When Bill Maher predicted, in 2020 , that Donald Trump would not concede the presidential election if he lost, Trump's defenders accused the "Real Time" host of having " Trump derangement syndrome." But Trump, just as Maher predicted, refused to admit defeat after losing the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden . Now, four years later, a variety of Trump critics — from Maher to Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias — are warning that Trump will do the same thing again if he loses the 2024 election .
But The Guardian's Sam Levine, in an article published on August 12 , stresses that there is a crucial difference between 2020 and 2024: Trump and his MAGA allies "may be better prepared" to steal the election this time. READ MORE: Trump is losing it because he's afraid of losing "(Cleta) Mitchell, a close Trump ally, has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections," Levine explains . "And the Republican National Committee's election litigation team is now being led by Christina Bobb, an election denier who is now facing criminal charges for her efforts to overturn the 2020 race.
" The reporter continues , "The RNC claims it is recruiting an army of 100,000 poll observers who could provide significant disruption during voting and counting...
. But more significantly, the idea that the 2020 election was stolen has moved from the fringes to being a pillar of the Republican Party. A January poll from PRRI found that 66 percent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen.
" Elias laments that election denialism has become the GOP's "standard position." The attorney and Democracy Docket publisher told The Guardian , "I think we saw efforts by Republicans in 2020 that were pretty ham-handed. I worry that there will be both legal and extralegal efforts by Republicans to keep ballots from being counted.
" READ MORE: 'Has he met his boss?' Vance mocked after whining about Dems turning tables on the GOP Similarly, Ben Berwick, an attorney for Protect Democracy, told The Guardian , "It's all part of creating sort of a pretext to say, 'Oh, we need to throw out this set of ballots' or 'We can't really know who the real winner is.' I think much of it won't stick, but I think the point is to have enough of it stick to create enough uncertainty for that critical post-election period." Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, told The Guardian he is "definitely concerned" that there will be "a lot of efforts to disturb" vote counting.
Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, believes that MAGA election denialism is much more sophisticated in 2024 than it was four years ago. Morales-Doyle told The Guardian , "This has started earlier in the cycle and is louder and is more consistent. That is all just at a different level than it was before 2020.
” READ MORE: Inside the GOP plot to silence Texas voters Read The Guardian's full report at this link . A conservative shouting match erupted on CNN Monday morning as panelists argued about a confusing comment from Donald Trump's running mate Sen. J.
D. Vance and one Republican's controversial take. Matt Gorman, former advisor to Sen.
Tim Scott (R-SC), started screaming when David Frum, onetime speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, suggested there was a dark motive behind Vance's attacks on Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
"It's not nice, it's not true," Frum said. "But what he's trying to suggest is that Tim Walz is a sexual deviant." "What are you talking about?" Gorman roared.
"That's ridiculous!" Vance made a comment that spurred this exchange during a CNN interview with anchor Dana Bash over the weekend which she found unconvincing. The Ohio senator pointed to a moment when Walz, on stage for the announcement he would be Vice Kamala Harris ' running mate, turned with his hand extended and found himself facing his wife. "When I had just been announced as the V.
P. nominee, I gave my big speech and I saw my wife and I gave her a big hug and a kiss because I love my wife and I think that's what a normal person does," Vance told Bash. "Walz gave his wife a nice firm midwestern handshake and then tried to sort of awkwardly correct for it.
" Bash shook her head as she recounted the comment Monday morning and said, "I can't believe we're having this conversation." She then argued Walz, who famously dubbed the MAGA right "weird," had simply not realized his wife was standing next to him and Vance was unsure how to respond to a significant change in Democrats' campaign tactics. "Democrats for so long have brought a sort of a knife to a gunfight when it comes to the rhetoric of Donald Trump ," Bash said.
"They're trying to be more in that space." Frum sought to explain Vance's underlying meaning and, in doing so, triggered Gorman's rage. "The man spends way too much time online," said Frum.
"A lot of what he says is going to be incomprehensible to you unless you participate in or have some acquaintance with this strange underworld." ALSO READ: Trump's insatiable ego is destroying the former president Frum points to Trump's son Donald Jr. and the messaging he sends on Twitter, arguing it appealed to "the lava coming up from the ugliest parts of American life.
" Vance recently attacked Walz on the same site, writing , "He and Kamala Harris want to take children away from their parents if the parents don't like sex changes." On Truth Social, the social media site owned and dominated by Trump, MAGA supporters such as conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and he fake news site Gateway Pundit share false claims that Walz passed legislation protecting pedophiles and call him "Tampon Tim." Frum urged Vance to step away from the screen, arguing the Ohio Republican was above such social media spaces.
"Everything is couched as a personal attack of the most viscous kind," said Frum. "That's why people think he's weird; he's so brilliant, he's so capable, so why is he so filled with rage and contempt?" Watch the video below or click here. WASHINGTON — Republicans continue lambasting Democrats for wanting to “ pack ” the Supreme Court with additional justices.
But GOP rhetoric is distorting reality. Most vulnerable Senate Democrats are actually running away from progressive calls to expand the court beyond its current nine justices. Even President Joe Biden , who last month unveiled a Supreme Court reform proposal, excluded the addition of additional justices.
“Curious your thoughts on expanding the size of the Supreme Court?” Raw Story asked Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). “We’re commencing on an important discussion, and of course we've heard the president's proposal,” Baldwin — who’s facing Republican businessman Eric Hovde this fall — told Raw Story.
“There's often been discussion about what you're asking about. I'm at the very early stages of evaluation.” ALSO READ: 21 worthless knick-knacks Donald Trump will give you for your cash “Yeah?” Raw Story pushed.
“But you’re supportive of ethics reform?” “Ethics for sure,” Baldwin said after casting one of her last votes before the Senate broke for its August recess last week. Baldwin is with most every other Senate Democrat, as they unite around an ethics reform proposal for the Supreme Court. Reform within the high court has been of particular Democratic interest since ProPublica first broke the news of Justice Clarence Thomas living a lavish lifestyle — one filled with free private jets, exclusive resorts and luxury yachts — on billionaire donor Harlan Crow’s dime.
But most Democrats in power have also stopped short of outrightly calling for expanding the court to, say, 12 or 13 or 15 justices — a move that would ostensibly give a Democratic president the power to fundamentally alter the court’s ideological balance of power. This isn’t something they’re particularly keen on advertising, however, as they tip-toe around the topic so as not to alienate the progressive — and energized — wing of the Democratic Party, which would love to see Biden, or Kamala Harris were she to win the White House , nominate a slate of new liberal justices. Democratic divisions Biden’s package of potential Supreme Court reforms includes capping justices’ careers on the court at 18 years and the installation of an enforceable code of ethics.
While you wouldn’t know it based on Republican rhetoric — from former President Donald Trump on down to the conservative pundit class — Biden has squarely rejected calls to expand the Supreme Court. So unenthused are most congressional Democrats about expanding the court that one congressional proposal to expand the size of the Supreme Court to 12 justices — the Judiciary Act of 2023 from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) — has sat collecting dust for months, not even gaining a single new supporter in the past year.
Besides Markey, it’s supported by Sens. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), but that’s it at present. If Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-CA) wins his race to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, the measure to expand the court could gain a new sponsor. U.S.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) arrives for a vote at the Capitol on July 8, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) “Right now, people recognize that we've got to do something, and so there's a lot of negotiation about what's the right way to reform the Supreme Court,” Warren told Raw Story as she was walking to her car outside the U.S. Capitol.
“But on our side, we recognize that we're not going to save our Constitution and our nation if the United States Supreme Court is going to make declarations that presidents get to be kings and Congress can't do their business.” Added Warren: “We're still talking.” If they’re talking, it’s not to their vulnerable colleagues, such as Baldwin.
‘Have not even looked at it’ Before Congress kicked off its August recess, Raw Story interviewed 12 Senate Democrats — including the chair of the Judiciary Committee, three of the Senate’s most embattled incumbents and, arguably, the chamber’s fiercest proponents of ethics reform — about so-called court packing proposals for the Supreme Court. All told, they reveal the vacuousness of the right’s Supreme Court-packing rhetoric, such as in July, when a Trump campaign statement — reacting to Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 election — declared: “It’s all part of Kamala’s scheme to pack the Supreme Court with far-left radical judges who will render decisions based on politics, not the law.” ALSO READ: Tim Walz's personal finances are extraordinarily boring — and that may help Harris But that’s far from reality.
Democrats aren’t just divided over the topic of court packing — many run away from it altogether. Inside the Democratic Caucus, most senators aren’t interested in discussing it or plead ignorance about it. “Have you looked at Markey's measure to expand the size of the Supreme Court?” Raw Story asked.
“I haven’t,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) — who’s facing former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy in November — told Raw Story. Sen.
Jon Tester (D-MT) listens during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee hearing on January 11, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) “Haven’t even looked at it?” “I have not even looked at it,” Tester said of the decades-old debate that stretches back to the days of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. “The question I have is, where’s it stop? Look, accountability is really important, I don't care what branch of the government you're in, and I'm all about accountability transparency.” Raw Story asked Sen.
Bob Casey (D-PA): “Are the calls in your party to expand the size of the court – like Ed Markey’s bill — are those unhelpful? Because when you watch Fox or Newsmax, the whole party gets pegged as ‘progressive’ on the issue.” “Look, the president made a really thoughtful proposal on a range of issues,” said Casey — who’s running against Republican businessman Dave McCormick this cycle. “The question of the makeup of the court, that's a question that I've got to take a closer look at.
I just haven't spent the time to examine that.” Casey has company. “No I have not looked at it,” Sen.
Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) — who squeaked out her reelection victory by some 8,000 votes in 2022 — told Raw Story. “It really doesn't take the politics out of it.” Before coming to Congress, Cortez Masto served as Nevada’s attorney general.
She says that these days, she’s hearing about the judiciary from more than angry base voters, including from many bewildered lawyers. “Because they've also seen under a Trump administration the caliber of the [judges] from the Ninth Circuit, which is outrageous. And so they're having to deal with it, so there's a lot at stake,” Cortez Masto said.
Cortez Masto was especially enraged when the John Roberts-led Supreme Court did away with “Chevron deference” — a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that enabled Congress to pass broad bills before experts in federal agencies wrote out the rules and regulations needed to implement those statutes. ALSO READ: Supreme Court’s MAGA majority wants us to burn “It's a matter of getting it right, and watching what's coming out of the court now and watching not just rights being eroded, l also recognize that the executive branch agencies have a role to play in discretion in how they implement our programs is very important,” Cortez Masto said. “And for them to overturn Chevron is not just impacting at the federal level, but it is impacting at the state level.
” She says the bubble the nation’s top justices inhabit is having real world consequences beyond Democrats’ fight to restore nationally recognized abortion rights, which seems to get the most attention since Roe v. Wade was wiped away. Cortez Masto says the justices are daft when it comes to the art of legislating.
“You're not going to get it right on the first try — any legislation. You're hopeful, you bring all the stakeholders together, you're there, everybody solving the problem. Everybody has input, but sometimes it's so complex that it takes two or three times to get it,” Cortez Masto said.
“That's why it is important that you have that flexibility with those agencies to hear what they're saying, to work with them to implement the ratio. I just think we need to take them out of that process. And what the court has done is injected themselves into the process.
” That’s why Cortez Masto and other Democrats are focusing on ethics reform and not even entertaining proposals to expand the court. It’s not just vulnerable lawmakers. Even party leaders are staying away from the proposed “packing.
” “I haven’t come out for it,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) acknowledged to Raw Story. ‘Term limits are where the mainstream is’ Some progressive Democrats still want to expand the court. But they largely acknowledge that they likely won’t get their way — at least not yet.
“Term limits are where the mainstream is right now. I think it's very clear that the court is out of control and operating in a totally partisan, in some cases unlawful, way,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story.
“There's a recognition that there are three branches of government and these guys shouldn't be permitted to operate with total impunity.” For many in Congress, it’s started to feel like this Supreme Court is slowly taking power away from the legislative branch, which Schatz bemoans. Sen.
Brian Schatz (D-HI) leaves a meeting with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol Building following passage in the House of a 45-day continuing resolution on Sept.
30, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) “Doesn't mean we should interfere with their individual decisions, but the structure of the court, the ethical standards of the court, how many justices there are, how many circuits there are — all of those are subject to congressional action,” Schatz said.
“These particular justices have decided that any exertions of article one power is some sort of obscene transgression and I think the public is wise to that.” “But expanding the court just goes too far?” Raw Story pressed. “I don’t know if it goes too far.
I just think we should start the conversation where everyone is,” Schatz said. Biden’s court reform package is uniting the Democratic Party where Chief Justice John Roberts has failed to, because while Roberts convinced justices to adopt an ethics measure, there’s no current mechanism to enforce it. While Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have fought all year for ethics reform Sen.
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — the author of the SCERT or Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 — says it’s helpful to have the president on board, too. “I'm very happy about it. I'm particularly happy with his recommendations aligned with my bill,” Whitehouse told Raw Story.
As for expanding the court? “Investigation comes first,” Whitehouse said. “I think the aperture for that is not there yet.” The clock’s ticking, so Dems say keep it bipartisan Another loud reform advocate agrees.
Before Biden came out in favor of an 18-year term for justices, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) proposed as much with his TERM — Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization — Act. “So whatever tact we've taken, this is why I think the president's measures were so solid, it should be things that objectively are not partisan,” Booker told Raw Story.
“And that really helped to restore the prestige and faith to the court.” Booker says there’s little time to waste. “This is a real crisis for the Supreme Court right now that the legitimacy of the court is being called into question by people across the political spectrum.
We have individuals who are receiving literally millions of dollars in gifts from people that have matters before the court order or fighting logical preferences of the court,” Booker said. “This is very problematic.” As for calls by Markey and other progressives to expand the size of the court, Booker says it alienates the very Republicans they need to win over to pass any reform measures.
“I haven't looked at the specifics of this proposal. It's like, when does that stop when both sides are trying to do that for political advantage? I think it could be that they could fall into partisanship,” Booker said. “I'm not criticizing the measure.
I just know that I have resisted calls to do things that don't have wide bipartisan support.” In spite of all the accusations that Democrats want to pack the court, most Democrats, including Georgetown educated lawyer Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), have rejected those calls from the party’s leftward flank.
“We should start with the fact that they should have a code of ethics. It’s nuts that you can have a Supreme Court justice or justices accepting millions of dollars in entertainment. Like, what the heck is that?” Hirono told Raw Story.
“None of us get to do it, and thank goodness not!” Charlie Sykes offered a sinister explanation for Donald Trump's social media posts suggesting that Kamala Harris was sharing fake photos of her crowds. The former president claimed his Democratic rival had used artificial intelligence to make it appear thousands of supporters had greeted her at a Michigan airport, and the conservative commentator told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump was setting the stage for another attempt to overturn an election loss. "As we're watching this, you know, decomposition meltdown by Donald Trump, notice that not a single prominent Republican is looking at this and saying, 'Hey, you know, let's get off this train, this is deeply wrong, let's go in a different direction or change my vote,'" Sykes said.
"They're completely locked in. I also agree with you, that what's really rattling Donald Trump is that this has become a cultural phenomenon, not simply a political phenomenon." "Yes, it is sad and we can make fun of it, it is alarming, but it is also profoundly dangerous, what is going on," Sykes added, "because you look at that insane tweet, and it's not just that he's going down this rabbit hole of deep swamp conspiracy theories.
He's using this as, you know, a way of saying that the Democrats are cheating, that Kamala Harris should be disqualified." The Republican nominee seems to be trying to question the legitimacy of the election three months before it takes place, Sykes said, after previously trying to overturn his loss four years ago. ALSO READ: Trump’s smear job climaxed prematurely — and now he’s stuck "This is pre-election denialism by Donald Trump," Sykes said.
"It's no mystery, Donald Trump is never going to graciously concede defeat in this election. He's already laying the groundwork for what's going to happen after November. I think this is going to be an extraordinarily dangerous period.
He has election deniers in key states, his base is psychologically not prepared for him to lose." "This is a desperate man," Sykes added. "Donald Trump will not simply lose the election.
Donald Trump knows if he is not elected president, he may be going to jail. He will do and say anything. You see in that tweet, not merely the fact that he is rattled and losing it, but that he is already coming up with his lines for why he can deny the results of the election, how Kamala Harris' nomination is unconstitutional, how this is being stolen – all of that in advance.
"No one should be surprised or think that this fever is going to break on Nov. 5. Whatever happens, we are about to head into a very dangerous period in American politics, led by Donald Trump, obviously assisted by Republicans who simply have decided that they're not going to draw the line.
" Watch the video below or at this link. - YouTube youtu.be.
