Lou Dobbs on his Fox Business show:
“We’re eight weeks from the election, and we still don’t have verifiable, tangible support for the crimes that everyone knows were committed — that is, defrauding other citizens who voted with fraudulent votes. We know that’s the case in Nevada, we know it’s the case in Pennsylvania and a number of other states, but we have had a devil of a time finding actual proof. Why?”
“The leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested by D.C. police Monday afternoon on a warrant charging him with burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a historic Black church during a demonstration last month,” the Washington Post reports.
Jonathan Chait: “Trump has spent his entire presidency battering away at democratic norms. He has been previewing his intention to deny the legitimacy of the election since before the 2016 election, which he relentlessly dismissed as rigged. He has been hinting at his intention to stay in office beyond his constitutionally allotted term since at least 2019, when he began saying ‘the people’ would ‘demand’ he stay in office ‘longer’ than eight years.”
“To support Trump’s reelection was always to endorse an attack on democracy. The chief divide between the party was between those Republicans who denied Trump’s clearly signaled intent to attack the democratic system, and those who reveled in it.”
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Zeynep Tufekci: “We are in a race against time, and the virus appears to be gaining an unfortunate ability to sprint just as we get closer to the finish line.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) told WATL that he considered his phone call with President Trump to be a “private conversation” and would not have shared details of it if the president had not sent a false tweet about it.
Said Raffensperger: “If President Trump wouldn’t have tweeted out anything and would’ve stayed silent, we would’ve stayed silent as well. If you’re going to put out stuff that we don’t believe is true, then we will respond in kind.”
“We invited each of the 12 senators involved in plotting this disgraceful effort to come on the show this morning, to try to defend and explain their position. Each of them declined or failed to respond. It all recalls what Ulysses Grant once wrote in 1861: ‘There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots.’ How would you describe the parties today?”
— Jake Tapper, on CNN.
A new poll for a GOP super PAC in Georgia:
For comparison, here’s FiveThirtyEight polling average:
“President Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger represents a new low in this whole futile and sorry episode.”
— Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), in a statement.
Dominion Voting Systems plans to sue attorney Sidney Powell “imminently” for defamation, and is continuing to explore similar suits against President Trump and others, Axios reports.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that England will enter a six-week lockdown, as the spread of a highly contagious new variant threatens to overwhelm the country’s health system, the BBC reports.
Johnson said that the entire country will be placed into full lockdown, with household mixing banned indoors and only essential shops remaining open.
Politico: “It’s the worst-kept secret in Georgia that Abrams is gearing up for a rematch against Kemp in 2022… The Senate runoffs are shaping up as the first salvo in a Kemp-Abrams rematch — a test of whether Abrams’ yearslong mobilization efforts can solidify Georgia’s status as a purple or even blue state, or if Biden’s victory over President Trump was an aberration.”
New York Times: Georgia is getting more blue. The Senate runoffs will tell you how much.
David Graham: “The moral hazard of the Republican stance on the Ukraine plot was clear. If Trump got away with extorting Ukraine and trying to rig the election process in his favor, he’d take the lesson that he could continue his brazen interference in elections without consequence. The only remaining check on him would be the voters—and he was looking for ways to juke them, too.”
“Reaching this conclusion didn’t require clairvoyance, because Trump was open about it even amid impeachment. As he stood accused of privately pressuring Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, he publicly asked China to do so. He continued his pressure play on Ukraine, too, though it never came to anything.”
“Trump quickly proved me right. He began pushing out officials who had testified in the impeachment inquiry. In May, he tried to extort election-procedure changes from Democratic-led states. The post-election moves, and especially the coup call, are the most brazen and direct echo of the Ukraine plot, and they show why acquittal was so dangerous to the republic.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a top House Republican, said President Trump’s call with top Georgia election officials asking them to “find” more votes for him was “deeply troubling,” making her the highest-level Republican to publicly criticize Trump’s conduct, USA Today reports.
She added: “I think everybody ought to listen to the full hour of it.”
Cheney sent out a lengthy memo to GOP lawmakers urging them not to take part in the challenge of the Electoral College vote.
The U.S. attorney in Atlanta abruptly departed his post Monday, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
In an internal email obtained by TPM, Byung Jin “BJay” Pak, cited only “unforeseen circumstances” as the reason he was leaving Monday rather than on January 20, as he had previously announced.
A Milwaukee-based law firm is distancing itself from one of the attorneys involved in President Trump’s disturbing call trying to overturn the results of the Georgia election, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“President Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it,” the New York Times reports.
“In the 220 years since a defeated John Adams turned over the White House to his rival, firmly establishing the peaceful transfer of power as a bedrock principle, no sitting president who lost an election has tried to hang onto power by rejecting the Electoral College and subverting the will of the voters — until now. It is a scenario at once utterly unthinkable and yet feared since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s tenure.”
“That he is almost certain to fail does not mitigate the damage he is doing to democracy by undermining public faith in the electoral system.”
Almost 200 of the country’s top business leaders urged Congress to certify the electoral results for President-elect Joe Biden in a letter Monday, arguing that “attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy,” the Washington Post reports.
“The letter marked the business community’s most significant push yet to ensure President Trump’s efforts to overturn the November election are unsuccessful. Signers included a wide array of executives of Fortune 500 companies, from the leaders of banks, airlines, investment firms, pharmaceutical companies, professional sports leagues, real estate conglomerates, top law firms and media companies.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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