1. Claim that mail-in voting encourages voter fraud and election theft. 2. Discourage your supporters from voting by mail. 3. Ensure that mail-in ballots can't be counted before Wednesday morning. 4. Demand to know the results by Tuesday night.
Trump declaring victory prematurely isn’t *sufficient* to steal the election, but it is a *necessary precondition* to pull it off.
Maybe it won’t work, maybe Biden will win by such a large margin PA doesn’t matter, maybe the lawfare fails, but the fact that he’s saying this all out loud is itself raising tensions and increasing risk to a dangerous point.
During a two-week span between March 23 and April 6, Fox hosts and guests promoted hydroxychloroquine nearly 300 times: mediamatters.org/coronavirus-co…
Through their coverage -- and a White House meeting featuring Fox host Laura Ingraham and her doctor guests -- they convinced Trump it was a miracle cure: They convinced Trump it was a miracle cure: mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-f…
Trump frequently takes government action in response to what he sees on Fox; in this case, he molded federal policy around the effectiveness of the drug, building up huge federal stockpiles: mediamatters.org/donald-trump/1…
Four different news outlets published damning stories about Trump administration corruption in four different agencies -- none can get the attention they deserve. They've flooded the zone with graft to the point where it is virtually impossible to hold them accountable for it.
Tucker Carlson's grievances, bigotries, and conspiracy theories will define the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
He will have more influence than any single person with the possible exception of Donald Trump (and he'll shape Trump's perception of the race as well).
Carlson is an extremist and his positions don't command anything near majority support -- but the modern GOP is a minoritarian party that benefits from antidemocratic institutions and tries to win by keeping Democrats from voting. politico.com/news/2020/10/2…
More broadly, GOP presidential candidates are going to be spending a ton of time courting Carlson and other Fox hosts and their primary-voter rich audiences. Hard to imagine them spending much time on other networks except to create viral clips by dunking on the hosts.
My general sense at this point is that it's very clear that the Republican Party is more interested in winning QAnon votes than keeping them out of power, and we're going to see years of soft support for their aims.
Gonna see a lot of Republican politicians talking about human trafficking and expressing scorn to reporters who question them about it.