Speaker 1: Welcome. Today could happen here. It's it's the last episode
Speaker 1: that that there were that I'm recording this year. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm your host. Be along, and today we are going
Speaker 1: to tell you a story of the Republican Party using
Speaker 1: extensive political violence and attempt to manipulate an election to
Speaker 1: install their unelected presidential Canada's dictator of the United States.
Speaker 1: And of by this, of course, I am referring not
Speaker 1: to the election, but to the election of two thousand's okay,
Speaker 1: So for for for those of you who do not
Speaker 1: remember this story, and this is okay, I was like
Speaker 1: three when this was happening. But weirdly, I have a
Speaker 1: very very this is legitimately one of my first memories.
Speaker 1: Is just I have the words engraved into my mind
Speaker 1: hanging Chad's and so we we we will get to
Speaker 1: what exactly that is, but that the two thousand election
Speaker 1: was one of the most chaotic elects in the history
Speaker 1: of the United States. Now, the US has a long
Speaker 1: history of really really weird elections. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: from from from the subspective of sort of like is
Speaker 1: the U s representative democracy? I think there's a pretty
Speaker 1: good argument that no election until like after the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act is even sort of a legitimate election. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean and and so far as you
Speaker 1: like consider elections to be legitimate, which you know, okay,
Speaker 1: but you know, the u s is, no is no
Speaker 1: stranger to someone winning an election than not taking office.
Speaker 1: There are, in fact, there are if you if you
Speaker 1: go back into your berking history, there are two different
Speaker 1: elections that are called the corrupt bargain Um. There's John
Speaker 1: Quincy Adams and I think it's four makes this really
Speaker 1: really weird alliance with the original American political Slee's ball
Speaker 1: Henry Clay to get himself often sold as president. Although
Speaker 1: that that that's an election that's like truly an election
Speaker 1: with there are no heroes where it's it's John Quincy
Speaker 1: Adams Henry Clay allying to bring down Andrew fucking Jackson.
Speaker 1: So you know, no no heroes there. There there's there's
Speaker 1: another election after Reconstruction, which is the end of Reconstruction,
Speaker 1: where the Republican Party literally trades and like trades ending
Speaker 1: Reconstruction for putting their president in office. After a truly
Speaker 1: genuinely wild set of voting results happens, we're like all
Speaker 1: of the votes are in a box, and the two
Speaker 1: parties are fighting over like who's going to count the votes,
Speaker 1: because the guy who counts the votes from like the
Speaker 1: box is the person who's going to determine who wins
Speaker 1: the election. And so there's this whole negotiated thing where
Speaker 1: the eight hundreds, like racist Southern Democrats are like, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll give you, we'll we'll give you this election
Speaker 1: if you promised to pull troops out of the South.
Speaker 1: So okay. You know, American elections have always been sort
Speaker 1: of more fraudulent than people give them credit for, but
Speaker 1: the two thousand election, even by the standards of like
Speaker 1: an American election, is some bullshit. So let's let's let's
Speaker 1: go back. Let's go back to the origin of the story.
Speaker 1: The year is two thousand. For the last time in
Speaker 1: human history, humanity has taken collective action to stop and
Speaker 1: impenny catastrophe, having by the heartrending labor of a bunch
Speaker 1: of siss admins, including a guy that I knew growing up,
Speaker 1: who spent fucking New Year, who literally spent New Year's
Speaker 1: Eve until the bell ring, like basically in a closet
Speaker 1: with a bunch of computers at his job trying to
Speaker 1: make sure what UK wouldn't happen. But you know, we
Speaker 1: did it, actually we we actually did it. There was
Speaker 1: there was, there was like you know, there was human
Speaker 1: collective action to stop a major catastrophy from happening. And
Speaker 1: Al Gore, a Democrat who claims we have invented the Internet,
Speaker 1: is running against Harvard educated Harvard and actually Yale educated
Speaker 1: oil man caused as a cowboy whose name is George Bush.
Speaker 1: And I, oh god, I don't know, I I don't
Speaker 1: I feel like people have kind of forgotten how really
Speaker 1: genuinely sleazy George Bush was. Like he he has this
Speaker 1: sort of public like, you know, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: he wins elections, and he has his public images like
Speaker 1: the guy who you know, like everyone like he he's
Speaker 1: the presidential candidate who you'd want to have a beer with.
Speaker 1: But again, like literally everything from he's like public mannerisms
Speaker 1: down to like the minutia of his accent to like
Speaker 1: the stupid cowboy hat that he wears, all of this
Speaker 1: this is a bullshit, right, This is a fucking Harvard guy,
Speaker 1: And all of this is you know, like completely intricately
Speaker 1: manufactured by a set a set of like very very
Speaker 1: very like sleazy but incredibly ruthless and efficient Republican political operatives. Now,
Speaker 1: George Bush's father is George H. W. Bush, who was
Speaker 1: the first to only director of the CIA to become president.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but Bush Bushes running on this sort of
Speaker 1: neo conservative alliance of Texas oil men, evangelical hardliners, and
Speaker 1: weapons contractors. Um, the weapons contractors part uh winds up
Speaker 1: being incredibly relevant when nine eleven happens and both Bush
Speaker 1: and Dick his co uh what's it called vice presidential
Speaker 1: I guess candidate at the time, but his vice presidential
Speaker 1: selection Dick Cheney, who is like Dick Cheney like saying
Speaker 1: that he's like the physical human embodiments of the military
Speaker 1: industrial complex, is under selling how closely tied, um, Dick
Speaker 1: Cheney is to the military dustrial complex. And you know,
Speaker 1: like this is this is part of the reason why
Speaker 1: the ward Rock happens, because again, like this entire coalition
Speaker 1: is just like it is, it is the it is
Speaker 1: is the sort of height of the military petro dollar coalition,
Speaker 1: just a a coalition of peer evil like fueled by
Speaker 1: war profits and homophobia. And but you know, part part
Speaker 1: of part of what's been happening in this entire period
Speaker 1: is this is this is the year after the Battle
Speaker 1: of Seattle on the anti globalization movement hasn't been smashed again.
Speaker 1: This is There's other thing is this is pre nine eleven, right,
Speaker 1: This is this is a very very short period of
Speaker 1: time where like in between the Battle of Seattle and
Speaker 1: uh eleven where American politics are very very very weird.
Speaker 1: And you get another thing that we don't really have now,
Speaker 1: but from the nineties until about nine eleven kind of
Speaker 1: existed where that which was that there was a period
Speaker 1: where third party is kind of mattered ish like Ross
Speaker 1: Pirot like in the nineties. Arguably maybe could have won
Speaker 1: the election if vietn't just like given up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what one of the sort of products of
Speaker 1: this is that the Green Party is actually a real
Speaker 1: thing in in two thousands in a way that they're
Speaker 1: kind of not right. And then this has been this
Speaker 1: this sort of unfolding of a bunch of left wing
Speaker 1: social movements into which is absolutely disasterous attempt to enter
Speaker 1: party politics. Um, but they pull you know, and this
Speaker 1: is the thing that no one has ever heard the
Speaker 1: end of. But they pull a bunch of votes into
Speaker 1: Ralph Nader in Florida, which winds up being a big deal.
Speaker 1: But the product of this is that this election is
Speaker 1: on a just on a knife's edge. Both sides of
Speaker 1: this election are unbelievably close. The entire election comes down
Speaker 1: to Florida. Now, the problem with the entire election coming
Speaker 1: down to Florida is that the American electoral system is
Speaker 1: a fucking joke. It is a disaster. It is a
Speaker 1: a genuine embarrassment. The United States is a country that
Speaker 1: has more resources than like, it has enough resources that,
Speaker 1: like Genghis Khan would weep like, it has genuinely unfathomable
Speaker 1: amounts of resources, and its election system is basically run
Speaker 1: by a bunch of weird dipshit like party if like
Speaker 1: local like a weird patchwork of like completely underfunded and
Speaker 1: overworked local government officials who never have real budgets and
Speaker 1: who just spends like two months not sleeping with their
Speaker 1: like three co workers trying to make the elections work.
Speaker 1: And this is really weird because like most places on
Speaker 1: Earth that have elections, um, there's like, you know, a
Speaker 1: national thing that sort of does the elections in the US,
Speaker 1: like no, no, it relies heavily on volunteers. It's just
Speaker 1: like this weird patchwork quilt of stuff, and Florida being Florida,
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff goes very wrong very quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: There there's two very famous ballot problems, the most aimless
Speaker 1: of which is hanging chads. So okay, okay, what what what?
Speaker 1: What is a hanging chat for people who have forgotten?
Speaker 1: Are people who you know weren't alive then? Which I
Speaker 1: realize is I man, the fact that the fact that
Speaker 1: I have coworkers who are not alive for hanging chads
Speaker 1: is really really disturbing thought. But okay, so what is
Speaker 1: a hanging chat? Um? The answer is that in Florida,
Speaker 1: the way this ballot works is that you have to
Speaker 1: physically punch holes in your ballot. And you know, you
Speaker 1: punch a hole in the place, like okay, so today,
Speaker 1: right when you fill in a ballot, you have to
Speaker 1: like fill in a square right with a pencil in
Speaker 1: in in Florida, you have to like hold punch that square.
Speaker 1: This is maybe the worst ballot design I can possibly imagine,
Speaker 1: and it goes terribly wrong. A bunch of these whole
Speaker 1: punches basically don't actually remove all the paper. And there's
Speaker 1: there are so many ways, so many ways that this
Speaker 1: gets sucked up. The hanging chat is the most name
Speaker 1: was one that Haying so a chad. Basically, it's it's
Speaker 1: the piece of paper that when you punch the thing
Speaker 1: with like the whole punch, it's supposed to like it's
Speaker 1: the paper that comes out of the whole right, Haying
Speaker 1: chad is when you do the whole punch thing, but
Speaker 1: the chat is still connected to the piece of paper
Speaker 1: by like one corner. But but but again less less
Speaker 1: you think there's only one way that these ballots get
Speaker 1: fucked up. No, no, no, no, no, there's there are like,
Speaker 1: there are unfathomable number of ways that these ballots don't
Speaker 1: punch correctly. They're they're swinging door chairs, there's tried chairs,
Speaker 1: there's did bull chairs, there's pregnant chats. It's unbelievable, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of people's votes just don't get counted because
Speaker 1: these ballots. The reason they're doing these whole punch ballots
Speaker 1: that these are these are you know, this is what's
Speaker 1: supposed to be like the fancy new like voting technology.
Speaker 1: Right then the new vote technology is the voting machines.
Speaker 1: And the way the voting machine works is basically, the
Speaker 1: votoing machine can check if if if there's a whole
Speaker 1: air and if there's a hole in the paper, then
Speaker 1: it counts you as the accounts it as the vote.
Speaker 1: But if the entire chad hasn't been punched out, it
Speaker 1: won't count your vote. This is a problem. And there's
Speaker 1: another problem. Uh and and that problem is the butterfly ballot.
Speaker 1: So the butterfly ballot was original Is this ballot you're
Speaker 1: using in Florida that was originally designed to help elderly voters? Um,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be the goal of the ballot is
Speaker 1: to have larger fought sizes to make it more accessible
Speaker 1: for people. Which this is good, right, Like, okay, I
Speaker 1: I support I support accessible design. Is put accessible design
Speaker 1: for voting. The problem is this ballot is designed like ship.
Speaker 1: The way it works is there's a two page ballot
Speaker 1: with like a crease in it. All right, It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a book, right, like you unfold the
Speaker 1: book in the middle of the ballot, you know, And
Speaker 1: on both of these pages there are like the different
Speaker 1: different candidate names and parties The problem is, in order
Speaker 1: to pick a candidate, you have to punch like a whole,
Speaker 1: you have to punch one of the one of these
Speaker 1: served circles. But these st goals are in a line
Speaker 1: down the middle of the crease of the ballot, right,
Speaker 1: so you have you have candidates on both You should
Speaker 1: you should google what these look like because it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to explain. But basically what's happening is that
Speaker 1: there are there are different party names on each side
Speaker 1: of the ballot. But then in order to pick which
Speaker 1: party you're voting for, you have to pick for a
Speaker 1: specific hole that's supposed to be next to the like
Speaker 1: that the candidate you support it in the in the
Speaker 1: middle of the page. And the problem is these are
Speaker 1: all on a line, right, They're all a straight line,
Speaker 1: which means that two candidates can be like across from
Speaker 1: each other on the same page or on on opposite pages.
Speaker 1: And then there's two holes that are like right next
Speaker 1: because because the holes are both in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ballot, right, so that you have these situations where
Speaker 1: for example, for and this is the one that's important
Speaker 1: inside of the there's like two lines and then there's
Speaker 1: like it says al Gore Lieberman in it right, and
Speaker 1: inside of those two lines in the in the in
Speaker 1: the middle of the page, there are two holes, and
Speaker 1: one of these holds votes for Core but the other
Speaker 1: one of those holes I is for the candidate on
Speaker 1: the other side of the page, which is Reformed Party
Speaker 1: candidate and cryptal fascist goal Pat Buchanan. And the result
Speaker 1: of this and says, people start looking through these things
Speaker 1: where Pat Buchanan has a bunch of voters from Democratic
Speaker 1: Party strongholds and like also particularly like like a bunch
Speaker 1: of like Democratic Catholic voters vote for Buchanan, and Buchanan
Speaker 1: himself is like, there's no way this is real. Like
Speaker 1: Buchanan's like, you know, he's he's a figure will probably
Speaker 1: like one day do a like we'll probably talk about
Speaker 1: more on this podcast. Yeah, that those behind the Baschard's
Speaker 1: episode about him. He is a he is a fucking Nazi. Uh,
Speaker 1: he sucks ass. But he's also so he's some a
Speaker 1: kind of evangelical who like really really really fucking hates Catholics.
Speaker 1: And you know, so there's a bunch of these Catholic
Speaker 1: like Democratic voters he voted for this guy, and everyone's
Speaker 1: like what the funk happened here. The thing that happened
Speaker 1: here is all these people got confused. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is a disaster on a hundred million levels. And
Speaker 1: when we come back from ADS, we will talk about
Speaker 1: the product of all of this, which is not good. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So on election night, the media starts to
Speaker 1: call Florida for Gore based on exit pulling, but they
Speaker 1: start getting calls for Republican political operatives saying, hold hold on,
Speaker 1: hold on, it's actually too close to call. And the
Speaker 1: initial count from Florida has the Republican Party ahead. But
Speaker 1: when I say the Hublican Party is ahead, they were
Speaker 1: ahead by like six hundred votes. And so this triggers
Speaker 1: a mandatory recount. But and this, and this is another
Speaker 1: problem with this, right we we we We've gone through
Speaker 1: atlant all of the problems with these ballots. Right. The
Speaker 1: recall that they do is a recall using the voting machines.
Speaker 1: And those voting machines our guess what the ones that are.
Speaker 1: If if you if you rerun a funked up Chad
Speaker 1: ballot through the same voting machine, it's going to get
Speaker 1: a fucked up result. So okay, so they run this
Speaker 1: again and the difference in votes comes down to FLEC
Speaker 1: five hundred votes. And at this point, Gore's campaign requests
Speaker 1: a manual recount. They want people to look at the
Speaker 1: ballots by hand and figure out who people actually voted for,
Speaker 1: because these machines are a fucking shit show. But in
Speaker 1: any kind of sort of like you know, and even
Speaker 1: remotely competent or saying, like democratic political system, there would
Speaker 1: be a bunch of people doing this like they're there,
Speaker 1: you know, like when when an election happens, they would
Speaker 1: be just a very very large number of people mobilize
Speaker 1: to make sure that it runs smoothly. There's not there's
Speaker 1: like a bunch of like unbelievably overworked and underpaid. Some
Speaker 1: people are people who also people who are just sucking volunteers,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of just random, like unbelievably exhausted like
Speaker 1: local election officials who have to do this recount. And
Speaker 1: this is where the Bush campaign sees their chance to
Speaker 1: steal the election. So the election happens no November seven,
Speaker 1: and on November eleven, the Bush campaign sues to stop
Speaker 1: the recount. Now, we talked on a previous episode a
Speaker 1: while back about the Democrats how they have this line
Speaker 1: in the two thousand's about how they're part of the
Speaker 1: quote reality based community and how this is a reflection
Speaker 1: of you know, if you look at the whole quote,
Speaker 1: which is from a Republican political strategist, I what's actually
Speaker 1: what they're saying here is that what's happening is that
Speaker 1: the Democrats observe reality. Well, the Republicans set out to
Speaker 1: define reality. And this is the moment, this election is
Speaker 1: where we get to see how the daynat we we
Speaker 1: we we we get to like really first see these
Speaker 1: these principles in action. I'm gonna read from the Washington
Speaker 1: Post here. Unlike the Gore campaign, which focused on filing
Speaker 1: motions in Florida courts to keep the recount going in
Speaker 1: key counties like Miami Dodd, the Bush campaign waged a broader,
Speaker 1: costlier effort on multiple fronts. Blakeman said it was a
Speaker 1: three pronged effort. He said it was a court battle,
Speaker 1: it was a recount organization, and it was also a
Speaker 1: pr effort because although the voting effort ended, the campaign
Speaker 1: never did until there was a definitive winner. So what
Speaker 1: happens here is Republicans start this massive media blitz to
Speaker 1: convince people that Bush actually won the election. And this
Speaker 1: this is a really really important moment in sort of
Speaker 1: American history because it's one of the things that solidifies
Speaker 1: um is one of the things that solidifies sort of
Speaker 1: like like owning the lib for example. It's like a
Speaker 1: major point, and it's like like one of the key
Speaker 1: focal points of America of Republican politics, and this is
Speaker 1: eventually going to consume like all of their politics, right
Speaker 1: until when we get this sort of you know, like
Speaker 1: now right where that's like we're owning the Libs is
Speaker 1: the only thing this is about. You know, this, this
Speaker 1: owning the Libs is kind of like it's it's been
Speaker 1: a partner of Republican politics for a long time, but
Speaker 1: this is where we really start to see it sort
Speaker 1: of consuming everything. And Okay, if you look at their
Speaker 1: like like what they're saying, by modern standards, it is
Speaker 1: incredibly weak ship, right. This is like this is a
Speaker 1: culture that is just a burge from the nineties. Nobody
Speaker 1: has invented real posted yet, but it is really on
Speaker 1: the lips stuff. Like they have this whole campaign where
Speaker 1: they call the goyal Libramain campaign sore loser man, and
Speaker 1: everyone has like sore loser man hats, and like they
Speaker 1: have all these like printed signs and like T shirts
Speaker 1: and they're selling merch and you know, and so you know,
Speaker 1: they're running basically an OP, and they're running an OPT
Speaker 1: to convince everyone that like, no, actually we legitimately won
Speaker 1: this election and it's over, and the recounts just people
Speaker 1: being but heard they lost. And this is where things
Speaker 1: get really really weird. So in Miami DoD where there's
Speaker 1: a manual recount going on, a bunch of protesters in
Speaker 1: fancy suits show up but starts screaming at election workers. Now,
Speaker 1: if this was the old Democratic Party machine like LBJ,
Speaker 1: would have personally pushed six of these guys out a
Speaker 1: window and the recount would have been run by like
Speaker 1: sixty of the earliest dudes, the entire Chicago mob. But
Speaker 1: this is the incredibly decrepit two thousand Democratic Party, who
Speaker 1: have replaced all their mob guys with consultants. And these
Speaker 1: people legitimately, like you know, they believe in the rules
Speaker 1: and the norms and the process. And the result of
Speaker 1: this is that Bush literally destroys the entire United States.
Speaker 1: And I think, like irrevocably damaged, like the entirety of
Speaker 1: the of you know, like what what whatever is left
Speaker 1: to the American democratic system. So how how this is achieved?
Speaker 1: But back in Miami DoD this Democratic Party operative is
Speaker 1: seen walking around the recount area with a ballot. Now
Speaker 1: this is a blank ballot, right, this guy is going
Speaker 1: to see he's going with an election official to go
Speaker 1: see if he can replicate like the like how they
Speaker 1: h has stuff happens to prove that, like this is
Speaker 1: what's going on. But the publicans see this guy and
Speaker 1: they immediately start screaming about how the Democrats are staling
Speaker 1: in the election, and they like beat this ship out
Speaker 1: of this guy, and just a full on riot starts
Speaker 1: in this government building and it works. The recount stops.
Speaker 1: The election workers are terrified. The recount yeah, like the
Speaker 1: like everything stopped for the day, they can't do anything.
Speaker 1: And the next day the recount is fully stopped. It
Speaker 1: never resumes, And the Republicans are stunned by this. They
Speaker 1: assumed that, like, you know, the political operatives doing the rioting,
Speaker 1: we're gonna like face some oppositions to the Democrats on
Speaker 1: the ground for you know, like literally assaulting and intimidating
Speaker 1: a bunch of election workers in order to like stop
Speaker 1: votes from being counted. But there's they they don't, there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing, there's no resistance at all. Um. Here's a
Speaker 1: quote from Douglas Hay, who is there a Republican Political Operatives,
Speaker 1: who is one of the organizers of the Brooks Brothers riot,
Speaker 1: who he tried to do a redemption arc in the
Speaker 1: media to sort of like be like, oh, I was
Speaker 1: part of the Brooks Brothers riot. But even I think
Speaker 1: the stop the steel stuff is bad, which like I
Speaker 1: think my man doth protests too much. Um, here's just
Speaker 1: the quote. I still don't understand how it was that
Speaker 1: we completely outmatched the Democrats, hey says, And this is
Speaker 1: how Bush wins the election. The Supreme Court, which again
Speaker 1: it should also be know the Streame Court is staffed
Speaker 1: by a bunch of George H. W. Bush appointees. Um.
Speaker 1: Eventually here's the Clayic case and decides that the constitution
Speaker 1: says that the winner the winner has to be declared
Speaker 1: by a certain time, so there's no time for a recount.
Speaker 1: And they have the election and the Bush and this
Speaker 1: is achieved, and this is possible because of the Brooks
Speaker 1: Brothers riot and the Brooks Brothers, right, is what this
Speaker 1: whole sort of Republican opertor things comes to be known
Speaker 1: because they're all wearing Brooks Brothers suits. Um. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people involved in this riot
Speaker 1: who are like at the core of modern Republican politics. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Neil Gorrich and AMYCLEMYN. Barritt, and I think there's actually
Speaker 1: one other like Paris and Republicans of elevated senior office.
Speaker 1: There are multiple people on the Supreme Court today who
Speaker 1: were on the Bush legal team when they were doing this.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's also the question of the extent
Speaker 1: to which roger Stone has involved. He asked roger Stone,
Speaker 1: he claims to have organized literally this entire thing. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: other people who were involved with they claimed that roger
Speaker 1: Stone was like fucked off at a hotel somewhere else
Speaker 1: and didn't was just sort of around and didn't actually
Speaker 1: organize it. But either way, this set a precedent for
Speaker 1: how you can rig an election, which is if you
Speaker 1: if you can seize the majority on the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: with sort of like when you know you can put
Speaker 1: your sort of loyal minions there and then you can
Speaker 1: have an initial count of an election that looked that
Speaker 1: that that looks like it's favoring you, even if that's
Speaker 1: not actually true. If you then have an initial count
Speaker 1: of an election that says that you win, and then
Speaker 1: you can stop and then you were able to stop
Speaker 1: votes from being counted from November until January, you will
Speaker 1: win the election. That that is that that is the
Speaker 1: precedents that was installed by by the two election. And
Speaker 1: if you look at the Stop the Still campaign, this
Speaker 1: is exactly what Trump is trying to do. Then literally
Speaker 1: Roger Stone is also trying to do this. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is this is what stop
Speaker 1: is still is. Right. You can you can find Trump
Speaker 1: talking about this monthly for the election. Right. This this,
Speaker 1: this is why he was trying to do his whole
Speaker 1: thing about about the mail in batt because he and
Speaker 1: Roger Stone and sort of all the political operators who
Speaker 1: are involved in the circles were like, okay, so we
Speaker 1: know that that a bunch of Democrats are gonna do
Speaker 1: mail in ballots because of COVID, because they don't want
Speaker 1: to be there at the ballots. They know that the
Speaker 1: initial count is going to favor them. And I think
Speaker 1: people have forgotten this, but if you remember the night
Speaker 1: of the election in I remember like like even a
Speaker 1: bunch of my friends who were like people who were
Speaker 1: you know, like like fairly serious, like I don't know
Speaker 1: politics nowhere, people were really deeply invested in politics, like
Speaker 1: thought that Trump had won the election because what would
Speaker 1: have been counted on that night was just was just
Speaker 1: the sort of initially wasn't counting the mail in ballots,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, the plan was just to delegitimate mail
Speaker 1: in ballots in the eyes of of sort of the
Speaker 1: well mostly the Republican based, but like sort of the
Speaker 1: American populacets the whole, and then have a bunch of
Speaker 1: people physically assault these centers to get him to stop
Speaker 1: the places where these votes are being counted, to get
Speaker 1: him to stop the count and it doesn't work. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't work I think partially because but yeah, those
Speaker 1: few things, Like one of the things is that you
Speaker 1: know you can't if you're gonna do a play like this,
Speaker 1: you have to run it like you you you are
Speaker 1: relying on the sort of physical intimidation of the court workers.
Speaker 1: But mostly what you need to do is make sure
Speaker 1: that it's stuck in a court fight. And the problem
Speaker 1: is that like the sort of modern like Trump based people,
Speaker 1: like they don't have any competent lawyers. The root of
Speaker 1: Giuliani is like trying to do this ship or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like that guy, I don't know that that guy
Speaker 1: may have known what a law was in like nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, but his brain has been just melted by
Speaker 1: like inhaling cigar smoke and truly copious about a drug.
Speaker 1: So you know, they're not they're not really able to
Speaker 1: sort of pull this off, but Bush is. And the
Speaker 1: result of this is the American reaction at eleven is
Speaker 1: the war in the Rock is basically the the the
Speaker 1: sort of complete annihilation of like then like this is
Speaker 1: slightly an exaggeration, but like the concept of freedom in
Speaker 1: the US, like the ability for you not to be
Speaker 1: constantly surveiled, the ability for you to like you know,
Speaker 1: live live in a society in which there's like every
Speaker 1: single thing you do isn't being monitored by a thousand
Speaker 1: different kinds of police stations who are all sharing your
Speaker 1: tweets so they can fucking grab people out off of
Speaker 1: the road and sucking unmarked fans, right, Like, that's all
Speaker 1: stuff that is a specific product of the sort of
Speaker 1: kind of fascism at the Bush administration deploys. And they're
Speaker 1: able to do this because they just try to stole
Speaker 1: an election. And now we all, we all sort of
Speaker 1: just live in in the permanent afterlife of the Brooks
Speaker 1: Brothers riot. This is what January sixth was. This is
Speaker 1: what stop the Steel is, and it's what the that's
Speaker 1: what the modern Republican Party is. So yeah, it's happy holidays,
Speaker 1: ye everyone. I hope you have a good new year.
Speaker 1: And uh, in Chlaw, we will destroy these fashion Republican
Speaker 1: bastards and make sure that none of them ever get
Speaker 1: to do this again.