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THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's
-
2021-04-24 at 1:33 PM UTCMaking
America
Germ-free
Again
Business Insider
Ex-White House aide reveals 'inside story' of what happened when Trump claimed injecting disinfectant could cure COVID-19
jzitser@businessinsider.com (Joshua Zitser)
Trump famously touted injecting disinfectant as a cure for COVID-19 during a press briefing.
Olivia Troye, a former aide, said that the White House Coronavirus Task Force was "in shock."
The task force then had to discuss how to mitigate people actually ingesting bleach, Troye said.
A former aide has revealed what happened when then-President Donald Trump first suggested injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19, HuffPost reported.
Olivia Troye, who served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and also as a staffer to former Vice President Mike Pence, shared the "inside story" in a video released by the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project on Saturday.
"We were in shock," Troye said in the clip. "You could see everyone looking around the room, saying, 'did he really just say that?'"
Prior to the daily briefing on April 23, 2020, Troye said that the task force had agreed with Trump that he should communicate that "the mitigations and the 45 days to slow the spread had worked and the numbers had dropped."
Trump, however, veered off-course in the presser and instead decided to focus on a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security about sunshine and cleaning products potentially being able to reduce the number of hours that the coronavirus could live on a surface.
During the conference, Trump famously and erroneously suggested that injecting disinfectant inside people could work as a cure for COVID-19.
He said: "And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs."
Injecting oneself with bleach or any other disinfectant is not only dangerous and even life-threatening, but it is also not an effective treatment or cure for the coronavirus.
Troye explained how the task force was horrified and frustrated by the comments. "He just threw away all of the work we've done," she said. "That night there was a discussion of how do we mitigate people actually ingesting bleach," she continued.
Later on in the clip, the former aide cited this incident as an example of why Trump should not run for office again. "He's hinted at running at 2024, Troye said, "That's why we've got to remember moments like this... because we can't allow him or someone like him to ever hold power again." -
2021-04-24 at 3:36 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Making
America
Germ-free
Again
Business Insider
Ex-White House aide reveals 'inside story' of what happened when Trump claimed injecting disinfectant could cure COVID-19
jzitser@businessinsider.com (Joshua Zitser)
Trump famously touted injecting disinfectant as a cure for COVID-19 during a press briefing.
Olivia Troye, a former aide, said that the White House Coronavirus Task Force was "in shock."
The task force then had to discuss how to mitigate people actually ingesting bleach, Troye said.
A former aide has revealed what happened when then-President Donald Trump first suggested injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19, HuffPost reported.
Olivia Troye, who served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and also as a staffer to former Vice President Mike Pence, shared the "inside story" in a video released by the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project on Saturday.
"We were in shock," Troye said in the clip. "You could see everyone looking around the room, saying, 'did he really just say that?'"
Prior to the daily briefing on April 23, 2020, Troye said that the task force had agreed with Trump that he should communicate that "the mitigations and the 45 days to slow the spread had worked and the numbers had dropped."
Trump, however, veered off-course in the presser and instead decided to focus on a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security about sunshine and cleaning products potentially being able to reduce the number of hours that the coronavirus could live on a surface.
During the conference, Trump famously and erroneously suggested that injecting disinfectant inside people could work as a cure for COVID-19.
He said: "And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs."
Injecting oneself with bleach or any other disinfectant is not only dangerous and even life-threatening, but it is also not an effective treatment or cure for the coronavirus.
Troye explained how the task force was horrified and frustrated by the comments. "He just threw away all of the work we've done," she said. "That night there was a discussion of how do we mitigate people actually ingesting bleach," she continued.
Later on in the clip, the former aide cited this incident as an example of why Trump should not run for office again. "He's hinted at running at 2024, Troye said, "That's why we've got to remember moments like this… because we can't allow him or someone like him to ever hold power again."
1/10
Would not read again. -
2021-04-24 at 5:10 PM UTCHere, you can just watch this and not have to strain yourself reading.
Like Father, Like Son
-
2021-04-25 at 5:39 PM UTCTRUMP
Making
America
Greedy
Again
Business Insider
Minutes before Trump departed office, a mysterious Florida company reportedly took over a slice of the Pentagon's internet space
kshalvey@businessinsider.com (Kevin Shalvey)
A Florida firm took over a slice of the internet owned by the Pentagon during Biden's inauguration.
It now controls as much as 6% of the total internet, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
That was more than either AT&T or Comcast controlled, The Associated Press reported.
A mysterious Florida company is said to have taken control of a substantial portion of the internet owned by the Pentagon, only three minutes before President Donald Trump's official term in office ended.
Since then, the company has increased its control to as much as 6% of the total internet, or about 175 million addresses, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
The Associated Press reported that it controlled more space than some of the world's largest internet providers, including Comcast and AT&T.
The company was identified as Global Resource Systems LLC, headquartered in Plantation, Florida. According to Florida state records, Global Resource Systems filed paperwork in October 2020. The paperwork said it was incorporated in Delaware.
A Department of Defense spokesperson told the AP in a statement that the government was publicizing the space to "assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space."
On Twitter on Saturday, the AP posted: "What a Pentagon spokesman could not explain is why the Defense Department chose Global Resource Systems LLC, a company that seems not to have existed until September, to manage the address space."
A Saturday blog post from Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a networking information provider, detailed the "great mystery."
On inauguration day, at 16:57 UTC, or 11:57am in Washington, a message was posted by an "entity that hadn't been heard from in over a decade," Madory wrote.
The post came from AS8003, announcing it had taken over unused ranges of the IPv4 internet space owned by the Department of Defense, according to Madory.
He wrote that the timing was "moments after the swearing-in of Joe Biden as the President of the United States and minutes before the statutory end of the administration of Donald Trump at noon Eastern time."
The AP and Post sent reporters to the listed address for the Global Resource Systems, according to reports. Both times, the reporters were turned away without information.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-25 at 5:40 PM UTCFlorider Hackers took over muh internet.
-
2021-04-25 at 5:50 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 TRUMP
Making
America
Greedy
Again
Business Insider
Minutes before Trump departed office, a mysterious Florida company reportedly took over a slice of the Pentagon's internet space
kshalvey@businessinsider.com (Kevin Shalvey)
A Florida firm took over a slice of the internet owned by the Pentagon during Biden's inauguration.
It now controls as much as 6% of the total internet, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
That was more than either AT&T or Comcast controlled, The Associated Press reported.
A mysterious Florida company is said to have taken control of a substantial portion of the internet owned by the Pentagon, only three minutes before President Donald Trump's official term in office ended.
Since then, the company has increased its control to as much as 6% of the total internet, or about 175 million addresses, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
The Associated Press reported that it controlled more space than some of the world's largest internet providers, including Comcast and AT&T.
The company was identified as Global Resource Systems LLC, headquartered in Plantation, Florida. According to Florida state records, Global Resource Systems filed paperwork in October 2020. The paperwork said it was incorporated in Delaware.
A Department of Defense spokesperson told the AP in a statement that the government was publicizing the space to "assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space."
On Twitter on Saturday, the AP posted: "What a Pentagon spokesman could not explain is why the Defense Department chose Global Resource Systems LLC, a company that seems not to have existed until September, to manage the address space."
A Saturday blog post from Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a networking information provider, detailed the "great mystery."
On inauguration day, at 16:57 UTC, or 11:57am in Washington, a message was posted by an "entity that hadn't been heard from in over a decade," Madory wrote.
The post came from AS8003, announcing it had taken over unused ranges of the IPv4 internet space owned by the Department of Defense, according to Madory.
He wrote that the timing was "moments after the swearing-in of Joe Biden as the President of the United States and minutes before the statutory end of the administration of Donald Trump at noon Eastern time."
The AP and Post sent reporters to the listed address for the Global Resource Systems, according to reports. Both times, the reporters were turned away without information.
This is interesting but why is this blamed on Trump? -
2021-04-25 at 5:56 PM UTCIt seems very questionable that this occurred just as Trump's ass was getting booted out of the White House.
I'm pretty sure more will be coming out about this.
Just like his taxes! -
2021-04-25 at 6:11 PM UTCseems I heard he was bangin ur mom when he was 17
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2021-04-25 at 6:17 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-25 at 10:51 PM UTCQAnon
Making
America
Goofy
Again
Business Insider
A QAnon believer, who smashed his way into the Capitol, believed he'd stormed the White House, FBI affidavit says
sankel@businessinsider.com (Sophia Ankel)
A Florida man who stormed the Capitol confused the building for the White House, an affidavit says.
Kenneth Kelly sent two text messages on January 6, referring to the Capitol as the "White House."
According to a relative, Kelly held extreme political views and was a QAnon believer.
A Florida man who stormed the Capitol on January 6 repeatedly referred to it as the "White House" in text messages to a relative, according to an affidavit by an unnamed FBI special agent.
Kenneth Kelly, 58, of Ocala, Florida, was amid a group of people who broke the windows of the Capitol building on January 6, the affidavit claims.
According to a relative identified in the affidavit only as "W-1", Kelly sent them a text message on the day alongside an image that showed him standing inside what appears to be the Capitol.
"Inside White house via breaking in windows," Kelly allegedly wrote in the text. "Tree of liberty was watered today!"
The relative also claimed Kelly had driven to Washington DC from his home in Florida, "knowing full well they were going to break in," according to the affidavit.
Kelly reportedly also sent another photo to a second witness, identified as "W-2", which showed rioters scaling the side of the Capitol building, writing: "Patriots stormed the White House, broke in while senate was in session..."
"Patriots took back our capital today," he added.
According to his relative, Kelly was a Trump supporter with "extreme political views" who had mentioned the QAnon conspiracy theory to them a few months before the riot.
Federal investigators said they were able to identify Kelly in a surveillance video from inside the Capitol building, wearing a dark blue beanie with "TRUMP" written across it.
The 58-year-old turned himself in on Friday and is facing charges of disorderly conduct in a restricted building, knowingly entering a restricted building, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, The Orlando Sentinel reported.
More than 430 people have so far been charged in connection to the riot, according to a tracker by Insider.
The FBI is still searching for a shadowy figure known as "the Polecat" and expect an arrest soon. -
2021-04-25 at 11:04 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 A QAnon believer, who smashed his way into the Capitol, believed he'd stormed the White House, FBI affidavit says
Are these people dangerous insurrectionists or are they goofy and misled?
You can't have it both ways.More than 430 people have so far been charged in connection to the riot, according to a tracker by Insider.
How many people have been charged in connection with the BLM riots, arsons and killings over the summer? -
2021-04-25 at 11:54 PM UTCincluding charged and released, or arrested but not charged,, or just let to be a wildling set apon the city with no reprecussions
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2021-04-25 at 11:56 PM UTCMAGGOT
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2021-04-26 at 12:03 AM UTCur momma
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2021-04-26 at 12:04 AM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-26 at 5:01 AM UTCMake
America
Goosestep
Again
-or-
FOURTH TIME'S A CHARM!
The New York Times
Half a Year After Trump’s Defeat, Arizona Republicans Are Recounting the Vote
Michael Wines
PHOENIX — It seemed so simple back in December.
Responding to angry voters who echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, Arizona Republicans promised a detailed review of the vote that showed Mr. Trump to have been the first Republican presidential nominee to lose the state since 1996. “We hold an audit,” State Senator Eddie Farnsworth said at a Judiciary Committee hearing. “And then we can put this to rest.”
But when a parade of flatbed trucks last week hauled boxes of voting equipment and 78 pallets containing the 2.1 million ballots of Arizona’s largest county to a decrepit local coliseum, it kicked off a seat-of-the-pants audit process that seemed more likely to amplify Republican grievances than to put them to rest.
Officials unloaded election equipment at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds in Phoenix on Wednesday.© Matt York/Associated Press Officials unloaded election equipment at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds in Phoenix on Wednesday.
Almost half a year after the election Mr. Trump lost, the promised audit has become a snipe hunt for skulduggery that has spanned a court battle, death threats and calls to arrest the elected leadership of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
The head of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm that Republican senators hired to oversee the audit, has embraced Mr. Trump’s baseless theories of election theft and has suggested, contrary to available evidence, that Mr. Trump actually won Arizona by 200,000 votes. The pro-Trump cable channel One America News Network has started a fund-raiser to finance the venture and has been named one of the nonpartisan observers that will keep the audit on the straight and narrow.
In fact, three previous reviews showed no sign of significant fraud or any reason to doubt President Biden’s victory. But the senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.
Critics in both parties charge that an effort that began as a way to placate angry Trump voters has become a political embarrassment and another blow to the once-inviolable democratic norm that losers and winners alike honor the results of elections.
“You know the dog that caught the car?” said Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the Republican-dominated Maricopa Board of Supervisors. “The dog doesn’t know what to do with it.”
After a brief pause on Friday ordered by a state court judge, the audit continues without clarity on who will do the counting, what it will cost and who will pay for the process, which is expected to last into mid-May. The One America network is livestreaming it, and Mr. Trump is cheering from the sidelines.
Though three previous checks showed no sign of cheating, Arizona senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.© Pool photo by Ross D. Franklin Though three previous checks showed no sign of cheating, Arizona senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.
In an email statement on Saturday, he praised the “brave American Patriots” behind the effort and demanded that Gov. Doug Ducey, a frequent target of his displeasure, dispatch the state police or National Guard for their protection.
Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, was less enthused.
“My concern grows deeper by the hour,” she said in an email on Friday. “It is clear that no one involved in this process knows what they are doing, and they are making it up as they go along.”
The Senate president, Karen Fann, said in December that the audit had no hidden agenda and could not change the settled election results in Arizona, regardless of what it showed.
“A lot of our constituents have a lot of questions about how the voting, the electoral system works, the security of it, the validity of it,” she said, and so the senators needed experts to examine voting processes and determine “what else could we do to verify the votes were correct and accurate.”
Other state legislatures have looked into bogus claims of election fraud. But the Arizona audit, driven in part by conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, is in a league of its own. Experts say it underscores the sharp rightward shift of the Legislature and the state Republican Party even as the state edges toward the political center.
“I get why they’re doing it, because half of the G.O.P. believes there was widespread fraud,” said Mike Noble, a Phoenix pollster who got his start in Republican politics. “The only problem is, a majority of the electorate doesn’t believe there was widespread fraud.
“The longer they push this,” he said, “the more they’re alienating people in the middle.”
In Arizona, the state party is headed by Kelli Ward, a former state senator who has rejected Mr. Biden’s victory and supports the audit. Under her leadership, the party in January censured Mr. Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain for being insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
The 16 Republicans in the State Senate reflect the party’s lurch to the right. November’s elections ousted the Senate’s two most moderate Republicans, replacing one with a Democrat and another with a Republican who claims lifetime membership in the Oath Keepers, the extremist group that helped lead the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Another self-proclaimed Oath Keeper, State Representative Mark Finchem, proposed in January to give the Legislature the power to reject presidential election results and choose new electors by a majority vote. (The proposal went nowhere). Mr. Finchem since has become a vocal backer of the audit.
“The people in the Legislature are more prone to believe in the conspiracy theories and are more prone to espouse them” than in the past, said Barrett Marson, a Phoenix campaign consultant and a former Republican spokesman for the Arizona State House.
Ms. Fann, Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Finchem did not respond to requests for interviews.
The Senate’s rightward drift is simply explained, political analysts say. Most of the 30 Senate districts are so uncompetitive that the Democratic and Republican primaries effectively choose who will serve as senators. Because most voters sit out primary elections, the ones who do show up — for Republicans, that often means far-right Trump supporters — are the key to getting elected.
Responding to stolen-election claims, through tougher voting laws or inquiries, is by far those voters’ top issue, said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican campaign strategist in Phoenix.
“They’re representing their constituency,” he said. “The whole process was built to produce this.”
The senators warmed to the notion of a Maricopa County audit from the first mention of it in early December.
Before long, they sent subpoenas to the county seeking the 2.1 million ballots, access to 385 voting machines and other equipment like check-in poll books, voting machine passwords and personal details on everyone who voted. The supervisors resisted, calling the election fraud-free, and said they wanted a court ruling on the subpoenas’ legality.
The reaction was immediate: The four Republicans and one Democrat on the Board of Supervisors were deluged with thousands of telephone calls and emails from Trump supporters, many from out of state, some promising violence.
“All five supervisors were receiving death threats,” said Mr. Gallardo, the Democratic supervisor. Two police officers were posted outside his home.
Hoping to head off a dispute, the supervisors hired two federally approved firms to conduct a forensic audit of the county’s voting machines. The audit concluded that the equipment had performed flawlessly.
Ms. Fann, who in the past had been seen as a moderate conservative, said the Senate wanted a stricter review. Senators said they had hired “an independent, qualified forensic auditing firm” for the task.
Then it developed that their selection, Allied Security Operations Group, had asserted that Arizona voting machines had been hacked in an “insidious and egregious ploy” to elect Mr. Biden.
The senators backtracked, but Jack Sellers, the chairman of the Maricopa County supervisors, charged in a Facebook post that they had chosen “a debunked conspiracy theorist” for the audit.
Tempers flared, and all 16 Republican senators proposed to hold the supervisors in contempt, potentially sending them to jail.
But that fell apart after Senator Paul Boyer, a Phoenix Republican, backed out after deciding he could not jail the supervisors for disobeying a subpoena they considered illegal.
As he stood on the Senate floor explaining his stance, his cellphone began buzzing with furious texts and emails. Some were threatening; some mentioned his wife’s workplace and their toddler son.
“It was like, ‘You’d better watch your back — we’re coming for you,’” Mr. Boyer said. The family spent days in hiding before returning home with a 24-hour police guard.
Just two weeks later, on Feb. 27, a county court ruled the Senate subpoenas legal.
The Senate, seemingly caught unawares, initially refused to accept delivery of the subpoenaed material for lack of a secure place to store it. Officials rented a local coliseum, but the county sheriff’s office refused to provide security, calling the job outside its scope.
The second firm hired to analyze the audit results, Cyber Ninjas, says it is an industry leader. But The Arizona Republic soon reported that the company’s chief executive, Doug Logan, had posted a litany of stolen-election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account that he had deleted in January.
Among them was a retweeted post suggesting that Dominion Voting Systems, a favorite target of the right, had robbed Mr. Trump of 200,000 votes in Arizona. Dominion says Cyber Ninjas is “led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the “Big Lie” of a rigged election.
Mr. Logan, at a news conference last week said the company was committed to a fair, transparent process. “It’s really, really important to us that we have integrity in the way we do this count and in the results that come out of it,” he told reporters.
Ms. Fann has said that the firm and others it will oversee are “well qualified and well experienced.”
But unease about the audit has continued to mushroom. Ms. Hobbs, the secretary of state, asked the state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, to investigate the Senate’s handling of the procedure, citing a lack of transparency about security of ballots. She noted that some of the Legislature’s furthest-right firebrands have had free access to the coliseum even as it remained unclear whether reporters and impartial election experts would be allowed to observe the proceedings.
He declined.
Greg Burton, the executive editor of The Arizona Republic, said in a statement on Friday that “Senate leaders have throttled legitimate press access and handed Arizona’s votes to conspiracy theorists.”
Amid the growing uproar, the Republican senators who have approved and stood behind the audit since its beginning have largely been silent about concerns over its integrity. -
2021-04-26 at 5:21 AM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Make
America
Goosestep
Again
-or-
FOURTH TIME'S A CHARM!
The New York Times
Half a Year After Trump’s Defeat, Arizona Republicans Are Recounting the Vote
Michael Wines
PHOENIX — It seemed so simple back in December.
Responding to angry voters who echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, Arizona Republicans promised a detailed review of the vote that showed Mr. Trump to have been the first Republican presidential nominee to lose the state since 1996. “We hold an audit,” State Senator Eddie Farnsworth said at a Judiciary Committee hearing. “And then we can put this to rest.”
But when a parade of flatbed trucks last week hauled boxes of voting equipment and 78 pallets containing the 2.1 million ballots of Arizona’s largest county to a decrepit local coliseum, it kicked off a seat-of-the-pants audit process that seemed more likely to amplify Republican grievances than to put them to rest.
Officials unloaded election equipment at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds in Phoenix on Wednesday.© Matt York/Associated Press Officials unloaded election equipment at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds in Phoenix on Wednesday.
Almost half a year after the election Mr. Trump lost, the promised audit has become a snipe hunt for skulduggery that has spanned a court battle, death threats and calls to arrest the elected leadership of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
The head of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm that Republican senators hired to oversee the audit, has embraced Mr. Trump’s baseless theories of election theft and has suggested, contrary to available evidence, that Mr. Trump actually won Arizona by 200,000 votes. The pro-Trump cable channel One America News Network has started a fund-raiser to finance the venture and has been named one of the nonpartisan observers that will keep the audit on the straight and narrow.
In fact, three previous reviews showed no sign of significant fraud or any reason to doubt President Biden’s victory. But the senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.
Critics in both parties charge that an effort that began as a way to placate angry Trump voters has become a political embarrassment and another blow to the once-inviolable democratic norm that losers and winners alike honor the results of elections.
“You know the dog that caught the car?” said Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the Republican-dominated Maricopa Board of Supervisors. “The dog doesn’t know what to do with it.”
After a brief pause on Friday ordered by a state court judge, the audit continues without clarity on who will do the counting, what it will cost and who will pay for the process, which is expected to last into mid-May. The One America network is livestreaming it, and Mr. Trump is cheering from the sidelines.
Though three previous checks showed no sign of cheating, Arizona senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.© Pool photo by Ross D. Franklin Though three previous checks showed no sign of cheating, Arizona senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.
In an email statement on Saturday, he praised the “brave American Patriots” behind the effort and demanded that Gov. Doug Ducey, a frequent target of his displeasure, dispatch the state police or National Guard for their protection.
Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, was less enthused.
“My concern grows deeper by the hour,” she said in an email on Friday. “It is clear that no one involved in this process knows what they are doing, and they are making it up as they go along.”
The Senate president, Karen Fann, said in December that the audit had no hidden agenda and could not change the settled election results in Arizona, regardless of what it showed.
“A lot of our constituents have a lot of questions about how the voting, the electoral system works, the security of it, the validity of it,” she said, and so the senators needed experts to examine voting processes and determine “what else could we do to verify the votes were correct and accurate.”
Other state legislatures have looked into bogus claims of election fraud. But the Arizona audit, driven in part by conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, is in a league of its own. Experts say it underscores the sharp rightward shift of the Legislature and the state Republican Party even as the state edges toward the political center.
“I get why they’re doing it, because half of the G.O.P. believes there was widespread fraud,” said Mike Noble, a Phoenix pollster who got his start in Republican politics. “The only problem is, a majority of the electorate doesn’t believe there was widespread fraud.
“The longer they push this,” he said, “the more they’re alienating people in the middle.”
In Arizona, the state party is headed by Kelli Ward, a former state senator who has rejected Mr. Biden’s victory and supports the audit. Under her leadership, the party in January censured Mr. Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain for being insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
The 16 Republicans in the State Senate reflect the party’s lurch to the right. November’s elections ousted the Senate’s two most moderate Republicans, replacing one with a Democrat and another with a Republican who claims lifetime membership in the Oath Keepers, the extremist group that helped lead the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Another self-proclaimed Oath Keeper, State Representative Mark Finchem, proposed in January to give the Legislature the power to reject presidential election results and choose new electors by a majority vote. (The proposal went nowhere). Mr. Finchem since has become a vocal backer of the audit.
“The people in the Legislature are more prone to believe in the conspiracy theories and are more prone to espouse them” than in the past, said Barrett Marson, a Phoenix campaign consultant and a former Republican spokesman for the Arizona State House.
Ms. Fann, Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Finchem did not respond to requests for interviews.
The Senate’s rightward drift is simply explained, political analysts say. Most of the 30 Senate districts are so uncompetitive that the Democratic and Republican primaries effectively choose who will serve as senators. Because most voters sit out primary elections, the ones who do show up — for Republicans, that often means far-right Trump supporters — are the key to getting elected.
Responding to stolen-election claims, through tougher voting laws or inquiries, is by far those voters’ top issue, said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican campaign strategist in Phoenix.
“They’re representing their constituency,” he said. “The whole process was built to produce this.”
The senators warmed to the notion of a Maricopa County audit from the first mention of it in early December.
Before long, they sent subpoenas to the county seeking the 2.1 million ballots, access to 385 voting machines and other equipment like check-in poll books, voting machine passwords and personal details on everyone who voted. The supervisors resisted, calling the election fraud-free, and said they wanted a court ruling on the subpoenas’ legality.
The reaction was immediate: The four Republicans and one Democrat on the Board of Supervisors were deluged with thousands of telephone calls and emails from Trump supporters, many from out of state, some promising violence.
“All five supervisors were receiving death threats,” said Mr. Gallardo, the Democratic supervisor. Two police officers were posted outside his home.
Hoping to head off a dispute, the supervisors hired two federally approved firms to conduct a forensic audit of the county’s voting machines. The audit concluded that the equipment had performed flawlessly.
Ms. Fann, who in the past had been seen as a moderate conservative, said the Senate wanted a stricter review. Senators said they had hired “an independent, qualified forensic auditing firm” for the task.
Then it developed that their selection, Allied Security Operations Group, had asserted that Arizona voting machines had been hacked in an “insidious and egregious ploy” to elect Mr. Biden.
The senators backtracked, but Jack Sellers, the chairman of the Maricopa County supervisors, charged in a Facebook post that they had chosen “a debunked conspiracy theorist” for the audit.
Tempers flared, and all 16 Republican senators proposed to hold the supervisors in contempt, potentially sending them to jail.
But that fell apart after Senator Paul Boyer, a Phoenix Republican, backed out after deciding he could not jail the supervisors for disobeying a subpoena they considered illegal.
As he stood on the Senate floor explaining his stance, his cellphone began buzzing with furious texts and emails. Some were threatening; some mentioned his wife’s workplace and their toddler son.
“It was like, ‘You’d better watch your back — we’re coming for you,’” Mr. Boyer said. The family spent days in hiding before returning home with a 24-hour police guard.
Just two weeks later, on Feb. 27, a county court ruled the Senate subpoenas legal.
The Senate, seemingly caught unawares, initially refused to accept delivery of the subpoenaed material for lack of a secure place to store it. Officials rented a local coliseum, but the county sheriff’s office refused to provide security, calling the job outside its scope.
The second firm hired to analyze the audit results, Cyber Ninjas, says it is an industry leader. But The Arizona Republic soon reported that the company’s chief executive, Doug Logan, had posted a litany of stolen-election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account that he had deleted in January.
Among them was a retweeted post suggesting that Dominion Voting Systems, a favorite target of the right, had robbed Mr. Trump of 200,000 votes in Arizona. Dominion says Cyber Ninjas is “led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the “Big Lie” of a rigged election.
Mr. Logan, at a news conference last week said the company was committed to a fair, transparent process. “It’s really, really important to us that we have integrity in the way we do this count and in the results that come out of it,” he told reporters.
Ms. Fann has said that the firm and others it will oversee are “well qualified and well experienced.”
But unease about the audit has continued to mushroom. Ms. Hobbs, the secretary of state, asked the state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, to investigate the Senate’s handling of the procedure, citing a lack of transparency about security of ballots. She noted that some of the Legislature’s furthest-right firebrands have had free access to the coliseum even as it remained unclear whether reporters and impartial election experts would be allowed to observe the proceedings.
He declined.
Greg Burton, the executive editor of The Arizona Republic, said in a statement on Friday that “Senate leaders have throttled legitimate press access and handed Arizona’s votes to conspiracy theorists.”
Amid the growing uproar, the Republican senators who have approved and stood behind the audit since its beginning have largely been silent about concerns over its integrity.
tl/drThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-26 at 2:10 PM UTCI'LL DRINK TO THAT!
The Guardian
Ex-Trump adviser mocked for claiming Biden pushing ‘plant-based beer’
Martin Pengelly
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has joined a flood of social media users gleefully trolling Larry Kudlow after the former economic adviser to Donald Trump complained that Joe Biden wanted Americans to drink “plant-based beer”.
Kudlow made the indignant claim on his Fox Business show on Friday, saying Biden’s climate policies and attempt to slash emissions would force Americans to “stop eating meat, stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy and animal-based fats”.
“OK, got that? No burgers on 4 July. No steaks on the barbecue ... So get ready. You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag.”
Beer is typically made from grains, hops and yeast – not steak, sausages or chops.
“So this seems to be the latest rightwing attempt to smear Bidenomics,” he wrote on Saturday. “There is, of course, nothing about eliminating meat in Biden’s plans; so this is like the imaginary mobs that burned our cities to the ground.
“If you read what Kudlow actually said, he’s cagey – doesn’t say that Biden proposed this, only that some people say this is what would happen. But Fox viewers won’t notice, which is the intention.
“This is what rightwing politics is down to. It’s all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it’s primed to believe in liberal villainy. They’re not even trying to engage on actual issues.”
But on Sunday night Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the Senate, chose a more sarcastic path.
“Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer,” he tweeted. “Thanks Joe Biden.” -
2021-04-26 at 4:30 PM UTChttps://www.foxnews.com/us/blm-protesters-oklahoma-capitol-gop-bills-drivers-riot-police-doxxing-transgender
Why do BLM get away with storming government buildings? -
2021-04-26 at 4:43 PM UTCWhy aren't you in prison yet?
