Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

BUSTED: Newly-released text reveals GOPer conspiring to overturn election ‘within hours of the polls closing’



A Republican lawmaker sent a text message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows within hours after polls closed to hatch a plot to overturn a Donald Trump loss.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) read a message from the GOP lawmaker, whose name was not publicly revealed, when the U.S. House voted to hold Meadows in contempt of court, and revealed that members of Congress were conspiring with the White House to prevent Trump from losing before the results were known.

"HERE's an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY: Why can't [sic] the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS," the message read.

Election officials were still counting legal votes at the time that message was sent, and Joe Biden's election win was officially projected on Nov. 7 and confirmed by the Electoral College on Dec. 14.

Jake Tapper: "An anonymous GOP lawmaker texts then WH chief of staff Meadows within hours of the polls closing, proposing a way to disenfranchise millions of voters because election officials were still counting legal votes and Trump’s victory was not assured.



Jim Jordan confirms he sent one of the damning Mark Meadows texts



Several Republican lawmakers sent text messages to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows ahead of the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol in which they advocated having Vice President Mike Pence throw out certified electoral college votes.

Although the House Select Committee investigating the riots has not made the names of the lawmakers public, Politico has confirmed that one person who sent such a text was Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Jordan's office admitted that he was the one who sent a text that pushed for Pence to toss out votes from key states, although they say that he didn't write the argument himself but rather forwarded it from a third party.

The text message reads as follows:

“On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. ‘No legislative act,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.’ The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ‘That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.’ 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916).”

According to Politico, the analysis was originally written by former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz.


AP finds fewer than 475 cases of potential voter fraud in six 2020 battleground states

An Associated Press into the 2020 election found fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud in six battleground states, refuting former President Trump's claims of a massive, coordinated effort to steal the election from him.

Reporters conducted a months-long examination of the election, which the AP called one of the most comprehensive to date, at more than 300 local election offices where ballots were submitted in swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. President Biden won those states by a combined 311,257 votes.

The AP concluded there was no collusion to steal the election and found fewer than 473 cases of individual voter fraud, with 80 percent of the counties in the battleground states reporting no suspicious activity.

"The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not," reporters wrote.

The instances of individual voter fraud include a Wisconsin man who thought he could vote on parole and a Pennsylvania man who voted twice, for himself and his son. In most cases, fraud was intercepted by election officials, which the AP said further confirmed the security and integrity of the election.

Trump told The Associated Press he would soon release more information about the alleged massive voter fraud in the 2020 election.

“I just don’t think you should make a fool out of yourself by saying 400 votes,” he told the publication.

Biden beat out Trump with a historic amount of votes, winning more than 81 million. Biden also won each of the crucial swing states by thousands of votes each, winning a total of 79 electoral college votes.

But Trump continues to claim the election was stolen, citing massive voter fraud and contesting the use of mail-in voting, which was used on a larger scale than usual due to the coronavirus pandemic. His rhetoric fueled the Jan. 6 riot, during which Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the Senate and then-Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the election results.

Trump's lawsuits in battleground states have largely been thrown out of court, and election audits have also unearthed little evidence of voter fraud, including a highly publicized one in Arizona.

But the AP investigation into the battleground states is the most thorough debunking of Trump's repeated claims of massive voter fraud. Reporters found no mass wave of mail-in ballots from unregistered voters or more votes than registered voters.

A spokesman for the Biden administration, Andrew Bates, told the AP the investigation further cements Biden's victory.

“Each time this dangerous but weak and fear-ridden conspiracy theory has been put forward, it has only cemented the truth more by being completely debunked," he told reporters.

The review found individualized cases of voter fraud in each state: 198 in Arizona, 64 in Georgia, 26 in Pennsylvania, 31 in Wisconsin, 56 in Michigan and around 98 in Nevada.

https://thehill.com/homenews/presidential-campaign/585901-ap-finds-fewer-than-475-cases-of-potential-voter-fraud-in-six

[Rick Plant]

Multiple House Freedom Caucus members coordinated with Mark Meadows schemes to keep Trump in power: NYT



A new report in the New York Times reveals how several members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus went out of their way to take drastic measures to keep former President Donald Trump in power.

According to the Times, former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows worked closely with Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) to push the United States Department of Justice to intervene in the certification of the 2020 presidential election to stop President Joe Biden from taking power.

Perry late last year called former Trump DOJ official Richard P. Donoghue and told him he "had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet" and urged him to authorize Trump DOJ loyalist Jeffrey Clark to “do something” about them.

"Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories," reports the Times.

Other Republicans who worked with Perry and Meadows to keep Trump in power included Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX), reports the Times.

Read the full report here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/us/politics/trump-meadows-republicans-congress-jan-6.html


Trump's DC hotel lease had 'zero checks and balances' as federal agency 'washed hands': House panel

Former president Donald Trump's D.C. hotel operated with an alarming lack of oversight from the General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency that manages his company's lease of the Old Post Office Building, according to a new congressional report.

The GSA "failed to examine ethical conflicts and constitutional issues posed by then-President Donald Trump’s refusal to divest from the property," according to NBC News, which obtained a copy of the report from House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

The GSA also failed to "track foreign government payments to the hotel or identify the origins of more than $75 million in loans made by Trump and his family to shore up its troubled finances."

The report is based on 14,000 pages of newly obtained GSA records that were first requested by the committee two years ago, but which the Trump administration declined to turn over.

"The GSA 'washed its hands of any responsibility' to review whether the emoluments clauses of the Constitution were being followed, the report said, including by trying to ensure that profits from foreign governments didn’t benefit Trump," NBC News reports. "The agency did not take any steps to identify expenditures by foreign or domestic government officials and implemented 'zero checks and balances' to make sure the hotel's calculations of such payments were 'fair, complete and accurate,' the committee found."

Back in October, another House committee found that the former president had “grossly exaggerated the financial health" of the hotel. Trump claimed the hotel had generated $150 million in income during his presidency, when in fact it lost more than $70 million.

According to the new report, Trump and three of his adult children — Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump — loaned the hotel more than $75 million to keep it afloat. The Trumps ultimately forgave $72 million of those loans, with the hotel repaying less than $3.5 million. However, the report found that the GSA "never made any effort to identify the origin of these loans and whether the ultimate source of the financing posed any constitutional concerns."

Although Trump transferred ownership of the hotel to a trust controlled by Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg after the 2016 election, the former president never divested his financial interest — which, according to the report, was “problematic” and “created multiple conflicts of interested during his presidency that both he and GSA refused to properly address.”

"For example, the report noted that political appointees at GSA were responsible for making federal real estate decisions 'that impacted the president’s personal properties as well as that of his competitors,'" NBC News reports.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), who chairs the committee, told the network that the report “brings to light GSA’s flagrant mismanagement of the Old Post Office lease and its attempt to duck its responsibility to support and defend the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clauses.”

Last month, the former president reached an agreement to sell the Trump International Hotel in D.C. for for $375 million.

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-2656046762/

[Rick Plant]

All of these anti American traitors need to be locked away in prison for treason. These losers knew Trump was going to lose the election because every single poll showed us he would. So, after the polls were confirmed to be accurate when Trump lost, they concocted their treasonous plan to steal the election and to keep this lunatic in power. It was plainly obvious what they were doing because Trump refused to concede and all of them were saying "Trump was going to have a second term" even though he lost. Those words prove they hatched this coup plot in November.

Man behind the infamous PowerPoint has a long history of election subversion attempts -- in multiple states



WASHINGTON — The suddenly famous election denier behind the circulation of a PowerPoint filled with plans to overturn the 2020 election has a long history of election subversion attempts in multiple states.
Retired Army Col. Phil Waldron also has close ties to former President Donald Trump’s legal team and served as one of its key witnesses in efforts to reverse the presidential election results.

This week, Waldron became known as the person responsible for circulating the document titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” to Trump’s allies and Republican lawmakers on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Waldron also said he met with Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in the White House “maybe eight to 10 times” after the election, the Washington Post reported. Meadows is a former North Carolina congressman who on Tuesday was found in contempt by the U.S. House for not answering questions about its Jan. 6 inquiry.

But before any of that work, Waldron was working to subvert the election by sowing doubt about electronic voting, pushing for election “audits” in the states, including Arizona, and testifying as a witness for Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in hearings in Georgia and Michigan.

Giuliani repeatedly cited Waldron as the source of information in the former New York mayor’s legal filings seeking to overturn the 2020 election. Waldron’s testimony was filled with misinformation about election administration and false claims about fraud.

Before the election, Waldron started working with Texas-based Allied Security Operations Group, a company led by cybersecurity analyst Russell James Ramsland Jr., Waldron told the Washington Post. Ramsland, a Republican businessman and failed congressional candidate, is credited as one of the leading election deniers to spread false information about the election, the Post said.

Despite the lack of evidence behind Allied Security Operations Group’s allegations of inaccuracies in electronic voting audit logs, Republican officials called on it to advise them post-election. In February, Republican Arizona Senate President Karen Fann tapped Waldron and Allied Security Operations Group to conduct an audit of the election in Maricopa County under another company. Arizona Senate Republicans later hired Cyber Ninjas to lead the audit.

Last December, Waldron testified before a Michigan House subcommittee at Giuliani’s request, the Detroit News reported. Waldron told lawmakers he was part of the “forensics team” responsible for a debunked report signed by Ramsland falsely claiming that election results in Antrim County, Michigan, were tabulated with a 68 percent error rate.

Citing the same report, Waldron also falsely told lawmakers there were 10 Michigan precincts with 100 percent turnout and six precincts that recorded over 120 percent voter turnout.

In response to his testimony, Michigan’s former elections director, Chris Thomas, tweeted, “Colonel Waldron is not up to speed on election results reporting.”

After his testimony in Michigan, Waldron continued to spread false claims on Fox News, alleging there were 17,000 dead people who cast ballots in the state.

“Each one of those is a woeful attempt to strip rightful voters in America of their civil rights,” he said. “It’s a multifaceted attack.”

In Arizona in November 2020, Waldron, serving as a witness for Giuliani, said voting machines are “vulnerable everywhere,” falsely claimed that Arizona voting machines are connected to the internet, and stated incorrectly that signatures on mail-in ballots are not verified.

Waldron also appears in a film about purported election fraud by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, and claims with no evidence that the Chinese government has access to Dominion Voting Systems’ files and that servers in Europe played a role in manipulating election results, the New York Times reported.

Despite Waldron’s history of spreading false information and his connection to the Jan. 6 PowerPoint, states continue to give him a platform. A voting panel in Louisiana tasked with replacing the state’s voting machines invited him to speak on Tuesday.

“We’re very pleased to have him here and excited to hear what he has to say,” said Louisiana GOP Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, according to the Washington Post. Ardoin added that the audience included many members of Waldron’s “fan club.”

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2021/12/16/how-an-election-deniers-fan-club-got-its-start-in-the-states/

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence.

[Rick Plant]

Fox "News" passes Trump's loyalty test: It's about more than lying — it's about teaching how to lie



After a full day of silence, the hosts of Fox News finally quit ignoring their bombshell text message scandal and came out swinging. It's unclear, however, why they needed an entire day to draft their responses as what they finally offered was both lazy and incoherent.

The text messages sent to Donald Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Jan. 6 indisputably prove that Fox News hosts deliberately lie to their audiences.

Privately, the network's biggest stars were freaked out by the Capitol insurrection. They clearly, and correctly, saw it as something Donald Trump purposefully instigated. Publicly, however, they were willing to deflect blame from Trump, defend the rioters and minimize the violence. But rather than apologize to their viewers for spending 11 months lying to them, the hydra-headed Fox News monster just threw out a bunch of contradictory and not even remotely persuasive excuses.

Laura Ingraham whined about "left wing media hacks" who are in "spin and defame mode." Tucker Carlson flatly claimed that the texts were "exculpatory" and "a tribute to the people who wrote them." Sean Hannity sneered that the release of his text messages was "a weak attempt to smear yours truly and presumably I guess President Trump." In reality, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — who is a hardcore conservative, but is just an outlier in finding fascist insurrections distasteful — simply read the texts verbatim, no garnish needed to expose these two as sleazy liars.

They pretended their "privacy" was being invaded, even though the texts were turned over under legal subpoena. And they continued to pretend that the insurrection didn't actually happen while also insisting that their texts show they took it seriously while it was happening. Hannity even tried to revive the talking point that the insurrection was actually the fault of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, instead of the guy that gathered his supporters together with promises that it would be "wild," and then unleashed them on the Capitol for six hours.

Don't try to make sense of all these Fox News excuses. They aren't meant to be rational, logical, or persuasive. On the contrary, the swirl of rationalizations is intended to discombobulate.

While good faith actors are busy picking apart Excuse A, Fox News hosts are busy churning out Excuses B, C, D, and E. There's no keeping up with the firehose of bulls**t. This is gaslighting and not just garden variety lying. There's no intent here to fool anyone — not the media, not liberals, and certainly not Fox News viewers. Instead, the intent is to flood the zone with so much nonsense that the opposition becomes exhausted and gives up fighting for truth. Most importantly, Fox is training their audiences to embrace the same approach to politics.

What the average Fox viewer gets from this grotesque display is not a convincing argument that the hosts are blameless victims of a left-wing smear campaign. What he is being persuaded of is the importance of releasing any lingering attachment to truth or decency. Facts and rationality are direct threats to the authoritarian ideology and must be crushed under the heel. What Fox viewers are learning is shamelessness. Fox News hosts are demonstrating a willingness to say or do whatever it takes to advance the cause of what is, ultimately, fascism.

As Andrew O'Hehir argued at Salon Wednesday morning, for Trump, "reality is always contingent, always manufactured." Selling this fake reality does not depend on a convincing or even logical story. Instead, the key is belligerence: "Never break character or let down your guard; never admit doubt or regret or uncertainty." Just keep repeating the lies, loudly and ad nauseum, and exhaust your opponents into giving up.

The tornado of bulls**t emanating from Fox News in response to the text scandal is proof that the students of Trump have become the masters.

Gone are the fearful mice that were worried that inciting an insurrection might make the GOP look bad, or scare their followers away from taking the fascist movement to the next level. Instead, they are more committed than ever to the belief that truth doesn't matter. All that matters is power. Indeed, the more ridiculous and unjustified the claims, the more power they demonstrate by standing by them anyway. This is something Trump has always understood, which is why his first act in office was to insist that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Barack Obama's, and refuse to relent in the face of what should have been indisputable photographic evidence that showed otherwise.

The bellicosity worked. A study swiftly demonstrated that, when shown pictures of both the Trump and Obama inauguration crowds, a significant percentage of Republican voters rejected the evidence of their own eyes to insist the Trump crowd was bigger. They aren't crazy or deluded. They just understand what is expected of them: Facts don't matter. All that matters is toeing the party line.

Back in 2017, more than 40% of Republican voters were shameless enough to parrot the "Trump's crowd was bigger" line, even when they were being embarrassed by pictures that showed otherwise. The situation has only gotten worse since then. Now 7 out of 10 GOP voters will tell a pollster they believe the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, even though their actual behavior indicates they do not believe this at all. The average Republican voter is now committed to doing and saying whatever it takes to end democracy and has no compunction about telling obvious lies to achieve that goal.

The situation has gotten worse since 2017, in no small part because Fox hosts spent the past five years or so instructing their audiences in the art of gaslighting. As Trump demonstrated, the trick is to make claims that both the liar and their targets know are untrue, but to make them "true" through the simple but effective method of relentlessness.

In a sense, it's not even really lying. Lying is an attempt to deceive. Gaslighting, however, does not try to convince anyone of anything, except their own powerlessness. Trump's incessant insistence that the election was "stolen" convinces no one. But, by grinding at it day and night, Trump has indoctrinated his followers into parroting the lie, not because they believe it, but as a means to demonstrate loyalty.

So Fox News hosts lie to their audience. They know it, their opponents know it, and most crucially, their audiences know it. The excuses being fanned out to justify it aren't persuasive in the slightest, nor are they meant to be. The only purpose is to fill Fox viewers with hot air that they can, in turn, spew back out when defending their support for Trump. Lies do not offend GOP voters, because they understand that lies are a tactic in gaining power. And power is, ultimately, all that matters to them.

https://www.rawstory.com/fox-news-trump-lies/

[Rick Plant]

REVEALED: Trump’s congressional allies were 'key foot soldiers' in the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election
https://www.rawstory.com/here-s-how-trump-loyalists-conspired-to-overturn-the-2020-election/

Mark Meadows trapped himself — and now his ‘situation is quickly worsening’: analysis
https://www.rawstory.com/meadow/

'You were the hero of January 6th!' Peter Navarro inadvertently implicates Steve Bannon while talking on his podcast
https://www.rawstory.com/peter-navarro-steve-bannon/

'Tell us everything': CNN's Paul Begala demands Jim Jordan reveal all his MAGA riot texts
https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-capitol-riot-2656053324/

Michael Cohen sues Donald Trump and Bill Barr for violating his First Amendment rights
https://www.rawstory.com/michael-cohen-sues-first-amendment/

There is a ‘direct line’ from Fox News lies to Trump supporters trying to overturn elections: NYT columnist



Fox News has played a critical role in undermining democracy in America by spreading lies about the election that incite violence, according to a New York Times column published online on Thursday.

"What did Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham say about the Jan. 6 rioting at the United States Capitol — and when did they say it? Were they suitably censorious of the violence? At the time, did their public remarks match their private horror?" columnist Frank Bruni asked. "Those questions have been heatedly and extensively hashed out over the days since a House committee released text messages from Jan. 6 in which Hannity and Ingraham, the popular hosts of prime-time shows on Fox News, separately implored President Donald Trump’s chief of staff to get Trump to say and do something to disperse the protesters and quell the violence. Hannity and Ingraham knew that he had stirred those protesters and could sway them, more so than they ever acknowledged on-air, according to their critics."

The network has received a great deal of scorn for its hypocrisy after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) read the texts messages into the public record.

"You can delve into the weeds of this or you can pull back and survey the whole ugly yard. And what you see when you do that — what matters most in the end — is that Fox News has helped to sell the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and there’s a direct line from that lie to the rioting. There’s a direct line from that lie to various Republicans’ attempts to develop mechanisms to overturn vote counts should they dislike the results," Bruni explained. "That lie is the root of the terrible danger that we’re in, with Trump supporters being encouraged to distrust and undermine the democratic process. And that lie has often found a welcome mat at Fox News."

Bruni noted comments by Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro and Fox Business hosts Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs.

"And their evidence? It was fugitive then, and no one has tracked it down since. That’s because it doesn’t exist. It’s a conspiracy-minded, ratings-driven hallucination," he wrote. "And they’re being motivated and cheered, both directly and obliquely, by what they see and hear on Fox News. I care less about Hannity’s and Ingraham’s precise words on Jan. 6 than about what they and their colleagues on Fox News said before and after, and what they’re saying now. It’s reckless. It’s subversive. And it’s scary."

Read the full column:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/opinion/fox-news-trump-january-6.html

[Rick Plant]

I hope Dominion takes them for every penny they have.

'A nightmare for Fox': CNN panel says right-wing cable network in massive trouble over Dominion lawsuit

On Thursday's edition of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," a panel of legal experts weighed in on Dominion Voting Systems' preliminary victory at a key step of their lawsuit against Fox News.

"By putting Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, making these outrageous false allegations on the air without allowing Dominion to refute them, that's libel," said chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. "And that's what Fox is going to have to defend. And I don't know how they're going to defend it it. I think it's a very good case for the plaintiffs."

Cooper turned to former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean. "Legally, how difficult is it to prove individuals knew their statements were false, or that they were intentionally leaving out relevant information?"

"It's not easy," said Dean. "In fact, it's very surprising. Most of these cases get dismissed at this very early stage with a motion to dismiss. I think that probably handles overwhelming number of defamation cases, because the standard is very unique. They have to show actual malice that was employed, meaning that they either knew it was false and went ahead with it or they did it with reckless disregard, they had some indication but yet they still went ahead."

"This case has not been decided on any substance yet. Just on the pleadings," Dean added. "And it made the basic bar and got over that, which is going to be a nightmare for Fox, as Jeffrey says. They're going to now dig in deep and it's not going to be easy."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Mitch McConnell's latest remarks about Jan. 6 probe shows GOP senators are done with Trump

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) signaled that he's closely watching the House select committee investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough explained why that's bad news for Donald Trump.

The Kentucky Republican said this week that he was interested in learning who all the participants were in the deadly U.S. Capitol riot, as the panel was revealing communications between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawmakers, Fox News hosts and others ahead of the insurrection and as the violent assault was underway.

"We're going to look back on those Mark Meadows documents, those 6,000 documents released, and they are going to be seen historically as extraordinarily significant because it is the beginning of cracks in sort of this united front," Scarborough said, "and it's going to require other people since the information is out, it's going to require other people to talk about it."

"There is, I think, a growing sense of unease," the Morning Joe host added. "It may not be among many people in the House where you have an extraordinarily gerrymandered chamber. In the Senate there is no doubt. Republicans in the Senate, at the beginning said, 'Oh, we want nothing to do with this committee, it's going to be so political.' Things are getting so bad that Mitch McConnell is going out now about every day, and what Mitch is doing is, we've heard that he does not do anything without the consent -- he's not Newt Gingrich, he's not a renegade. He speaks for his caucus."

McConnell had opposed the independent commission, and Republican senators had echoed Trump's language about the congressional investigation, but Scarborough said something has changed.

"Mitch McConnell is lending credibility to this by just saying the fact-finding is significant," Scarborough said. "It is significant, that's truthful. It was a horrific event. Yes, it was a horrific event and most Americans, despite what they tell pollsters, we know on that day was horrified by what was happening, and we can never forget that House members, they run in these gerrymandered little safe districts. United States senators, they have to run statewide, so they just have to take a more reasonable, rational view and face up to facts. We've seen Mitch now two days in a row speaking, not just for himself, he knows he's speaking for the entire caucus to say let the chips fall where they may."

[Rick Plant]

77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/trump-election-lie.html