This is stunning. https://t.co/9AFobGpwhX
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) January 16, 2021
Fahrenthold's "stunned" tweeting came amid a score of likeminded shock I ran across this morning, the buzz of Axios' "Off the Rails: A premeditated lie lit the fire" having alighted across the land as would a dazzling meteor shower. Finally, a publication had the skinny on Trump's wicked rollout of lies atop lies about a fraudulent election, robbing him of his entitled sinecure.
By this, I am bewildered.
Election Day: "His preparations were deliberate, strategic and deeply cynical," writes Axios' Jonathan Swan. "Trump wanted Americans to believe a falsehood that there were two elections — a legitimate election composed of in-person voting, and a separate, fraudulent election involving bogus mail-in ballots for Democrats. In the initial hours after returns closed, it looked like his plan could work."
It did work, as far as it could work. Trump has consumed this two-and-a-half-month post-election period with absurdly twisted tales of "illegal" immigrants, 15-year-olds and dead people voting, electronic machines devouring or changing votes, states manipulating election laws to benefit Biden, mysterious ballots appearing on 4 Nov. and beyond, and every other imaginable fraud. Millions among the moronic class believe it.
Yet, contra Axios' "stunning" reportage, there was nothing new — or now, newsy — about Trump's deliberate, strategic, deeply cynical preparations to bamboozle the rabble. He had been broadcasting his plans for even more months before 3 Nov. As though on tape, he blathered with invariable monotony that his victory was in the bag — only dark doings could possibly dethrone him.
Indeed, Swan observes much the same: "For weeks, Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory on election night — even if he lost. But the real-time results, punctuated by Fox’s shocking call, upended his plans and began his unraveling."
I gather that Swan would argue his unique revelation lies in what transpired on election night and that night only. But in the traditional way of revelation, its uniqueness escapes me. Trump declared victory before the election, after the election, and he's still declaring it. Whether he genuinely refused then and genuinely refuses now "to believe the election results," I can't say. But one thing has been on the public record for some time: His refusal, as Swan himself writes, "was premeditated."
Had some of us missed that?