It may be a somewhat disconcerting deja vu on today’s BradCast for longtime listeners. Apologies in advance. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Seven and a half years ago, on the day Donald Trump came down his golden escalator at Trump Tower to declare that Mexicans were rapists and he was running for President, our guest was HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo. Since then, she’s joined us to try and make sense of virtually every landmark event during his disastrous candidacy, Presidency and post-Presidency.
Back in June of 2015, when posting that day’s show at The BRAD BLOG, I headlined it “The GOP’s New ‘Frankenstein’s Monster'”. Most in the media considered Trump’s candidacy a joke at the time. We felt otherwise. I believe history has proven us right on that one.
After multiple failed attempts at trying to steal the 2020 election, including inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in hopes of stealing it by force, and with multiple criminal investigations against him now underway at both the state and federal level, Trump announced (to the nation’s chagrin) his third run for President on Tuesday night. He did so at a really long and boring super-spreader event at Mar-a-Lago, the scene of at least one of the many crimes for which he’s being investigated. Parton joins us once again today to discuss whether we should be as worried this time about Trump’s candidacy (she describes it at Salon today as “the America First Vengeance Tour 2024”) and whether he or Ron DeSantis would be more difficult for Democrats to defeat in 2024.
We spend more time, however, discussing the three-ring circus, circular firing squad, or whatever metaphor you wish to use, for the Republican House and Senate leadership battles now under way following last week’s midterm elections in which the GOP appears to have won the narrowest of majorities in the U.S. House — but not much more than that anywhere else. Will the splintered, increasingly loony GOP caucus in the House even be able to get 218 votes for anybody as House Speaker come January? (“They have created an absolutely insane caucus filled with lunatics, and now they’re having to pay the piper on this,” says Parton. “This is what happens when you embolden people like Marjorie Taylor-Greene. She’ll be operating as a shadow Speaker.”)
Also today…A note of caution at the top of the show: Do not be fooled by Trump’s deceptive call at his announcement speech on Tuesday night for “paper ballots” to help fight fraud in elections. He has no clue what he’s talking about. Else he would have called for “hand-marked paper ballots,” since all of the states he lost (but pretends to have won) already use paper ballots! He’s also demanding new voter suppression measures. We explain all of the above today.
In related news, two counties in the state of Mississippi used hand-marked paper ballots in the 2022 midterms for the first time. After some 20 years of forcing voters to vote on 100% unverifiable touchscreen systems — while we’ve been begging them to move to hand-counted paper ballots for all of those years — the clerks of both counties report that voters and pollworkers loved the new system and it worked great! In fact, the clerks also found that it was both faster and more cost-efficient than their 20-year old unverifiable touchscreens. Who could have predicted it?
Following a new state law adopted in April, all counties in MS must upgrade their systems before the 2024 Presidential elections. As noted on today’s show, I’ve long argued that it would likely take a high-profile Republican getting screwed by touchscreen voting systems before GOPers finally demanded a move to verifiable voting systems. I was close. What I should have said was that it would take a high-profile Republican pretending to be screwed by touchscreen voting systems before they’d finally demand such changes.
Finally, we close with some listener email. Enjoy!…
Speaking of more of the same (‘Positively dystopian’: Judge blocks Ron DeSantis’ ‘Stop WOKE’ law by quoting George Orwell).
I find this article not only amusing but also highly biased and hypocritical.
In the documentary, Murder, Spies and Voting Lies, Brad Friedman, definitely confirmed through programmer, Clint Curtis that electronic voting can easily be rigged.
Now, he is making fun of the Republicans for claiming voting fraud.
What a travesty of heavy Democrat bias. When the Republicans use vote rigging, it is a crime. But when it comes to the Democrats there is complete denial of any guilt whatsoever.
What a joke!
Hi Terry!
Thanks for the thoughts and for your mostly accurate description of Murder, Spies and Voting Lies. In fact, Clint does make the argument that voting can be easily rigged through computers, and I agree with that argument — both then and now.
However, there is exactly ZERO evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, despite what is easily the most closely examined election held on computers in U.S. history.
In my nearly 20 years on this beat, I have never argued that any election was rigged — by or for Democrats or Republicans — unless there was independently verifiable evidence to back up such a serious claim. And, so, yes, I absolutely am happy to “make fun” of those who lie about election fraud simply because they lost an election.
Sorry to see you don’t find evidence important when making such a serious allegation. Also sorry to see that you are so easily duped that you believe the 2020 election was rigged despite ANY evidence to support that claim in the two years since it was first fraudulently made by our sore loser former President.
But thanks for stopping by and for the thoughts — as silly as they may be.