As the 2020 election heats up and draws closer, so does the media’s efforts to cast doubt on the future elections and paint Republicans as ready and willing to steal and cheat their way to victory. Just the latest example of this came Thursday morning, during a segment of MSNBC’s Morning Joe where president of the Eurasia group Ian Bremmer was brought on to push the narrative:
Either way, in a number of core swing states, Michigan, North Carolina,Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, you have Democratic governors and you’ve got Republican legislators. In that scenario, and usually the governors are the people that are supposed to be actually certifying and going to Congress. But there’s nothing that would stop those Democrat, those Republican legislators from doing the same-- and if Trump says he wins and the Republicans in Congress say that's right, you would then have a contested outcome where the House says one thing, the Senate says the other and the Supreme Court doesn't get involved historically in congressional voting matters and they would want to stay out of politics as they have shown they have over the course of the past months and that means we're in pretty unprecedented territory.
Bremmer suggested this without evidence, not saying that both sides could try to sway a close election one way or another like a simulation would, but editorializing and saying that only Republicans would try and snatch the election away from Joe Biden.
Willie Geist stated this pretty clearly in his next statement, to co-host Jonathan Lemire:
And Jonathan Lemire, of course the President has been laying the groundwork for this, advertising the possibility of a, quote, rigged election because of mail-in voting.
Democrats and their media counterparts have been questioning the 2016 election results since Trump won, so it is a pretty stunning move for them to then say that Trump will paint the 2020 election results as illegitimate.
Bremmer’s closing remarks absolutely show that this is more of his opinion than a simulation, and that he and the media are fully prepared to question the 2020 election results as well:
Our sitting president, the president of the United States is absolutely prepared, if he loses, that it's illegitimate. And a lot of his party members if he loses and it's close, I suspect they’re gonna go along with him. We saw that of course in the impeachment but failed conviction, this was a direct intervention in what would eventually be the electoral process when you try to get a foreign leader to open an investigation against the person that’s probably gonna be running against you and one Republican senator voted against it. That's absolutely setting up for this problem.
The media is absolutely prepared to either trash Trump if he calls the election results into question, or question the results themselves if Trump were to win. Quite the contortionist the objective media have become.
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Read the full transcript below to learn more.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
7-16-20
7:24 AM
WILLIE GEIST: The Eurasia group again has updated its annual risk report, this time looking at the potential impact the coronavirus pandemic could have on the 2020 election, outlining what it says may be the worst case scenario. Joining us now is the group’s president and founder Ian Bremmer, Ian good morning, here with some rosy predictions I trust about what might happen this fall with mail-in voting in the middle of a pandemic, what did you all find?
IAN BREMMER: We said back in January that there was a concern -- the risk locally was for the first time ever a U.S domestic issue that was the election rate. Big change, of course, is that we now have a serious pandemic in front of us that we didn't have in January, and that makes the holding of this election a lot more difficult. Saw that with the primary in Georgia just back on June 9th. So look, the bad side scenario here is if it's close enough that it comes down to a number of swing states, right now that wouldn't be the case but certainly it's very plausible. And then, of course, the president says it's rigged. And he says its rigged it's rigged either because there are -- he claims that there are inadequacies in going from 5 to 10% typically of absentee balloting to say 50% or more which is what we are presently expecting in a lot of these swing states or because their voting infrastructure is overwhelmed, they don't have as many people out there and then a lot of voters show up like you saw in Georgia. Either way, in a number of core swing states, Michigan, North Carolina,Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, you have Democratic governors and you’ve got Republican legislators. In that scenario, and usually the governors are the people that are supposed to be actually certifying and going to Congress. But there’s nothing that would stop those Democrat, those Republican legislators from doing the same-- and if Trump says he wins and the Republicans in Congress say that's right, you would then have a contested outcome where the House says one thing, the Senate says the other and the Supreme Court doesn't get involved historically in congressional voting matters and they would want to stay out of politics as they have shown they have over the course of the past months and that means we're in pretty unprecedented territory.
GEIST: And Jonathan Lemire, of course the president has been laying the groundwork for this, advertising the possibility of a, quote, rigged election because of mail-in voting.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: Willie, that's right. Yesterday he had an event in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia, I should note, a state that is suddenly now considered more or less a battleground, at least the Biden camp feels like they can play there. This is an official event about infrastructure, it's infrastructure week again. And the president opened his remarks, basically opened his remarks deriding mail-in voting. So Ian, let me ask you- We're hearing from the pressure of the White House really trying to push away from this although some in Trump’s orbit say that's exactly the wrong thing because so many of his own voters will need to want to vote by mailing in their ballots. What's the best way to safeguard this? How can states, what is the best way for states whether by mail-in voting or something else, can keep their voters healthy while exercising their right to the ballot this fall?
BREMMER: Keeping the voters healthy is, as you're seeing, pretty impossible to do outside of an election. And uh, that's when we should have had the end of our first wave right now we're certainly not seeing that. When you talk about election day, most epidemiologists expect that you would see a second wave, particularly around some of the colder climate states where people are coming back to work, they’re coming back to school and they're inside much more. So, the idea that either you're going to get voting infrastructure suddenly up to speed unprecedentedly fast to handle the massive numbers of mail in votes which Trump has already clearly said, that's rigged, that's unacceptable. And his base does believe him on that. Or you're going to have a bunch of people showing up and it's going to be hard to process them because the necessary social distancing over the course of one day. So clearly there's gonna be an enormous number of lawsuits around this process. The question is whether you can stop it from becoming contested in Congress in these individual states. And it seems to me the best way to stop it from being contested is if it's a blowout either for Biden or Trump. But if it's not, if it's close, and we know how divided this country is, we know Trump has 40% blended support right now, even in the context of the worst crisis of our lifetimes and by November the economy will be turning better,the momentum will be better, hard to imagine he'll be doing as badly then as he is now. I think the potential for me, that's why the number one risk is out there. Normally we'd be talking about U.S. China relations, the technology of the Cold War, Iran, North Korea this year for the first year since when I started the department in 1998 we're talking about a U.S. domestic risk. It's because the likelihood of this being seen as rigged by half of the population is actually pretty high and it comes at a time that we are gonna need governance. We are still gonna need an enormous amount that is being done by Congress at this period in terms of further bailouts, in terms of relief for hundreds of millions of people suffering through the dislocations of an 8 to 10% contraction of our economy this year. So there are real consequences for a couple months of not knowing who the president is and fighting over it.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Let's bring Tom Nichols in for the next question. Tom?
TOM NICHOLS: Ian, I think one of the problems for the public is they have this idea that elections only take place and are counted somehow in Washington D.C., but this is really a federalism issue. The people that are really gonna be on the spot on Election Day are going to be Secretaries of State all over the country. Having to report back the vote. How resilient do you think American federalism is to be able to handle this kind of multiple shock throughout the states at the state capital level before this even gets to the kind of debate and contesting that we're going to see in Washington D.C. How healthy do you think American federalism is and how well do you think it's going to be able to handle and to be resilient in the face of this kind of potential crisis?
BREMMER: Look, Tom, I think that American federalism is showing that it's resilient in dealing with an unprecedented and modern times health care crisis with massive economic dislocations, with social dissent and violence. There's a lot that's been on the federal system and governors and state legislatures have shown they may not all be handling it equally well but the institutions aren't falling apart. I don't think they would fall apart even in the worst case scenario here. So it’s not about American representative democracy, though it has become much more sporadic, it's much more how do people react when they're that divided and when the outcome will be seen as illegitimate by half of the population. I mean Tom what I'm basically saying is that if this election were being run in another country there's a pretty high likelihood that Americans would be saying that it's unfair, it's unfree and we need to send in observers, this is the kind of thing that we usually castigate and poke aspersions at when we see it internationally and now the world’s greatest democracy, the largest economy in the world, the one that's supposed to be leading by example is preparing to hold an election that a decent percentage of our own population is going to say it's illegitimate and our sitting president, the president of the United States is absolutely prepared, if he loses, that it's illegitimate. And a lot of his party members if he loses and it's close, I suspect they’re gonna go along with him. We saw that of course in the impeachment but failed conviction, this was a direct intervention in what would eventually be the electoral process when you try to get a foreign leader to open an investigation against the person that’s probably gonna be running against you and one Republican senator voted against it. That's absolutely setting up for this problem.
