Donald Trump named election denier and indicted fake elector Michael McDonald as senior advisor to his Nevada campaign earlier this week, signaling that the battleground state will continue to be an area of Big Lie fixation if the Republican loses the state in November.
McDonald was one of six Republicans accused of falsely certifying the results of the 2020 election in Nevada in favor of Trump, despite the fact that Joe Biden won the state by more than 30,000 votes. A Nevada state court dismissed the criminal indictment in June of this year, but in response, Democratic Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has pledged to appeal the decision.
As recently as last month, Trump, during an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, repeated lies about the 2020 election in Nevada, claiming that he won the state: “And I really believe that bad things happened. … I really think we did incredibly, and we, somehow the vote wasn’t there. But I believe we won very strongly, by a lot.”
On Tuesday, McDonald, who has been chairman of the Nevada Republican Party since 2012, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in response to Monday’s announcement, that the role is “not just a title” but that it’s a “badge of honor to be able to be in this position, to be here for him [Trump] and the Trump campaign.”
In a statement following the announcement, Biden-Harris 2024 Nevada Communications Director Maddy Pawlak called the move out for what it appears to be: “Donald Trump is so fixated on his 2020 election loss that he’s now appointing one of his fake electors from that election to run his campaign in Nevada.”
“Just last week on the debate stage, Trump refused to answer, three times in a row, whether he would accept the results of the election, and this latest hire in Nevada makes it clear Trump is solely focused on regaining power,” Pawlak added. “Trump already tried to overturn one election, and Nevadans need to come together to defeat him and protect democracy.”
And in a statement to TPM, Stephanie Justice, regional press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, described McDonald as “just one example of the yes-men that Trump intends to surround himself with if elected to a second term: people who will follow Trump’s lead as he dismantles our democracy piece by piece and obliterates the boundaries of executive power.”
This isn’t the first sign that Trump and his allies are thinking ahead on how to deal with the possibility of losing in the fall. In May, the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party filed a case against the Nevada Secretary of State, alleging inconsistencies with the state’s voter rolls.
A federal judge dismissed the case last month, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing to file the challenge. The case, and similar cases like it, are merely a way for election deniers to sow seeds of distrust in the election system and set themselves up to cry voter fraud, if things don’t go their way in November.
“The ultimate goal of these lawsuits is to lay the foundation for later claims that the election results can’t be trusted because the voter registration rolls can’t be trusted,” director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center Jonathan Diaz previously told TPM. “And it’s all about creating this atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty.”
A very somber July 4. In a stunning convergence of perversities the determinant issue in this year’s Presidential election now appears to be the postulated unfitness for office, indeed the unfitness to be allowed to even continue in office let alone stand for reelection, of the incumbent, Joe Biden. The demand that he withdraw from the race because he is unfit to serve further is loud and constant This demand that the current President withdraw from the race is not limited to his political enemies in the GOP, but is actually being forcefully led by mainstream cable and network television and radio and the New York Times, Washington Post and all the other major papers in the major cities with the exception of the Philadelphia inquirer. The attack has been so persistent and uniform that now several Democratic office holders are joining in the stampede of the herd to drive Joe Biden from the national stage.
Simultaneously, a corrupt and lawless Supreme Court, aided and abetted by these same mainstream news media are successfully shielding from the view of the politically casual in this country, who likely can determine the outcome of the election, the criminality of and fascism promised by Donald Trump and his most extreme backers.
The conventional wisdom now appears to be that Joe Biden, who, when factoring in his slim Congressional majorities for only 2 years of his first term has had a successful presidency on the par with FDR, and who despite the strenuous efforts of corrupt republicans in Congress is untainted by any wrongdoing or ethical lapses in the conduct of his office must nevertheless withdraw from the race now, because a life long stutterer, he had difficulty expressing himself, and in fact lost his train of thought a couple of times in the first debate against his opponent. That same conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon and adjudicated fraud, who cannot speak without brazeningly lying, whose own presidency is rated by historians as the worst in our history, and who is only 3 years younger than Joe Biden is nevertheless vigorous and strong and forceful and therefore there is no need to call on him to withdraw or to pressure his party to force him out as is happening with Joe Biden. Trump has been effectively endorsed not just by his submissive party, but also by a corrupted Supreme Court and a cowed press.
A couple of months ago, the fate of the Republic seemed to rest on a disinformed group of indifferent voters in the swing states, but now that’s becoming overshadowed by the growing question of whether the Democrats will become a suicide pact by increasingly imbibing the fatal opioid being street dealt to them by a relentless, lazy, groupthink press more interested in clicks than truth that Joe Biden is too old and mentally shattered to stay in the race and that only by jettisoning him in favor of undetermined candidate four months before the election can they jolt the larger electorate into seeing Trump for the dire threat he is even if their coverage of the election both sides everything and normalizes the destruction of democracy which is the de facto platform of the Republican Party.
I join Justice Sotomayor not just in her dissent, but in her fear on this 248th, and perhaps last birthday of a free America.
Despite the tsunami of coordinated right wing and press attacks on him, Joe remains tied with Trump in polls of likely voters, and all the proposed alternatives fare worse, before they’ve been the subject of a similar foreign and domestic disinformation campaign. To paraphrase Cromwell, I beseech thee in thy
bowels to question whether you want to join the dump Joe herd at this moment.
EVERY WORD TSF uttered a week ago was a lie (including “and” and “the”), but JOE is the one unfit for office? Words fail.
Hey, media, how sick is Donald Trump? Have you discussed it on tv? Have you asked him if he’s stepping down?
Have you asked Republican Congressmen how concerned we should be that their candidate can’t think straight? How worried are they by their candidate being unable to walk down a ramp or ride a bicycle?
I believe our media is not our media but some other country.