This Was Always the Plan

President Trump telegraphed that he would try to steal the election if he didn’t win.

By
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Dear Reader (including those of you who are starting to layer up like Steve Bannon to deal with the cold),

I rather enjoy not writing about Donald Trump. My column today is on why I think forgiving student debt is a bad idea. On Wednesday, I wrote a pithy and fun G-File that barely mentioned the sitting president. It was nice.

I’d like more of this. But I feel like I need to vent some rage. If you don’t want to read it, fine, skip ahead to the Canine Update. Or stop reading entirely. Or unsubscribe. Or eat an enormous wheel of industrial grade salad bar cheese. Do whatever you want—I’m not the boss of you, nor you of me.

The thing is, I am very angry.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Young Riprock

    This article holds up.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Mkapnick

    Do you still think Cocaine Mitch is the adult in the room as you wrote a few weeks ago? Last I checked, he STILL had not acknowledged Biden's win. Is that being an adult or just another hyper-partisan leader? You know who has been the adult in the room this entire election season and especially since he won the Presidency. Joe freaking Biden. The President-Elect. And I never heard him once scream "get these squirrels off of me!". Biden deserves the "Adult in the room" far more than hyper-partisan leader cocaine Mitch. And I write this not as one of your progressive followers but as a classical liberal conservative who use to be a regular GOP voter.

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  3. Gene Wisdom

    Jonah, you are once again the voice of reason and every day I'm glad that I subscribed to the Dispatch. Though I voted for him this time (I wrote in Cruz in 2016), I still consider myself a never Trumper. A very conservative never Trumper. Our Republic deserves far better than it has gotten from Trump's response to this election. The Democratic agenda concerns me deeply but it is time to shift the battleground to Congress and the Court's eventually. No doubt Biden will pick up Obama's and Trump's pen and phone but we can make that work for us in 2022. And hope to God the orange SOB doesn't run again in 2024.

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  4. Mads Lindstrøm

    "If this was all just a show, he wouldn’t need to invite Michigan pols to the White House, presumably to strong arm them."

    The quote above links to the article https://abcnews.go.com/US/wayne-county-republican-canvassers-rescind-votes-certifying-election/story?id=74290114

    However, the article do not talk about inviting anybody to the white house, but about republican canvassers wanting to rescind their vote.

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  5. rob

    If this was always his plan, then the media truly helped out by being so wrong with their polling. Or maybe the media continues to be just as wrong now when it says 'Joe Biden is president elect' as it was when it said that 'Joe Biden is winning by 10 points'.

    This was all predictable and trump was the first to say so when we ran to mail in ballots back in June. The underlying problems with our election system (which include not enforcing photo id, having dirty voting roles, and using computer systems when pen and paper will do just fine) have been exasperated by using mail in ballots where fraud is so much easier. For years whenever there was a chance democrats pushed for a system that made it is easier to commit election fraud. And today by switching almost entirely to mail in ballots by one of our parties, we have reached the point where the amount of possible fraud is greater than the very narrow margins in 6 different states.

    I understand that many people would rather put their head in the sand and get rid of a president they never liked. But that won't make these problems go away. And if we ignore these problems today, then we may never have an honest election.

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    1. Tim Johnson

      Rob: He lost a fair election. Move on

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      1. rob

        We need to fix the system. Require voter photo id and clean voter rolls. Mass mail in voting allows for rampant fraud. 90 million mail in ballots, a 0.1% fraud rate would switch the electoral college. We will never know how many legal votes were made for each candidate. Cant let this happen again.

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      Pat Riot

      We don't have "dirty votes" in our country.

      Democrats have not push for systems that make it easier to commit election fraud.

      Mail-in ballots do not make it easier to commit fraud.

      The voters of both parties used mail-in ballots in this election and have for decades. Several states including Republican-controlled Utah have been using almost exclusively mail-in ballots for years.

      Etc. I guess the real question is why did Trump fire his attorney since she's saying nothing but truths. Did Rudy tell him to do it? Is Rudy part of the Democrat's conspiracy?

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      1. rob

        We have dirty voter rolls. That is where people have moved, died, or are registered under multiple names. When you go to vote they only check to see if you are on a voter roll, this enables voter fraud. Democrats constantly vote to prevent measures to clean up the voter rolls.

        With mail in ballots the only verification is a signature verification. It is hard enough for poll workers to identify signature differences. However, in this election purportedly because of the pandemic the verification was done mostly by computers with a setting of 40% match. Most people will tell you, signature verification is completely ineffective allowing for rampant fraud.

        90 million voters were cast by mail in ballot. If there is a 0.1% fraud rate, that is enough to swing the balance in several swing states.

        The problem is that these issues only show themselves when you completely move to mail in vote in swing states. I am sorry that the level of possible fraud has made this election illegitimate. However, it was predictable and predicted by president trump back in June. The key thing is Fix the System! We can not allow another election to be illegitimate.

        All votes, (other then true rare circumstances such as field deployed military) need to have photo id verification. Nearly everyone in the country has a photo id, and funding should be given to allow those that do not have a photo id to obtain one. Require it to be checked at the post office when sent. Return to sender any that are just dropped in the mail box.

        Clean the voter rolls. Require states to check their rolls against other states and remove anyone that is in two states or has died. This needs to be done before every major election.

        These are simple and easy things. This should never happen again. It isn't fair to either President Trump or Vice President Biden.

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    Rick Harlan

    I was not prepared for "someone would be forgiven for thinking his leaking hair dye was literally bullshit seeping out of his head."
    "In a time when jests are few," this was a doozie! I've caught my breath now. Back to the column!

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    Julie from Texas

    Just this: PREACH.

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    Mike B

    Wow. Looks like Giuliani and Ellis have cut ties with Sidney Powell! If even those two think she's gone off the deep end, you know the wheels are coming off (to pull a couple of cliched metaphors out of the bag).

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      Mike B

      Or maybe she cut ties with them? Either way, I think maybe the vaunted Trump legal challenge is rapidly disintegrating.

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    Richard Cheverton

    Here's my question: who will the haters hate when Trump slouches back to Mar el Lago?

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    1. rob

      I would guess every white male or christian. I don't think there will be any shortage of hate.

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        Richard Cheverton

        Not good enough: it has to be a specific person. The last election proved that a political marketing ploy--"systemic" racism, ie., racism of whites against other races--is a non-starter. That pitch is already in the memory-hole.

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        1. rob

          they have already hated kavanaugh and sandmann and trump hadn't even left office. their ability to hate based on race and gender is very strong. I for one will hide in my basement until 2024 for trumps 3rd term.

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      JohnF

      He has two sons who will be excellent recipients.
      Plus, Nunes, Gaetz, and Jordan will be available, as will Cruz and Cotton.

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  10. Victoria Ferauge

    "The republic will hold." I agree. I also agree with the comment about these shenanigans being a blueprint for future elections and I would bet on a smarter, more charismatic version of Trump.
    And if I may be a perfect pessimist here? We can argue and discuss all we like but the damage is done. The US is not politically stable, its people are not united, its political parties are no longer able to perform their gatekeeping functions and peaceful power transitions can no longer be taken for granted. These are all signs of a nation in rapid decline. Get out and look around the world - our credibility is shot, other nations are shrugging and moving on. Check out the new Asia Pacific trade deal - China is in and we are out. I do not believe Biden can fix this. I don't think anyone can. Yep, feeling mighty low right now.

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