Robin Messing

We now know that David DePape is a MAGA terrorist whose goal to cripple Nancy Pelosi was motivated by Donald Trump's Big Lie about election fraud. Don't take my word for it. He told us this himself. This is from the criminal complaint filed against him.

DEPAPE stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DEPAPE the truth, he would let her go, and if she lied, he was going to break her kneecaps. DEPAPE was certain that Nancy would not have told the truth. In the course of the interview, DEPAPE articulated he viewed Nancy as the leader of the pack of lies told by the Democratic Party. DEPAPE also later explained that by breaking Nancy's kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions. DEPAPE also explained generally that he wanted to use Nancy to lure another individual to DEPAPE. . . .

 

DEPAPE remembered thinking that there was no way the police were going to forget about the phone call. DEPAPE explained that he did not leave after Pelosi's call to 9-1-1 because, much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender. DEPAPE reiterated this sentiment elsewhere in the interview. . . .

DEPAPE stated that he pulled the hammer away from Pelosi and swung the hammer towards Pelosi. DEPAPE explained that Pelosi's actions resulted in Pelosi taking the punishment instead.

This confirms earlier reports that DePape's daughter said that DePape was indeed the author of a far right-wing QAnon-type blog that, among other things, claimed that "Either Q is Trump himself or Q is the deep state moles within Trumps inner circle."

This makes it all the more important to debunk Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It has been debunked by others before, but a more comprehensive debunking is needed--a debunking that looks at the events before the election--and I mean WAY before the election, back to 2016, and even back to 2012--as well as events that took place up to January 6. We need to look at Trump's history, what his advisors told Trump after the election, what Steve Bannon predicted would happen on election day, the lawsuits filed by voting machine companies in response to those spreading Trump's Big Lie, and a follow-the-money reward that proved there were millions of illegal voters--or was that just five? Here are the top dirty dozen reasons proving that not only was Trump's cry of a stolen election false, Trump and his associates knew they were false, and Trump planned well in advance to steal the election from Joe Biden if Biden won. This list is by no means complete.

This post is going to be extremely disjointed--consider it a collection of data points with one overarching theme. Today's Republican Party knows that its policies are unpopular and that the only way they can stay in power is to destroy our democracy. The LAST thing they want is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead, many of them want our country to become a White Christo-nationalist one-party state where the Republicans maintain a permanent lock on power. In other words, they want our country to become a tyranny of the minority. A common talking point among those who want to destroy our democracy is to say "We're a republic, not a democracy." If you hear someone say that, then shove this column down their throat.

And now, without further ado, ten signs that Republicans want to destroy our democracy.

Whenever I tweet that we are in danger of losing our democracy I almost INEVEITBALY get a response from some Trumpanzee or Putinista saying "America is a republic. It is not a democracy." This pablum is intended to be Novocain for the brain. It is designed to confuse the issue and cause us to lose sight that the Founders wanted a government that represented the will of the people, and not the will of an autocrat. True, the Founders defined who "the people" were far too narrowly. That is why we have had to work to form a "more perfect union." But we must not lose sight of the aspirational goal that President Lincoln set forth in his Gettysburg Address--that we should have a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." 

Congressman Tom Reed announced last year that he would not be running for re-election because of a sexual assault allegation made against him. (See this story from last year for more information about the alleged sexual assault.) But we just received a surprise when Reed unexpectedly resigned early on May 10. We are now without a Congressman to represent our district. 

Our democracy is hanging by a thread. It has never been in more danger during my lifetime, and I'm an old geezer who can remember back to the Nixon Administration. And the source of democracy's jeopardy is Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen from him. This lie motivated the January 6 insurrection and, just as importantly, it is motivating efforts to place acolytes of this lie in positions where they are the ones who decide how the votes will get counted in 2024.

A Trumpanzee clown was bitching about the Democrats and singing the praises of Donald Trump to me on Facebook. I noticed that his Facebook page had a picture of Ronald Reagan at the top. I was never a big fan of Reagan's. I often disagreed with him on policy, but I never questioned his patriotism. And I always thought he did what he thought was right for the country--no matter how misguided I thought his actions were. I never for a moment thought that he put his own personal interests above that of our country.

Over 60% of Arizona's population lives in Maricopa County. State Senate Republican leaders refused to accept that Biden had won the county by 45,000 votes, thus giving him a 10,00-vote victory statewide. Election results were audited twice with no evidence that there had been a significant error in the original count and no evidence of chicanery, but state Republican officials still refused to accept the results. They refused to accept the results, even though the Maricopa County Recorder and four of the five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBS) were Republicans. The state Senate Republicans sued the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to force them to hand over their voting machines and ballots so that they could hire their own auditors to do a forensic analysis of the machines as well as a hand recount of all the votes. The State Senate won their lawsuit and the clown show officially known as the Arizona audit was off to the races.

I will discuss why we should view the audit as a clown show in more depth in another column. For now let's just say that it isn't just the Democrats who see it that way. The Maricopa County Republicans wrote a blistering letter on May 17 to the Arizona State Senate President, Karen Fann that made it clear that they thought the audit was a circus. Much of that letter is technical and will be of little interest to the average reader. I know few people will read the entire 13-page letter, so here are the highlights in their raging glory.

The Fight

Jenna Ellis, one of Donald Trump's Kraken lawyers, may have said the quiet part out loud. Look at this tweet. Then read the Business Insider article attached to it.

This report is true @GOPChairwoman, and you know I have the receipts.

Why is the RNC lying and saying it’s false?https://t.co/Fn5fcyt8ln

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) July 11, 2021

Here is the beginning of the Business Insider article.

Last November, Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis received an email that forwarded a note from Republican National Committee (RNC) chief counsel Justin Riemer, with the GOP official questioning the former president's election claims, according to a forthcoming book by Michael Wolff.

 

In the note, Riemer reportedly wrote to his RNC colleagues asking why they were backing Trump's unfounded claims of election fraud, while also expressing that the organization raised more cash battling Democrats than challenging election results.

Ellis, who was having dinner with Rudy Giuliani and former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, passed her phone around for everyone to view the message, which reportedly left them "stunned."

Republicans want the January 6th Insurrection to disappear down an Orwellian memory hole, never to be heard of again. Or at the very least, they want to whitewash it to the point where we see the insurrectionists as little more than tourists who got a little carried away with their enthusiasm. Congressman Andrew Clyde denied that an attempted insurrection had occurred because those at the Capitol were unarmed. He acknowledged that there were some rioters and some acts of vandalism, but he said that to call it an insurrection was a "bald-faced lie." He then bizarrely claimed that the people who entered the Capitol looked like normal tourists.

Congressman Tom Reed posted the following statement on his official government Facebook page on October 23.

STATEMENT: Today, my family and I were threatened at our home in Corning.

The cowards used a dead animal and a brick with a family member’s name on it to try to intimidate us. We assure everyone such threats only energize us to stand stronger.

We thank the local police and federal authorities, who are already investigating this disgusting attack against my family. 

Across the country, politics has taken a disturbing turn. 

We have to overcome this. I know that we can. We are all Americans first. What unites us is far greater than our political differences