Trump's Plan to Interfere with Elections

Over the past year in which I have focused these blog posts on the dangers presented by the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, I have repeatedly warned that Trump planned to interfere with this year's midterm elections. Recent events have made this even more clear. I have written more than once that simply telling the truth about the Trump administration can make someone sound like a loony conspiracy theorist. This topic is a case in point. Trump's actions are so far beyond accepted norms that they can be hard to believe. Connecting the dots of such efforts results in bizarre conclusions that even the most cynical among us can find hard to believe. But, given recent developments, it is exceedingly clear that Trump does not plan to allow free elections this November.

Trump's recent actions regarding voting appear to be driven by two motives. First is Trump's narcissistic inability to accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election. Trump is simply delusional on this point. He recently claimed to have won Minnesota three times. In fact, he lost the state three times. He similarly claims to have won other states that he lost in 2020, such as Georgia. The second motive is the likelihood, which increases every day, that Republicans will lose the November midterms, costing them control of either the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both.

Make no mistake about it. If Democrats gain control of one or more chambers of Congress, the gig is up for Trump. Several of his cabinet secretaries could potentially be impeached, controls on spending will be reinstated, Trump administration actions will be routinely investigated, and Trump will lose his current freedom to act as a king. In the midst of building monuments to himself, Trump has no interest in seeing his hands tied for the last two years of his term. He and his close circle must surely view Democratic victories in November as close to an existential threat.

On top of Trump's legitimate concerns of being neutered by the midterms is the fact that he has long since lost the cognitive abilities required for his job. To put it in scientific terms, Trump's brain is mush. If you have any doubt of that, simply consider a recent post by Trump on his Truth Social social media network. Trump posted a screenshot of a tweet by an X user going by the name "The Scif." The tweet alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy to steal the 2020 election that involved former President Barack Obama, Merrill Lynch, Italian officials, the CIA and FBI, China, and military satellites. The complete text of "The Scif's" tweet was:

Maria Zack testified about the stolen 2020 Election operation connected to Obama when he diverted $400 million from the infamous pallets of cash sent to Iran, funneling through the Dubai Embassy to operatives in Italy and Merrill Lynch in Geneva, Switzerland.

In return, Italian officials at Leonardo SpA used military satellites to help hack U.S. voting machines, flipping votes from Trump to Biden using CIA-developed tools like Hammer and Scorecard. Along with numerous other methods of fraud and manipulation.

China reportedly coordinated the whole operation, providing the tech backbone and bribes to corrupt Americans. The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet. This is the global election fraud cartel and the real threat against American democracy and the rest of the world.

This is not a new conspiracy theory, but it is one of the most far-fetched. The fact that a U.S. president would promote the theory is remarkable. That Trump posted this outlandish idea should be front-page news and provoke around-the-clock discussions of his fitness to lead this country. But, like many of Trump's disqualifying activities, it has mostly been ignored.

Will Sommer of The Bulwark has made a career out of following right-wing media, particularly social media. He wrote recently about "The Scif's" conspiracy theory. He explained that the "Hammer" and "Scorecard" mentioned by "The Scif" refer to a belief that "an evil CIA supercomputer named ‘Hammer,’ running a program called ‘Scorecard,’ went rogue and changed the election results," flipping Trump votes to former President Joe Biden. Sommer further explains that "This theory’s leading proponent is Dennis Montgomery, who made big money during the first years of the Bush administration’s War on Terror by claiming to decode terrorist messages hidden in Al Jazeera broadcasts—a claim that has been widely debunked."

It is hard to guess what Trump's motive may have been in platforming "The Scif's" wacko conspiracy theory. Might Trump truly believe the crazy idea? It's hard to say, but Trump does seem to believe that votes for him were changed to votes for Biden and, for all we know, Trump might consider satellites and a CIA supercomputer to be as likely a mechanism for doing such a thing as any other. More likely, however, is an idea promoted by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov is a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was forced to flee Russia. Having dealt with Putin's propaganda for years, Kasparov came to the conclusion that "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." Trump may well be throwing anything he can out to the public in order to overwhelm our ability to deal with it. If one day Trump is blaming immigrants brought to the U.S. by Democrats to vote for them and another day Trump is blaming satellites, the American public may simply give up on trying to determine the truth. But the message that something was wrong with the elections may be the one idea that takes hold. If so, that is good enough for Trump.

There is a lot more to say about Trump's interference with elections, and I will be saying some of it tomorrow and maybe the next day. Trump simply cannot accomplish his goals if Democrats are successful in the midterms. Therefore, he cannot allow that to happen. While many of Trump's efforts to interfere with elections are fairly well known, the overall threat Trump presents still has not been adequately reported. Republicans, of course, are fully supportive of Trump's efforts. Democrats, for the most part, are scared of their own shadows, and they apparently are unwilling to point out the obvious in fear that it will make them look like lunatic conspiracy theorists. Alternatively, Democrats may be wedded to the idea that they should talk about nothing other than affordability, believing that the American public cannot absorb more than one message at a time. But the best campaign message of all time will not help if the elections are not free.