Government

Trump Campaign Staff Joked About Getting Their Asses Kicked In Wisconsin. Then They Cried Fraud.

Lucky thing they were all taping each other.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Siri, play us something which would be distinctly unhelpful if your campaign were under investigation by a special counsel for efforts to overturn a lawful election. Preferably by the state campaign chair.

Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need … Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull.

Admission that they’re making a fuss prophylactically without any proof of fraud? Check! Avowed willingness to pull stunts as needed? Check!

Yep, that’ll do it.

That fun snippet is from a tape of Trump campaign official Andrew Iverson, speaking on November 5, 2020, at the same time the outfit was gearing up to contest President Biden’s victory in seven swing states. The recording, obtained by the Associated Press, appears to prove that everyone inside the campaign knew that they’d lost fair and square. And though Iverson mentioned “shenanigans” in Wisconsin’s major metro areas, he acknowledged that Biden had won the state.

“Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters,” he congratulated the assembled staff. “Democrats just got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.”

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“Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You gotta respect that,” agreed Midwest RNC Director Clayton Henson. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.”

The Trump campaign clearly knew they’d lost, as polls predicted they would. Nevertheless, the former president and his allies immediately cried foul and insisted that the state had been plagued by fraud.

“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!” Trump tweeted on November 4. And just five days later he promised that “Wisconsin is looking very good. Needs a little time statutorily. Will happen soon!”

In fact, it did not happen soon. Or ever. The Trump team filed a lawsuit on November 18 alleging fraud in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, and in December, he filed an additional two cases. His Kraken allies filed dozens more pointless lawsuits, both in Wisconsin and nationwide, spinning fantastical tales of Italian space lasers, Venezuelan voting machines, Chinese Bluetooth thermostats, and, of course, Black women counting ballots. None of it moved the needle, because there was no fraud to discover, as they’d known all along. So instead, they moved on to the “stunt” of pretending that absentee ballots were definitionally illegal, necessitating wholesale disenfranchisement of qualified voters.

When that didn’t work, they moved on to an even bigger stunt on January 6. So if our nation’s law enforcement authorities are planning on doing anything about it, now would be a really good time!

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Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: ‘fan the flame’ [AP]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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