By now, the routine is starting to get old. 1) Right Wing Media Cult claims it has evidence of fraud in the election. 2) Said "evidence" is presented. 3) "Evidence" turns out not to indicate fraud after all. 4) Right Wing Media Cult turns to something else.
Case in point: the recent fraud claim in Georgia, the one allegedly about "suitcases full of ballots" being counted as soon as Republican poll watchers left, was claimed by Rush Limbaugh to finally be the "big one," according to him. It was, he said, the smoking gun which proves that some election fraud did actually take place.
Or was it?
See the video for yourself, here.
Here's how Rush Limbaugh described it on his show last Friday. "Folks, there is so much happening here with this election fraud story, that it has been a challenge for me - 'cause I've been somewhat distracted the past week, even longer than that - a challenge even for me to put all these pieces together. So, the first question: What the hell is that Georgia video? It's amazing! Can it be explained away by the Left? I don't think they can explain this away. And who are these people in the video? Well, we now know the name of one of the people in the video. This is the suitcase video; suitcase, underneath the table video. When all the Republican monitors are gone, here come the suitcases! With all the ballots! And we now know the name of one of the people engaged in this. This is exactly, this' exactly the kind of evidence that we need, and we need it pronto! We are running out of time, here!"
Well, Rush is right about that last part. They are running out of time! And it's interesting that Rush has inadvertently admitted that all the previous evidence was FALSE by jumping so eagerly onto this particular story, saying, in effect, 'Aha! Now we finally got 'em!'
Okay. So you didn't "get 'em" before, eh? Thanks for saying so! We always knew you'd come around, eventually.
In fact, a little bit later on in the program, Trump outright said as much.
"I got a note from Rudy," he said, referring to Rudy Giuliani (of course). "Rudy said, 'You know, you really deflated us that day.' I said, 'Oh, no, I didn't want to deflate you.' 'You did! When you said that we had to come up with some bombshells...' I said, 'Rudy, I just looked at the press conference is all I did, and you'd made it look like you had a whole bunch of 'em lying in wait... for that press conference. You and Sydney at the ti - well, primarily it was Sydney at the time - you guys got through, I was thinking, "Here comes the proof!" I was all jazzed! I was thinking, "This is it! They've got it!" And then, there wasn't "it." And, a little deflating to me, too. I wasn't trying to deflate you guys, I wasn't trying to depress you, I'm just saying, this is how I saw it. And I'm probably not the only one who saw it that way. I mean, the things that were said in that press conference, about the fraud, and the proof of it, and how deeply it went, and how much of it there was, I fully expected somebody to join that press conference with the evidence. Somebody involved in it. That didn't happen. So that's why - now I was expecting bombshells, and I didn't get any bombshells, and when I didn't get any bombshells,' he says 'Whoah.' And that's when Rudy said a, now kinda, 'That was very deflating, especially from you.' Well, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to deflate anybody. I'm just - sharing with everybody my reaction to it."
You know, you just gotta love it when even Rush Limbaugh departs from the dogma, inadvertently admits the truth, and then tries to go back to pretending there's actual fraud going on as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile, back to the earlier part of Rush's Friday program, where he insists that the "suitcase" footage from Atlanta's State Farm Arena somehow proves that there was fraud.
"Somebody's gonna have to come forward and either claim they were just counting stored, legal votes, or tell us what the con was and who ordered it," Limbaugh goes on. "This is - it, it's gonna have to happen this way. The smoking gun video! How long have we been told, folks, that the Trump team has no evidence of voter fraud. We've been told this since the first allegation of it was made. Despite the hundreds of sworn affidavits, the hours of sworn testimony before legislatures in Georgia, Nevada and elsewhere, and how about all of these people testifying - you know, C-SPAN's had it, all kinds of television networks have had these people, average ordinary Americans, coming forward and explaining, the witnesses - they're explaining what they saw. It has been fantastic to watch, if you're into the civics aspect of this. They have been giving testimony before legislatures in Georgia, Nevada and elsewhere, and now we have a smoking gun. Or rather, smoking suitcases.... Media, rest of the Democrats, still saying there's no evidence. Do they even know what 'evidence' means? Yes, of course they know what 'evidence' means. They're lying through their teeth about it."
Well, except, no. The Democrats and "the Media" are not "lying through their teeth" about anything. Someone did come forward and claim that only stored, legal votes were being counted. That person was Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager, and a Republican. You can see his disclaimer, here.
If you look at the video, it does show poll workers removing a few storage cases (not "suitcases") from below a black-colored table and continuing to count when it appears all the poll watchers have left. But the cases are not "hidden," because there's no skirt covering the table. Those bins would have been visible to every poll watcher the whole time. Also, there were observers present, just not as many. There was one election board monitor from the state, and members of the media were still present as well. Some poll watchers and workers had left, but not all. This was confirmed by Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state's chief investigator. She did this by sworn affidavit. And yes, I've been critical of sworn affidavits recently, but this woman is the chief investigator for exactly such matters, and that carries a lot more weight than some contractor driving a truck (see previous post).
Also, (here's MY big point), everybody there knew they were on security camera! If they were going to commit vote fraud, wouldn't they, you know, TURN THE CAMERAS OFF?! Okay, maybe that might look more suspicious, but I can't help but be convinced that there's just NO WAY anyone would be willing to commit voter fraud on camera!
There are bins seen, they are removed, their contents get counted. But does the camera show that these ballots are all for Biden? No. Hell, they might all have been for Trump, for all we know! Most likely, they contained some of both.
Plus, by now, the count has been gone over three times. Once in the initial election count, once in the recount, and once again in the recent audit. If these ballots, which were scrutinized three times over, were fraudulent, at least one of them would have been caught.
Not one of them was.
Last but not least, this story was debunked by - FOX NEWS! Yes, after initially reporting that it was a big deal, Griff Jenkins reported on Fox & Friends that he'd spoken with a senior source in the office of secretary of state Brad Raffensberger, who said that there was a designated observer present the entire time. He said the source had "seen this video and they’re familiar with the claims; they said that they’re simply not true. The suggestion that Georgia vote counters were sent home and ballots were brought in in suitcases, also not true. And that what appears is reported as suitcases are actually the normal containers that ballots are put in."
True, afterward, Fox News went back to ballyhooing the story as though there were anything to it, but it's interesting how Fox vacillated from "True!" to "Not true!" and then back to "True!" again.
So once again, big fucking deal.
That should have been the end of it. But the Right Wing Media Cult, ever so eager for this to finally be their "gotcha!" moment, refused to let it go quite that easily. Even after yet another embarrassment.
Come Monday, on my lunch break, I casually tuned in to Rush's program on my car radio, just in case Rush would have anything else to say about the phony claim he'd made on Friday. At the very least, he would have the opportunity to backpedal and admit that this footage does not constitute proof of anything.
Unsurprisingly, he doubled down.
"Remember we had the story - the video of the suitcases being pulled out from under tables, after the election observers had been sent home, the election observers were told, 'nothing to see here, you guys can go home, we're not going to count any more ballots tonight,' so the election observers left. And then those suitcases were dragged out from underneath the table. And the votes, there were 6,000 ballots inside each suitcase, and they - that's a total of 24,000. They were counted after the observers were sent home. Well, numerous officials in Georgia said, 'No, no, no, no, that's not what happened. And they're not suitcases they - they were in - in the normal containers that are used for these. There nothing to see here.' And they then proceeded to totally debunk - there's a video that was taken by Jackie Pick, is her name, and everybody resorted to using the video, and they debunked that - and Molly's piece here says 'No, the Georgia vote counting video was not debunked, not even close. A big-tech-backed fact-checking outfit claimed to debunk explosive evidence for Republican claims of significant election problems in Georgia. It didn't, not even close. So, here's the - I can get to the - cut to the chase of this. The Democrats have opposed, and have fought like banshees, against all responsible election protections for at least the last decade. Now that's - that's one of the starting points for this. This is an undeniable reality of our current election system. They have pushed, they have shamed, they have lied into, they have same-day registration, motor-voter, no-signature-verification, mail-in ballots, ballot-harvesting, those kind of things I'm talking about. It used to be we had election day. And it used to be we could all vote on election day. And every one of those votes magically ended up being counted. And by midnight, 2 o'clock in the morning, we had a winner! And magically, everybody accepted it! And the Democrats didn't like the fact that they were losing some. So they began to toy with and tamper with the system. Same-day registration. You know the problem with that: There's no way to verify that somebody is who they say they are. It was clearly an attempt to - get rid of a particular protection. A fraud. And the next thing that came along: motor-voter! Oh, yeah! Because everybody has to get their car registered.... Then, they attempted no signature verification. On absentee ballots, and - and, uh, and mail-in ballots. Then the mail-in ballots got big news, and that because of Covid, mail-in ballots were given all kinds of promotion, people were led to believe that it was gonna be scary, you could die if you show up at a polling place on election day. The way to stay alive, the way to save yourself, is by mail-in voting... And people used it. They used that, and early voting... Early voting is another attempt at tampering with election systems."
Oh, what a bunch of bullshit! You verify someone is the person they say they are with same-day registration with a simple thumb-print! But Republicans don't seem to want that! And since when did Democrats ever push for no-signature verification? Trump claimed this back in October, and PolitiFact debunked him right away! And absentee ballots and mail-in ballots have been around for over a hundred years! They've been proven reliable, and are the primary way service members and even entire states cast their vote!
And that's before we get into all the ways Republicans have fucked with the vote - with everything from gerrymandering (which steals votes by the millions!), to requiring I.D.'s and then relocating the departments which create said I.D. way, way out in the suburbs where minorities can't get to them, to outright, blatantly, fucking with the Post Office! If Limbaugh thinks he has any moral high ground here, he's Alice living in Wonderland!
"On Friday morning, a group called - that's last Friday - a group called Lead Stories - you ever heard of 'em? - they published a hoax alert. Oh, yeah. And they falsely claimed to have debunked this security video that was released that showed these suitcases being dragged out from underneath the table, after the Republican election observers had been sent home. [recording garbled] ... Fact Check says government officials told them everything was fine with the counting. The ballots were in containers, not suitcases. Remember that? 'Naw, they were in the right - they were in the right containers. The- the-there's nothing to see here. The suitcase was - just what the people that deal with this - that's just what they call them. And the party observers were never told to leave, because counting was over for the night, didn't happen. They just left on their own."
Now, Limbaugh had more to say, which was difficult to make out because the podcast got garbled in a couple more places. He was apparently taking issue with the claim that observers somehow left on their own, and that nobody was told to leave. Okay, fine. But then he goes on with this:
"It gets difficult to follow because the zone is so flooded with data, that you don't know what to glom onto, what to believe, what not to believe. But even in Georgia, there are much bigger claims than even this! For example, uh, Trump and state Republican chairman David Schaeper - state Republican chairman, Georgia - filed a criminal complaint in state court Friday regarding tens of thousands of votes they say were fraudulent...."
Did you see it? Limbaugh started out with a big attempt at a story, saying that the fact checking of Lead Stories (among others), was wrong, began to realize that he had nothing solid, gave zero reasons why the debunking was wrong, muttered something about how it's difficult to know what's out there in the data flood, and then just pushed on to the next fraud claim!
WHAT?! I mean, come on! What happened to "the big one?!" What happened to "the smoking gun?!" What happened to "I don't know how they can explain this away?!"
Jesus fucking Christ, Rush! After doubling down, you could at least try!
He is trying, actually. But he isn't trying to get to the bottom of the truth regarding one particular story. If he did that, he's discover how it debunks his biases and would force him into changing his views. Instead what he's trying to do is throw anything at the wall he can find in the hopes that some of it will stick. It's a tactic which has been used successfully by creationists, flat-earthers, holocaust deniers and UFO enthusiasts for decades! And, unfortunately, it seems to work with Rush Limbaugh's audience, as well.
Rush blew it so badly with his denial-and-pivot regarding the "suitcases" story, that I could leave this blog post right here. But he said lots of other crap earlier in the broadcast, so I thought I'd throw in some "bonus" debunking, too. Check this out:
Earlier in that same broadcast, Rush laid out some of his best reasons for believing why Trump actually won. He played recordings of the recent Trump rallies in Georgia, and argued that people don't cheer so loudly for a loser, or for a losing team. "Nobody greets the losing Superbowl team at the airport," is how he put it. So he concludes from this that people intrinsically know that Trump won. This, of course, is like arguing that because most Jehovah's Witnesses stayed within the cult after Jesus failed to show up in 1977 that there must be something to it, and I don't need to tell you how silly that line of reasoning is.
"Trump grew his support among black supporters by 50% from 2016," Limbaugh says. Except that Trump only won 8% of the black vote in 2016. Double that and you get only 16%. That means he lost the black vote by 84%. And that's like the football team that went 1 and 15 the previous year, saying "We doubled our victories this year! The franchise is moving in a positive direction!" But of course, 2 and 14 still SUCKS!
And besides that, it's wrong. The best estimates of how Trump did with African Americans show that he only achieved 12% of the vote. That's 50% better than in 2016, but it's hell and gone not as good as double! The most accurate and most recent reporting on these demographics comes from the BBC. You can read that report here.
"Nationally, Joe Biden's black support fell well below 90%," Limbaugh continues. "That's a level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose. That's why we say, if the Democrat gets something under 90 - 85% loses 10 to 15% they're in trouble."
Except that in a record turnout year, the white and Latino vote makes up for that. And 88% is not "well below 90%," nor is it below the threshold of "something under 90-85%."
"Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35%"
Wrong. It was 32% at most. Fivethirtyeight.com says Trump only won 27%.
"Now with 60% or less of the national Hispanic vote it is arithmetically impossible for a Democrat presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico." (Limbaugh pronounces "New Mexico" as "New Meh-HEE-co," completely oblivious of how racially insensitive that sounds.)
This is spectacularly wrong. First, Biden didn't win Florida, now did he? And he DID win 60% of the Latino vote. He also won at least that percentage in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin and just about everywhere else. The reason he lost Florida, and possibly Texas, was because Cuban-Americans resonated strongly with Trump's anti-socialist message, which successfully cast Biden's agenda as being sympathetic to the legacy of Fidel Castro. According to the election's reported results in Florida, Trump edged out a win among Florida Latinos by about 52.5%. But Biden won Latinos by about 70%! This according to estimates by NBC, and CNN. This is confirmed by a fivethirtyeight.com article which reports that Trump only won 27% of Latino votes this year. That's an improvement from 17% in 2016, but that's still low overall. In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to 60% of Arizona's total population, precincts with high concentrations of Latino voters voted 75% for Biden. That's a 3 to 1 margin! So it's simply ridiculous for Limbaugh to claim that Biden's vote total among Latinos was less than 60%. Not even close!
"Bellweather states then swung further in Trump's direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America's media polls with big wins for Trump. Now we're also told that Biden won more votes nationally than any other presidential candidate in history. But at the same time, he won a record low of 17% of counties. He only won 523 counties as opposed to the 873 counties that Obama won in 2008. Yet Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes? Now, a lot of people have focused on this, because this one is glaring."
No, it's not. Because number of counties has very little to do with number of votes. Cook County alone (Chicago) has more people in it than all the rest of Illinois, plus a few other states! In 2008, a lot of Republicans stayed home, and Obama won more counties as a result. This year, counties with big cities had extra big turnouts, and that led to more overall votes for Biden. That's not difficult to figure out.
"Late on election night with Trump comfortably ahead, and by comfortably ahead we're talking like 800,000 votes in Pennsylvania, many swing states stopped counting ballots, at roughly the same time. Just incredible. In most states, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers. What the hell?! Now we all know this. And everybody involved is denying that it happened, and they're saying there's no way it happened, and they'll make a big deal, and nothing, and even Republicans in these states, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, it didn't happen.' But it did! The counting was stopped! The observers were kicked out! They were not allowed back in, they weren't allowed close enough to see what was being done."
Incorrect, and Limbaugh knows it! Were some observers kicked out? Yes! Because they were being disruptive assholes! Were ALL Republican observers kicked out? HELL, NO! And deep down, Limbaugh knows this! But he lies to himself about it so that he can continue lying to others!
Limbaugh is reading off of a list provided by some person named Patrick Basham, because Rush can't come up with all this shit on his own. "#2," he says, "Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed."
Well, since the uncounted areas were major metropolitan centers, such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Atlanta, that makes all kinds of sense. And the vote-counting centers were forced to close in order to deal with hordes of irrational Trump supporters who showed up looking to start trouble! They had to pause to set up a perimeter. They had to set up a system of getting the volunteers in and out. And they had to make sure enough police were present to maintain order. If the vote count in the big cities was showing unusually large totals for Biden, so what? It's normal for big-city vote counts to lean heavily Democrat! Rush is using this well-known demographic to build a phony case.
"In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89% of the votes counted. 'Kay, no big deal there, that's ju- that's the starting point. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same, exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin, in every single batch! So Trump begins losing to Biden with 89% of the votes counted, for the next 53 batches of votes. And every batch has a different number of votes in them. They're coming in from all over the place. Throughout the state."
This is directly out of Patrick Basham's website, the so-called "Democracy Institute." You can read his article here.
How does Patrick know that the last 53 batches had this margin? He fails to tell us. How does he know that the percentages were 50.05% to 49.95%? Again, he provides us with nothing. No anecdotes, no witnesses, no citation whatsoever.
No corroborating information, no citation, no reference - NO ARGUMENT.
Of course Basham is the same idiot who claimed to have earned a PhD. from Cambridge when in reality he dropped out. So he's not exactly the most honest of English blokes to begin with.
And this moron represents Limbaugh's BEST attempt at showing voter fraud!
I'll leave it there, for now. It's so bizarre that Limbaugh thinks this pile of crap makes much of a case. But then, you don't need much to convince someone who wants to believe something.
All you really need to do is cast enough doubt about the other side's position.
Eric
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