks following McCarthy’s ouster, to work with Democrats to avert a partial government shutdown as soon as mid-January.”

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) has announced he will retire and exit Congress early next year.

But possibly even before that, Speaker Johnson’s tiny majority could at some point become an opening for Democrats, according to a top political scientist and scholar, Dr. Norman Ornstein.

“Democrats need to be prepared to act swiftly and decisively if the numbers drop below 218– even if only for a day. Quick motion to vacate, [Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries as Speaker, immediate agenda,” writes Dr. Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “where he has been studying politics, elections, and the US Congress for more than four decades.”

Ornstein offers more opportunities should Democrats be able to take the majority back soon.

“Reconciliation bill to secure robust spending, eliminate debt limit permanently, taxes on rich to pay for permanent child tax credit.”

He adds, the number of Republican members “would need to get down to 213. But any set of problems– a Covid outbreak, for example– could bring those numbers down, if only for a day or two. Have a plan ready! Hardball? You bet.”

David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator, responding to Ornstein’s remarks appeared to urge Republicans to join with Democrats to elect a Democratic Speaker, or even to switch parties:

“This. C’mon you GOPers from purple districts. Trump will have you purged and sent to Siberia. We just need 2 of you. You can be unloved by the GOP or heroes to the rest of America! Make your move now.”

Of course, special elections will be held to replace both Santos (scheduled for February 13, 2024) and McCarthy (likely summer, according to the Post), and at some point Ohio's Johnson.

But with the extremely large number of members of Congress who have exited or will be, as Ornstein says, Democrats need to be ready.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Mike Johnson

Why Democrats Will Love Mike Johnson In 2024

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the newly minted Republican speaker of the House, is quite simply a dreamboat GOP leader for House Democrats to run against next year.

He's a bonafide MAGA election denier who voted against certifying the 2020 election and labored to block the peaceful transfer of power.

He's an anti-abortion extremist who has voted for a national abortion ban and celebrated the fall of Roe v. Wade as "a historic and joyful day."

He's a former anti-LGBTQ+ legal advocate who vehemently supported the criminalization of gay sex, even in the privacy of one's own home.

Just before Johnson secured the requisite votes Wednesday, Politico columnist Jonathan Martin paraphrased the musings of an unnamed Democrat.

"A sage Dem texts, basically: Repubs are gonna elevate a speaker who tried to overthrow the election and backs an abortion ban - the two issues we won on in 2022," Martin tweeted.

“What are they thinking?” the Democrat posited to Martin.

In his Message Box Substack, Dan Pfeiffer, Pod Save America podcaster and former Obama White House communications director, offered this amusing amalgam of Johnson's political profile: "Paul Ryan’s economic policies + Mike Pence’s views on abortion + Donald Trump’s dangerously wacky views on the 2020 election = Mike Johnson."

Perfect! One big trash heap of dumpy GOP politicians pushing dim anti-democratic, anti-freedom policies.

There's truly so much for Democrats to like about Johnson, it's almost hard to choose. Still, after the vote, House Democrats quickly established their attack lanes.

"Instead of choosing bipartisanship, House Republicans have elevated MAGA extremist Mike Johnson to the Speaker’s chair," they tweeted. "Their agenda is clear: Attack our democracy, ban abortion, and slash Social Security and Medicare."

To top it all off, Johnson has zero fundraising experience and even less familiarity with insulating Republicans in swingy districts from his own extremist impulses, along with those of the Republican caucus. One of congressional Republicans' biggest failures leading up the 2022 red-wave-that-wasn't was their candidates' inability to keep pace with their Democratic counterparts. Without the fundraising expertise of Kevin McCarthy, the campaign committees and super PACs now under Johnson's domain will almost surely be hobbled in their ability to make up the difference.

If House Democrats didn't already have a reasonably good path to reclaiming the majority in 2024, House Republicans just handed them a golden opportunity—the cherry on top of three solid weeks of highly visible GOP incompetence and infighting.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.