When people say the 2000 & 2020 elections are dissimilar, they are comparing Trump to Gore. But if u instead compare Trump to Bush, the similarity is striking. Like Team Bush, Team Trump falsely accused Ds of a power grab to try to grab power themselves. 1/tallahassee.com/story/opinion/…
“In the words of Stone, ‘The idea we were putting out there [in 2000] was that this was a left-wing power grab by Gore, the same way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba.’” By @Ionsancho1, 2/3/19 2/
Remember the astroturf Brooks Brothers riot in 2000 (to stop the recount)? Roger Stone says he orchestrated it. 3/ newyorker.com/magazine/2008/… 
4/ GOP operative Brad Blakeman, who claims that he (rather than Stone) masterminded the Brooks Brothers riot, has acknowledged that propaganda— conveying the (false) message that Ds were trying to steal the election from Bush—was integral to the Bush campaign’s recount strategy.
5/ “It had to be a three-legged stool. We had to fight in the courts, in the recount centers and in the streets — in public opinion,” Blakeman said. washingtonpost.com/history/2018/1…
6/ The Bush street fight included the astroturf (staged) “Brooks Brothers” riot. It also included shaming the Gore/Lieberman campaign with “Sore Loserman” towels, tee shirts, signs, and bumper stickers.
7/ According to Blakeman, Gore ceded the propaganda war to Bush. In Blake’s assessment, this was a mistake: “Gore left a leg off the stool, and that’s why the stool fell," he said.
8/ Rs also gained an unfair advantage in 2000 via an overbroad voter purge list in Florida that erroneously purged between 1100 and 12k properly registered voters from FL’s voter rolls. Bush supposedly “won” by only 537 votes in Florida. tampabay.com/news/politics/…
9/ Trump, Stone, et al. also accused Ds of trying to steal the 2016 election—even as Russia tried to rig the election for Trump by hacking into our election infrastructure. (It is unknown whether hackers changed voter data or even vote tallies; as to the tallies, no one looked).
10/ Remember? It’s the same GOP playbook again and again. Sometimes it fails. But in 2000 and 2016 in worked. cnn.com/2016/08/01/pol…
11/ Rove used the same tactic—falsely accusing Democrats of cheating—to pull victory from the jaws of defeat in an Alabama judicial race in 1994. link.medium.com/4nj7DzSUgkb
12/ It was also Rove who came up with the myth of mass voter fraud (by masses of individual voters supposedly risking prison to vote illegally) after the 2000 election. nytimes.com/2007/04/12/was…
13/ Article in post 1 by the great @Ionsancho1, former supervisor of elections in Leon County, Florida.
14/ Stone and others also falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal the 2018 midterm elections in Florida—where Democrats were predicted to win but instead lost both the gubernatorial & senate races. Same damn playbook. Too few see the pattern. link.medium.com/jzVoOAoVgkb
15/ “Roger Stone Cheers as Conspiracists Descend on a Florida Election, Again, to Stop ‘Radical Leftists’ From Counting Votes” - by @willsommer, 11/10/18 thedailybeast.com/roger-stone-ch…
16/ “Claims by Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio, and President Donald Trump that Democrats are ‘stealing’ the 2018 elections in Broward County have sparked the expected reaction.” 11/9/18 miaminewtimes.com/news/trump-fan…
17/ In short, the tactics of Team Trump in 2020 (and in 2016 and 2018) are analogous to those of Team Bush in 2000, albeit more violent.
18/ But Trump and Gore’s approaches are worlds apart. Here is Gore’s concession speech, after which he disappeared from politics and instead devoted himself to saving the planet from climate change. theguardian.com/world/2000/dec…
19/ Excerpts from Gore’s concession speech, which he then honored.
20/ More familiar names from the 2000 election. 😡 Link to sourced thread: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1309932…
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