2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Jude]

Didn't Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say essentially the same thing regarding people who were criticizing her?

[RoseMorninStar]

Didn't Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say essentially the same thing regarding people who were criticizing her?

I believe she said something to that effect in response to people criticizing her boyfriend. Is that different? I dunno.

[Jude]

It's important to hold "our side" to the same standards as "their side". Otherwise you start making excuses for behaviour that you would have previously condemned.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I somehow missed that. Now that I have looked that up, I would guess that that is the explanation behind Ellis's flip comment: she was mocking Ocasio-Cortez.

I agree that people need to be held to the same standards. Between the two incidents, I think that Ocasio-Cortez's conduct was if anything worse.

[RoseMorninStar]

It's important to hold "our side" to the same standards as "their side". Otherwise you start making excuses for behaviour that you would have previously condemned.

I completely agree. But I never said Jenna Ellis was a narcissist, I specifically said I knew virtually nothing about her and was speaking generally. I also never said AOC wasn't a narcissist. But (at least from what I could find on the internet) in AOC's case it wasn't a complete change of subject out of the blue.. the person taunting her (Steve Cortes, Trump campaign advisor/comment on twitter) had brought up her boyfriend first, making it a topical part of the conversation. Ellis's comment was in response to was a subpoena from the Jan. 6th panel, not a random twitter comment, making it a bizarre response. There was a difference in how the conversation played out and we're not comparing apples to apples. That sort of thing doesn't ALWAYS imply narcissism, one has to take it in context with other behaviors, like the refusal to take responsibility for their behavior. Ever. And placing the blame on others. Always.

V. I agree Ellis may have been mocking AOC. However, I disagree re: AOC's comments for the reasons I state above.
(edited to add: although I agree it would have been better left out of the conversation altogether).

[N.E. Brigand]

Didn't Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say essentially the same thing regarding people who were criticizing her?

Sort of?

As others have said, Jenna Ellis was in fact probably making a joke about something Rep. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on New Year's Eve. I had completely forgotten about the former incident, which barely grazed my consciousness at the time. However, I do think there's a difference.

Someone snapped photos of Ocasio-Cortez and her boyfriend on vacation in Florida, including this one:



There were a number of commentators who criticized Ocasio-Cortez for supposedly being hypocritical. And then Steve Cortez, who used to work for the Trump campaign and now delivers commentary for the conservative Newsmax network, shared the picture, circled Ocasio-Cortez's boyfriend's foot, and added this comment:

1. If Leftists like AOC actually thought mandates and masking worked, they wouldn’t be frolicking in free FL.

2. Her guy is showing his gross pale male feet in public (not at a pool/beach) with hideous sandals.

0 FOR 2…

Setting aside the fact that the CDC doesn't recommend masks for outdoor dining, so that there was nothing hypocritical about how Ocasio-Cortez chose to spend her vacation, this Republican political operative also chose to make it personal with the odd comment about Ocasio-Cortez's boyfriend's feet.

So in response, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted:

If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet.

Ya creepy weirdos

It’s starting to get old ignoring the very obvious, strange, and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the Republican fixation on me, women, & LGBT+ people in general.

These people clearly need therapy, won’t do it, and use politics as their outlet instead. It’s really weird

For what it's worth, I think Ocasio-Cortez is probably correct in her psychological analysis broadly speaking* (and in Cortez's case, it wasn't the first time that he focused on someone's sandal-clad feet), but more importantly, she didn't go there until the "other side" had already made it personal.

By contrast, Jenna Ellis's joke, while no big deal, just doesn't work. Nobody has made a comment about her boyfriend's anatomy.

*When AOC first burst onto the scene, the local newspaper here still allowed comments on the articles, and I often read them to get a sense of what ideas were circulating on the right: I don't have an account on social media like Facebook or Twitter, and the comments at the paper's website skewed conservative. I probably encountered QAnon stuff before most folks here did because it was cropping up pretty regularly there (although the terms Q and QAnon themselves were rarely used). And starting in fall 2018, comments from right-wing trolls about AOC being physically attractive but (to them) intellectually repulsive were commonplace. I am also reminded a little of some police officers with whom I interacted in 2008. They were part of a unit that does protective duty for VIPs, one of whom was going to speak where I worked (this was a person who had faced some pretty serious death threats, and her attendance at the event wasn't even announced in advance). I overheard some of these plainclothes officers' conversation about different political candidates whose security details they had been assigned to. And let me tell you, boy were they really hoping for a chance to guard the "hot" Sarah Palin.

Edited to note that I have belatedly noticed that Rose already made my main point here.

[RoseMorninStar]

It is possible Ellis was mocking AOC, which would make more 'sense' (your mileage may vary). I wasn't aware of either comment previously but I do think they are in different contexts, one being more .. appropriate isn't the right word.. relevant? suitable? although both make me twitch. But Steve Cortes's comments were inappropriately creepy. I believe he no longer works for NewsMax because he was 'a constant risk' due to his penchant for inflammatory comments. And that's sayin' something.

I also feel those on the left are often willing to accept false equivalencies in the name of 'fairness' and it doesn't serve either side well.

[N.E. Brigand]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ion-audits

FBI agents and the House panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol have both learned of an alleged plan by allies of retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn to gather “intelligence” on top Republicans to “move” them to back election audits in key states Trump lost, said ex-whistleblower Everett Stern who talked to the panel and the FBI.

Stern, who runs the intelligence firm Tactical Rabbit and is a Republican vying for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, in multiple interviews with the Guardian said two Flynn associates with the rightwing Patriot Caucus group enlisted his help in April in a scheme to seek potentially damaging information on two Republican members of Congress to prod them to back an audit of the 2020 vote that Joe Biden won.

That said, it doesn't seem like this particular plot went very far.

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm betting Ron Johnson is among them.

[N.E. Brigand]

Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, says that after Republicans take control of Congress next January (they are likely but not guaranteed to win a majority of the midterm elections in November), that they will conduct an examination of the House Select Committee currently investigaing January 6th.

Gingrich says the Jan. 6th Committee members will then "face a real risk of jail".

- - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile Donald Trump says it's wrong for the Committee to be seeking information from "children" like his 40-year-old daughter Ivanka.

[RoseMorninStar]

Meanwhile Donald Trump says it's wrong for the Committee to be seeking information from "children" like his 40-year-old daughter Ivanka.

A very good reason she never should have been in the position in the first place.

[N.E. Brigand]

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, via CBS reporter Catherine Herridge (who often has an inside track on news that Barr and other former Trump officials want to share), says that while the House Select Committee did contact him to ask if he had any information about the events leading up to Jan. 6th and about the role specifically of Jeffrey Clarke, Barr told them he "did not feel he has much information that could be useful." Of course.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Prosecutors in Georgia open criminal investigation into Trump's attempt to influence election results

A prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia, has opened a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump for his "attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia general election."

In a letter sent Wednesday to numerous Georgia state election officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis requested that they preserve documents related to Trump's phone call last month in which he pushed Raffensperger to "find" votes to reverse his election loss.
Willis said the "investigation includes, but is not limited to, potential violations of Georgia election law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office, and any involvement in violence of threats related to the election's administration."

Fulton DA requests special grand jury for Trump probe

Not sure if this is good news or bad news for the progress of this case. Apparently witnesses including Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, have refused to testify without a subpoena, and I guess having a grand jury whose service last more than the usual two months and which is focused solely on one case makes it easier to issue subpoenas?

Empaneling a special grand jury requires the approval of a majority of the Fulton County superior court judges. I don't know if judges in Georgia have a track record of approving or denying such (infrequently-made) requests.

The judges approved the request today. DA for Atlanta area granted special grand jury to probe Trump's election interference

[N.E. Brigand]

At a rally in Texas tonight, Donald Trump said this:

"If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly, we will treat them fairly and if it requires pardons, then we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly."

This is him repeating what he did regarding the Russia investigation: the message he means to convey is that those people who don't flip on him will be pardoned should he become president again. In other words, he's flirting with obstruction of justice all over again.

Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander and Proud Boys founder Enrique Tarrio have both already shared Trump's message tonight on social media.

Trump also encouraged people to protest against prosecutors in D.C. and New York -- the latter may give some sense of where his head is. No January 6th prosecutions are underway in New York.

(On a lesser matter, Trump also mocked Pete Buttigieg for using paternity leave following the adoption of twins in September: "If you're the Secretary of Transportation, you get your ass to work!")

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Interesting that he didn't mention Georgia, where arguably he faces the most likely criminal charges (though to be clear, I don't think it will happen).

Edited to add: He did mention the prosecutors in Georgia: ""If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington DC, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt," Trump told the crowd in Conroe, Texas on Saturday night."

[N.E. Brigand]

Thanks for catching the Georgia reference.

In the same speech, Trump had the crowd deliver a round of applause for Congressman Roger Williams, after telling them this:

"Another man very brave—he got shot actually. Got shot! Handled it very well during that very horrible people that everybody knows about it."

Williams has never been shot (he was at the Congressional baseball practice where Rep. Steve Scalise was shot in 2017).

[N.E. Brigand]

Making his intentions for Jan. 6, 2021 even more clear, Donald Trump today issued a statement that says that since a bipartisan group of Senators is now considering legislation to reform the Electoral Count Act, and one provision of their efforts would make explicit (as had always been understood) that the Vice President can't reject electoral ballots, they are conceding that Mike Pence could have changed the outcome, and Trump concludes:

"Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That would be funny if it was so pathetic.

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN today reported that Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, last week testified to the Jan. 6 Committee after being subpoenaed.

And the New York Times has a story about how President Donald Trump was more directly involved in the eventually abandoned plan to have the military seize voting machines. The Times says Trump directed his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to call Ken Cucinnelli at the Dept. of Homeland Security for a discussion of whether the plan was feasible. Because the story describes Giuliani as opposing the plan, I would guess he is the source of this news.

Also, per the Washington Post, among the documents received by the Jan. 6 Committee from the National Archives are papers that President Donald Trump tore up after reading, so that White House staff, in order to comply with federal record-keeping laws, then had to tape back together. It had been reported during Trump's presidency that he was in the habit of doing so (in one instance, it was said that he not only shredded but chewed a sensitive document about Michael Cohen), but this is apparently the first time anyone outside the White House (or the Archives, I guess) has seen the reassembled papers.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's an interesting detail that I had not seen before.

And there is a very real chance that this person will be back in the White House (though to be clear I don't think it will happen). Scary!