The Dean of Republican Election Lawyers September 11, 2020September 10, 2020 Motor Trend just posted this feature on WheelTug: “E-Motor Tech Promises Supersonic Flight Times; Virtual Transmission for EVs.” Simple Flying has one, too: “How WheelTug Will Revolutionize Airport Pushbacks.” What makes this voter fraud op-ed notable is that it comes from the dean of Republican election lawyers. . . . Before retiring from law practice last month, I spent 38 years in the GOP’s legal trenches. I was part of the 1990s redistricting that ended 40 years of Democratic control and brought 30 years of GOP successes in Congress and state legislatures. I played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount and several dozen Senate, House and state contests. I served as counsel to all three Republican national party committees and represented four of the past six Republican presidential nominees (including, through my law firm, Trump 2020). . . . The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process. . . . Trump established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to expose all the fraud he maintains permeates our elections. He named the most vociferous hunters of Democratic election fraud to run the commission. It disbanded without finding anything. The Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database has compiled every instance of any kind of voter fraud it could find since 1982. It contains 1,296 incidents, a minuscule percentage of the votes cast. A study of results in three states where all voters are mailed actual ballots, a practice at the apex of the president’s outrage, found just 372 possible cases of illegal voting of 14.6 million cast in the 2016 and 2018 general elections — 0.0025 percent. . . . The president’s rhetoric has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out. Republicans need to take a hard look before advocating laws that actually do limit the franchise of otherwise qualified voters. Calling elections “fraudulent” and results “rigged” with almost nonexistent evidence is antithetical to being the “rule of law” party. Jason Kander: The White House’s response to the Trump Tapes is to lean into the importance of preventing panic. Basically, “Look at all the jobs we saved by not telling you what we knew!” If someone tells you that, remind them about Amity’s Mayor in Jaws. After the first shark attack, he refused to close the beaches, and chose not to tell the public about the shark. Donald Trump is the Mayor of Amity if the Mayor of Amity had known about the shark a month in advance and still told everyone it was just a dolphin. [But let’s not] get over-confident about this. Why? Remember the Access Hollywood tape? We’ve let off the gas before. Let’s not do it again. After all, the Mayor in Jaws 1 was still the Mayor in Jaws 2, so we better get out there and make this argument. For a lot more ways to talk about this week’s news, listen to today’s Majority54. Trump has kept his campaign promise to appoint hundreds of right-wing judges, but there are significant promises he has not kept. Among them — Nick Kristof notes in the indispensable New York Times — these: “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end. Beginning on Jan. 20 of 2017, safety will be restored.” (speech, July 21, 2016) Trump himself implicitly acknowledges that he has failed to create law and order, saying, “There is violence and danger in the streets” (speech, Aug. 27, 2020). Periodically, he incites that violence. “We’re going to work with all of our students who are drowning in debt to take the pressure off these young people.” (speech, July 21, 2016) Trump has sought to alter the terms of student loan repayments so that students would have to pay an additional $200 billion over a decade. He also attempted to cancel the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. “You’re going to have great health care at a much lower price. It will cost the United States nothing.” (remarks, July 27, 2018) Partly because of Trump’s assaults on the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured people in the United States has risen for the first time in a decade. An additional 400,000 children are without insurance. “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” (speech, June 16, 2015) Job creation continued during the Trump administration at roughly the same rate as in the Obama administration, but the pandemic ended that. There are now almost five million fewer Americans with jobs than when Trump took office. In raw numbers, this is the worst jobs record of any modern president. “It is time to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C. This is why I’m proposing a package of ethics reforms to make our government honest once again.” (remarks, Oct. 17, 2016) Eight of Trump’s associates have been charged with or convicted of crimes. Nonpartisan ethics watchdogs have repeatedly accused Trump and members of his administration and his family of serious ethics violations, and the Manhattan district attorney suggested last month that he was investigating Trump and his company for “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct.” “We will honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else.” (speech, July 21, 2016) Trump has made more than 20,000 false or misleading statements since assuming office, by the count of The Washington Post. “We will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports and the railways of tomorrow.” (remarks, July 21, 2016) Trump never tried to pass an infrastructure bill. “We’re going to cut taxes for the middle class. … We will ensure that the benefits are focused on the middle class, the working men and women, not the highest-income earners.” (speech, Sept. 27, 2017) Trump did pass a tax cut, but it was focused on the wealthy. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that for the 2018 tax year, 20 percent of the benefits would go to the top 1 percent, and that by 2027, 82 percent of the benefits would go to the top 1 percent. “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. … I could do it fairly quickly … over a period of eight years.” (interview, March 31, 2016) The debt has surged and may soon be larger than the American economy for the first time since 1946. That’s partly because of his tax cut for the wealthy and partly because of Covid-19. “We will end our chronic trade deficits.” (remarks, Oct. 15, 2016) The trade deficit is larger now than it was in Obama’s last year in office. BONUS: Awfully rough, but I think Lindsey has earned it. One minute. Have a great weekend! Volunteer. Contribute. Recruit poll workers. Vote!