On today's BradCast: The Donald Trump Crazy Train keeps chugging along. And its getting crazier, and seemingly farther off the tracks with each passing hour as the outgoing President's days in the White House continue to diminish and his likelihood of facing criminal accountability grows nearer and nearer. One of the biggest remaining questions is how many of his supporters are still to get run over by that train.

Among the many stories we cover today...

• Before we dive deep into The Crazy, some very grim milestones in the COVID crisis which, turns out, wasn't a hoax at all, as both Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz "guaranteed" us before the election. On Wednesday, there were more than 200,000 new cases, more than 100,000 hospitalizations and more than 2,777 deaths confirmed from COVID. All of them single day records, as the pandemic will continue to get far worse in coming months before it begins to get better. All thanks, in no small part, to idiots like Trump, Cruz and whole bunch of other Republicans who sadistically sacrificed their constituents' lives in dashed hopes of seeing Trump re-elected;

• Following Attorney General Bill Barr's comments to AP earlier this week that, "to date," the Dept. of Justice has "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election," Trump, as expected, reportedly blew a gasket. It resulted in a two and half hour meeting for Barr at the White House and Trump said to be considering whether he will now fire his second AG, despite his years of covering up and lying for the President and his unprecedented directive to dozens of Asst. U.S. Attorneys to investigate bogus claims of "massive fraud" before and after the election;

• On Thursday, the rightwing Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Trump Campaign's latest attempt to toss out hundreds of thousands of votes in a state that Trump lost. Of note, as has been the case in every suit they've filed (by way of contrast to what they say publicly to the chumps and suckers who believe in them), Team Trump offered zero evidence of fraud in their complaint. Rather, they complained about absentee ballot procedures that have been in place since before the 2016 election, when Trump is said to have won the state, as well as during this year's primaries. Apparently they forgot to claim that WI's absentee voting laws were illegal in those past elections. The suit was rejected today, however, because the court ruled it needs to be filed in a lower state court first before it can be heard by the state Supremes. The Campaign also filed another federal case in the state on Wednesday. It does not argue their was fraud in this year's election either;

• It's become so embarrassing that even top Trump sycophant Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking to Fox "News" to tell the Trump legal team that they need to provide proof of their fraud claims in court. "Doing a video is not proof," he said, shortly after Trump released a 46-minute video on Wednesday, falsely claiming (without evidence, naturally) that he actually won virtually every state in the union this year;

• Lack of evidence of fraud, however, has not stopped the Rudy Giuliani Traveling Dog 'n' Pony Show. After making presentations to GOP state legislators in "hearings" held in rented hotel banquet rooms in Pennsylvania and Arizona this week, the Republicans of the gerrymandered Michigan state legislature opened an actual hearing room in the state capital to the Rudy Show. It did not go well. We share the testimony from Melissa Carone, of one of the "witnesses" that Rudy hauled up to the stand. It's something to behold;

• Meanwhile, down in Georgia on Wednesday, a huge "Stop the Steal" rally at the Peach State capital, headed up by self-disgracing attorneys and Trump Crazy Train Conductors Sidney Powell and Lin Wood (who may actually be mentally ill), likely drove the what's left of the actual GOP crazy. Wood attacked the very Trumpy Republican Governor Brian Kemp, resulting in "Lock him up!" chants from the QAnon brain-poisoned crowd, before instructing the misinformed throngs that they should absolutely not vote for incumbent Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler or David Perdue in the upcoming January 5th runoff elections that will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate;

• Finally, we close with some helpful words, believe it or not, from far-right, not insane Trump supporter Erick Erickson. In a Twitter thread this week, the former Editor-in-Chief of the rightwing RedState blog, finally seems to have had enough of the madness of GOP conspiracy theorists who now believe that Trump's own DOJ, FBI, CIA, Attorney General, and the Republican Governors of states like Georgia and Arizona, not to mention others, have all teamed up to steal the election for Joe Biden. "Maybe…and I know this might just blow your mind…but maybe what if you've been lied to the whole time. There is no conspiracy. There is no theft of the election," Erickson unloads, suggesting that "maybe, just maybe" the problem is Trump and supporters who can't understand that "ultimately it is really you who are the problem because you so willingly got played and even now want to be played because now you're emotionally invested in a cause and a candidate and to admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad. So it's better to double down on the lies and bullshit and blame everyone else."

Sounds about right. Thanks, Erick. You can stop blocking me on Twitter now.

Buckle up and/or pop a bucket of popcorn or two for today's BradCast...

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Everything and everybody seem to be on edge. It feels like we're near a breaking point. At home and abroad, as detailed throughout today's harrowing BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

"It's all gone too far," Georgia's top voting systems chief made clear during powerful unscripted remarks at an emotional press conference on Tuesday night. "All of it!" Gabe Sterling's impassioned comments came after learning of new death threats against a young elections worker in his state. He is right to be infuriated. Things have now become damned dangerous thanks to our deranged President who seems to be turning more unhinged by the hour as his days in the White House wane.

We share an extended cut of the Republican Sterling's tirade today, as he called out both the Republican President and the state's two Republican Senators for failing to condemn the increasing hostility and threats against election officials in Georgia, as well those directed to its Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. "Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence," Sterling implored the President. "Someone's gonna get hurt. Someone's gonna get shot. Someone's gonna get killled...All of this is wrong!"

Both of Georgia's U.S. Senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, face tough election re-election runoffs against Rafeael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, on January 5. The contests will determine partisan control of the Senate. Both GOPers have decided to support Trump and his false claims about the state's election being stolen for Joe Biden with the aid, absurdly enough, of Kemp and Raffensperger. The President is currently scheduled to travel to the Peach State on Saturday to campaign with Loeffler and Perdue. We'll see if he makes it...and whether they both come to regret it.

It is, of course, insane that we find ourselves in support of Sterling, Raffensperger and Kemp, at least on these points. We have been vocally and justifiably critical of all three for a very long time on this program regarding the way they run elections in the state and undermine voter confidence in the bargain. But we'd never even consider the type of rhetoric that the President of the United States and his followers --- including Loeffler and Perdue --- are now using because Trump is too cowardly to concede that he lost and the two Senators are too cowardly to run without him.

None have any actual interest in cleaning up Georgia's elections. If they did, they'd have joined my weeks-old call to get the Dominion Voting Systems company out of the state entirely for the January elections by demanding hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots for all during the runoff. None of them, of course, have done so.

Rather than take Sterling's concerns to heart, Trump doubled down on Twitter thereafter to falsely declare a "Rigged Election" and "massive voter fraud in Georgia," charging the very Trumpy Governor Kemp is "afraid" of "what we'll find". And then, as released by the White House just before airtime, Trump delivered even more dangerously incendiary and deluded remarks in a fact-free 46-minute pre-taped video rant, asserting that "our election system is now under coordinated assault and siege."

But this is what is happening. And if all of it sounds insane, you'll be shocked to learn that top Trumpers, like his recently pardoned former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, are now literally calling for sedition by encouraging the President "to immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote."

Several weeks ago, I was uncertain about covering Trump's baseless claims of "massive fraud" in the election at all, back when he first began lying about all of this. Given where we are now, I'm glad we did. We all need to be informed about what is actually going on right now in this nation, no matter how twisted, and depressing, and damned dangerous it is now becoming.

But, for some "lighter" news today...We then turn to the recent assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the latest fallout following both that, Trump's undermining and violation of the landmark Obama era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran which had successfully blocked the Islamic Republican from the ability to create a nuclear weapon for at least ten years, and Trump's drone assassination earlier this year of Iran's revered General Qassam Soleimani. (Yes, that also took place in 2020!)

We're joined today for a great deal of insight on all of this --- as well as the history of targeting nuclear scientists, both in Iran in recent years and elsewhere since the dawn of the nuclear age, and whether the strategy actually works --- by someone who knows a great deal about all of it. WILLIAM TOBEY served on the White House National Security Council staff under three presidents, and as Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration from 2006-2009, where he managed the U.S. government's largest program to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism. He is now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism.

Among the many related topics discussed with Tobey today: How difficult it may be for the incoming Biden Administration to strike a new deal with Iran after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA and the assassinations of both Soleimani and Fakhrizadeh, as Iran now vows both revenge and an increase in nuclear production; Whether the JCPOA, which Tobey was critical of, made us safer and why "we are in a more dangerous position today than we were in 2018"; And, why nations like North Korea and Iran justifiably see the development of nuclear weapons as an existential issue.

And with all of those pretty heavy topics, listeners who make it all the way to the end of today's BradCast may be richly rewarded with the concession speech that we all should have heard long ago...

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Attorney General Bill Barr may now be in big trouble with Donald Trump at the DoJ. One of Trump's personal attorneys may be in big trouble with the D.C. Bar. And Trump's attempt to game the Census and Apportionment of Congressional seats for the next 10 years may be in big trouble at his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. All of that big trouble and more on today's BradCast! [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

First up, Attorney General Barr has undoubtedly infuriated his boss today by admitting to The Associated Press that "to date," the Justice Dept. has "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election."

Uh, oh. The last senior Administration official who said something similar --- Chris Krebs, Trump's Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the new DHS agency that oversees elections infrastructure --- was fired just days later after his federal agency and others (along with several voting machine vendors, so take it with a grain of salt) announced that the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history."

Speaking of Krebs, he was interviewed by CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday, where he stood by that assessment and chalked the success of the 2020 election up to "paper ballots."

"Paper ballots give you the ability to audit," he told CBS' Scott Pelley, "to go back and check the tape and make sure you got the count right. That's really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election. That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote."

Well, he was so close. "Paper ballots" don't protect elections, HAND-MARKED paper ballots protect elections. And there is a big difference. Krebs goes on to cite, for example, Georgia's terrible new Dominion Voting Systems touchscreen computers that voters are forced to vote on at the polls, and the subsequent statewide hand-count of ballots to make his case. But Georgia's systems, as we've long reported in great detail, print out computer-marked paper ballot summaries which can never be known after an election to reflect the intent of any voter. As we explain yet again today, studies show that the vast majority of voters do not check their computer-printed summary, and that 93%(!) of them do not notice if the computer has changed one of their votes. We offer much more detail --- yet again --- on today's show.

But Krebs, a lifelong Republican who has been bravely outspoken in attempting to debunk false claims about fraud both before and after the election, is certainly a hero for his efforts. The fact that Joe diGenova, one of Donald Trump's personal lawyers, took to the air on Monday to call for Krebs to be murdered --- literally --- is a chilling sign of our times and should result in disbarment for Trump's latest Fox "News" TV attorney for hire. "Anybody who thinks this election went well like that idiot Krebs," diGenova said on a wingnut radio program yesterday, "that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot."

Krebs suggested to NBC News today that he is likely to take legal action. But you know who else "thinks this election went well," apparently? Bill Barr! We'll see if diGenova calls for him to be executed now as well, or which of the two Trump lackeys will be fired by Trump first.

Next up, we're joined by DAN VICUÑA, National Redistricting Manager at Common Cause, one of the good-government immigration advocacy groups that sued the Trump Administration after a Presidential Memorandum from Trump last year directed U.S. Census apportionment data to leave out "illegal aliens" despite the Constitution's mandate to include the "whole number of persons in each State" for purposes of determining how many U.S. Congressmembers each state shall have for ten years following each decennial Census.

Four different lower courts largely agreed with the plaintiffs challenging Trump's decree --- which would increase political power for rural, white, Republican-leaning districts and take it away from more urban, Democratic-leaning, minority heavy jurisdictions --- finding it to be illegal and/or unconstitutional. On Monday, Trump's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the matter, and Vicuña reports today on how things went. In short, it appears to have not gone well for the Administration, even with three Trump-appointed Justices now packed onto the bench.

Vicuña, notes that "citizenship status has never been used as a determining factor in whether a person will be counted." He also explains the dangers of Trump's unprecedented decree and how his attempt to bastardize the "plain language" of the U.S. Constitution and "two centuries of precedent" to instead use only "voter-eligible" citizens in counts to determine apportionment in the U.S. House, endangers not only the immigrant population, but everyone else in America, even in so-called "red" states.

"The Administration's lawyers are dancing a strange dance," he tells me while describing Monday's hearing. "The President's memo very clearly states what the President wants, which is to exclude every undocumented person living in the United States --- undocumented people who contribute billions to the economy, who pay taxes on things that they may never see [like] Social Security. The President's attorneys are going into court and saying, 'Well, we're only going to do this within the strictures of what's allowable by law, so for that reason, you shouldn't even rule on this case now. There's no need to address the plaintiffs' challenge, because we don't exactly know how we're going to implement the President's goals' --- even though the President states them clearly --- 'so you should punt.'"

Whether the Court will go along with the Administration on this, and how the incoming Biden Administration may make all of this moot anyway, is all discussed on today's program.

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report, in which the Trump Administration actually does something that is not only NOT horrible, but very very good for folks in Alaska who have been challenging the creation of the controversial Pebble Mine for more than a decade. Other than that, however, the final days of Trump's environmental smash and grab continue apace...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration denies permit to controversial proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska; Trump EPA lets polluting industries off the hook for toxic waste; Trump Interior Department finalizes bird-killing rule; PLUS: Bank of America ditches fossil fuel projects in the fragile Arctic... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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