On Friday’s New Day, CNN co-host Alisyn Camerota and guest host Jim Sciutto brought on former Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm and Defending Democracy Together founder Bill Kristol to spout insane conspiracies about President Trump and the upcoming election. Granholm even suggested that Trump would use a Reichstag Fire like machination to enable him to remain in office: “What if Trump foments right-wing provocateurs and then sends out the military to put out the fire he created?”
Granholm began the discussion with her unhinged rant against Trump:
He's got the military. He's got the Secretary of State. He's got compliant Republicans, hopefully they can be persuaded, but remember elections are run by the states and governors and secretaries of state in every single state right now should be doing one of these table top exercises to game out the worst case scenarios. What if Trump foments right-wing provocateurs and then sends out the military to put out the fire he created? What if he seizes the ballot boxes, what's the strategy to de-escalate protests? What do state elections officials do now to give the public the assurance that vote by mail is safe and doesn't inspire fraud?
Sciutto enabled the former Democrat by concurring with her whacked out conspiracy theory: “It is, I think -- we should say it's remarkable we're discussing this in America in 2020.” It is remarkable that “we’re discussing this,” but not for the reasons that Sciutto believes. “It’s remarkable” that a mainstream media network is pushing Alex Jones like conspiracy theories on its airwaves “in 2020.”
Furthermore, it is well documented that mail-in voting has major issues. In July, an Honest Elections Project study demonstrated states often send ballots to deceased individuals and to addresses where the intended recipients no longer reside. Furthermore, the group said that mail-in ballots enable people to send in ballots for dead people and to send ballots to multiple states.
For these reasons, 800 ballots were disqualified from an election earlier this year in Paterson, NJ and four people, including two city officials, face criminal charges for their involvement. Don’t want to listen to a right-leaning group? Former President Jimmy Carter chaired a 2005 commission that found that there are serious issues with the legitimacy of mail-in voting. CBS also tried a mail-in voting experiment. It went very badly. With these concerns, it begs the question as to why the mainstream media is pushing for mail-in voting.
The Democratic shill then continued CNN’s false narrative that Trump has been going after peaceful protesters:
Now, we saw with protests following George Floyd, the President tried to use active military, the Pentagon refused. But the President in effect got what he wanted. He searched around, found a pliant member of the executive branch in the DHS acting secretary and then deployed military like forces in Portland and threatened to do so elsewhere.
What an authoritarian Trump is for wanting to stop rioters and looters such as those in Portland who have been assaulting the federal court and those who set up Seattle’s violent CHOP zone. He’s clearly abusing his power by desiring to halt violent “protests” such as in the ones in Minneapolis that caused over $500 million in property damage.
Sciutto then asked Kristol if Trump would attempt to fix the election:
There were the dramatic moves, the President saying I'm not going to accept the election, not leaving the White House. But there’re moves short of that, right? That the President can do with federal power to have a great effect to deploy such forces to discourage the vote in -- in certain places where he thinks he's losing, right? Or close polling places in places where he thinks he's losing. Is -- is that the more realistic concern and fear here?
Sciutto may want to check himself when it comes to questioning election legitimacy. He has still been pushing the debunked Russia collusion conspiracy, despite that the leading Obama officials who were involved in the investigation testified under oath that there was no collusion.
Kristol also ventured into tin foil hat territory:
Yes, because if -- if there's no predicate laid for the President saying it's an illegitimate or corrupt or rigged election, he can say he's not leaving the White House.
CNN has an election to win for the Democrats and it will try to undermine President Trump in any way that it can, even if it means enabling crazed Democrats to spout psychotic conspiracy theories.
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Read the full July 31st transcript here:
CNN New Day
07/31/20
8:34:37 AM
JIM SCIUTTO: Governor Granholm --
JENNIFER GRANHOLM (FORMER DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN): Can I just say Alisyn --
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Yeah, please, Jennifer.
GRANHOLM: Just quickly -- yeah -- I -- I -- just quickly, I mean, you know, as a governor and there were a couple of governors who participated in this, the point of this exercise is that Trump has got a huge amount of -- of power at his disposal. He's got the military. He's got the Secretary of State. He's got compliant Republicans, hopefully they can be persuaded, but remember elections are run by the states and governors and secretaries of state in every single state right now should be doing one of these table top exercises to game out the worst case scenarios. What if Trump foments right-wing provocateurs and then sends out the military to put out the fire he created? What if he seizes the ballot boxes, what's the strategy to de-escalate protests? What do state elections officials do now to give the public the assurance that vote by mail is safe and doesn't inspire fraud?
SCIUTTO: Yep.
GRANHOLM: What do state election official do now if he defunds the post office, for example? So those things have to be happening right now at the state level.
SCIUTTO: It is, I think -- we should say it's remarkable we're discussing this in America in 2020.
GRANHOLM: Yep.
SCIUTTO: I just -- it -- it -- it’s -- it is truly remarkable and -- and that you, a bipartisan group of -- of former members of government, et cetera, feel the need to address this today. I think folks at home have to pay attention. Bill Kristol, Governor Granholm brought up the idea of using the military. Now, we saw with protests following George Floyd, the President tried to use active military, the Pentagon refused. But the President in effect got what he wanted. He searched around, found a pliant member of the executive branch in the DHS acting secretary and then deployed military like forces in Portland and threatened to do so elsewhere. I -- I imagine -- a question here is this. There were the dramatic moves, the President saying I'm not going to accept the election, not leaving the White House. But there’re -- there’re moves short of that, right? That the President can do with federal power to have a great effect to deploy such forces to discourage the vote in -- in certain places where he thinks he's losing, right? Or close polling places in places where he thinks he's losing. Is -- is that the more realistic concern and fear here?
BILL KRISTOL (FOUNDER OF DEFENDING DEMOCRACY TOGETHER): Yes, because if -- if there's no predicate laid for the President saying it's an illegitimate or corrupt or rigged election, he can say he's not leaving the White House, but the military and the Secret Service and -- and really the Justice Department even aren’t going to listen to him and he will not be president after January 20th. He'll do a lot of damage in the -- in the interregnum between November 3rd and January 20th but still, that's limited. Yeah, I think that you’re absolutely right. More subtle, it -- DHS turns out to be much more -- I think even then when we did the game -- I think Jennifer would agree, we were focused a little more on DOD, on the Defense Department. It has real norms though. We saw that when there was the reaction --
SCIUTTO: Yeah.
KRISTOL: -- to Esper and Milley crossing Lafayette Square. The Justice department even there, I think there's constraints on Barr. DHS is worrisome.
