There sure is evidence of fraud. Just not the fraud Trump is ranting about.

[Rogue Valley]

There sure is evidence of fraud. Just not the fraud Trump is ranting about.

12/1/20
I read Trump-inspired election lawsuits so you don’t have to. Unlike some observers, I read them with an open mind. What I see is that these lawsuits have not turned up a single new provable allegation in three-plus weeks. The newest filings are mere regurgitations of the first, but longer and sloppier because no one is bothering to proofread them anymore. This tells me two things: First, there is no there there. If the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez actually created a vote-stealing machine that was later exported to the United States so that a bipartisan conspiracy could “elect” Joe Biden, while tipping the rest of the election to the Republicans; and if, for good measure, urban Democrats manufactured truckloads of phony ballots in pursuit of the same mixed results; and if, to be extra-sure of the outcome, the U.S. Postal Service engaged in wholesale theft of ballots to sell them to equally corrupt buyers; and if, to protect this vast criminal enterprise, the Justice Department and FBI turned a blind eye to the entire scheme; and if all the other unsubstantiated allegations tossed around by President Trump and his allies are true — Trump’s so-called elite strike force might not have all the goods by now, but there would at least be a fresh item or two on the shelves. Second, the paltriness of the legal effort is a dead giveaway of the real game. Why pretend to pursue a case that you are not actually pursuing? Money. The phony legal effort is a tool cynically employed to separate Trump supporters from their cash.

It’s working beautifully. According to published reports, Trump’s personal political action committee raised $170 million in November by squeezing donors to stop the (non)steal. That’s a lot of lettuce — more money than Trump was raising in recent months for his actual campaign. And here’s the beauty part for a man on the make: Most of those millions are Trump’s to spend essentially without limits. Too bad Trump University closed down. As ex-president, Trump could have offered a seminar titled “Tearing Down Democracy for Fun and Profit.” And the president’s personal PAC is only the tip of the iceberg. Of course, the globe-trotting opportunist Stephen K. Bannon is in the mix. The former Trump strategist and his sometime partner in grift, Brian Kolfage, built a potentially lucrative network of “StopTheSteal” pages on Facebook — even as Bannon awaited trial on charges (for which he pleaded not guilty) that he took cash illegally from a charity promising to build a border wall. Facebook took down the pages. I could go on. The Internet is a souk of cheap-jack merchandise — banners, flags, hats, bumper stickers, T-shirts — aimed at poor saps suckered into Trump’s phony war. This cynical commerce is a fitting end to an unseemly presidency: one more grand con, another monetized lie. There’s a massive fraud going on here, for sure. But not the one Trump is ranting about.

I've often wondered how people can be so gullible and downright, well, stupid. It's not a sophisticated scheme. You can see it in action on any given Sunday morning when the preacher begs for dollars from the vestibule of his billion dollar church so he can continue to save your rotten soul. We see it all the time from politicians, many of them multimillionaires. Heck, Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler's husband - Jeffrey C. Sprecher - is Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. I don't thinks she's worrying about where her next meal is coming from. And yet she begs for donations, just as the multi-millionaire Donald Trump does. All of these wealthy people begging for your money. And they get it from the rubes. By the truckload. Tax free. No wonder Trump says he loves the uneducated.

Still, I don't quite get it. Why do people send these hucksters their money? Money they probably worked very hard for. Sigh, I just don't get it.

 

[Emily L]

You make a great point, Rogue, and I'm not arguing against it, although maybe at first it will sound like it.

Sometimes asking for money is a way to get the public to feel like they have a state in the outcome. If I were to give $5 to Trump's fund, then I would certainly be interested in whether my money went to waste or not.

I have great respect for those who fought in World War II, and I hope this doesn't offend anyone. But I was once told that the U.S. Savings Bonds campaign wasn't so much to raise money--the Defense Department had plenty--but to get the public involved in the war effort. If I'm wrong about that, I'll certainly apologize.