In a pearl-clutching report out Wednesday, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla treated normal Election Day operations such as poll watchers and mobilizing election lawyers as an assault on democracy. But the reason this was suddenly a problem was that Republicans were stepping up their game. But MSNBC’s Deadline: White House (a home for the barely lucid to hyperventilate about Republicans) kicked off the show with the report and treated it as a serious story.
“We start this hour with a deeply unsettling news-making piece reporting today in Politico on organized, calculated efforts by the Republican Party that could throw the 2024 presidential election into chaos,” proclaimed fill-in host John Heilemann.
As though he was filling in on an episode of PBS’s Reading Rainbow, Heilemann decided to just regurgitate whole passages of Przybyla’s piece, even though he had Przybyla on hand and would speak to her during the segment (Click “expand”):
“Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts. The plan as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establish a network of party-friendly district attorneys who can intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.”
(…)
Once again from Heidi Przybyla in Politico, quote, “‘This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together,’ said Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One, an election watchdog group.
Peddiman goes on, ‘it looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself and that should concern everyone.’ Penniman believes the strategy is designed to create enough disputes to justify intervention by GOP-controlled state legislatures who declined to take such steps in 2020, quote, ‘come election day, you create massive failure of certification’ in Democratic precincts, Penniman said. Quote, ‘the real hope is that you can throw the choosing of electors to state legislatures.’”
Speaking for so-called “election experts,” Heilemann went on to warn that they were “alarmed, horrified, terrified by this effort on the right to undermine free, fair, and non-partisan elections.”
When he finally got around to bringing on Przybyla on, she seemed to suggest that the real horror was in how these poll watchers and elections lawyers were “being trained in what are called workshops by the RNC.”
Oh no! Training workshops! Say it ain’t so!
She also worried about how “they're being given new tools that they haven't had before including, John, a hotline as well as a website” so they can be organized on Election Day.
Notice that she’s worried they’re using tools “they haven’t had before.” That implies stuff like this has happened before and they’re just improving how they do it.
In response to this hyperbolic article, the former chief-of-staff to Senator Mitch McConnell (KY-R) (which Heilemann incorrectly labeled him as a current advisor), Josh Holmes mocked this supposed dark revelation. “In the year of our lord 2022 it appears POLITICO has discovered Election Day Operations,” he wrote in a tweet.
In addition to reading from that Holmes tweet, Heilemann also invited Przybyla to attempt to shoot down these tweets from Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel calling out Politico for their dubious reporting. “Interesting that they did not address the crux of the story which is they're not poll watchers and they're poll workers and there's a distinction and they know that,” Przybyla whined.
They’re so frightened by the GOP mobilizing election lawyers yet neither of them were this freaked out when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and infamous Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias conspired to steal the House seat of Iowa Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks after she had been duly elected and confirmed.
The more you know!
This unwarranted pearl-clutching was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Golden Corral and Amazon. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s Deadline: White House
June 1, 2022
4:00:14 p.m. EasternJOHN HEILEMANN: Aloha and Namaste, everyone. It is 4 o’clock here in Gotham City and I’m John Heilemann, in for Nicole Wallace. We start this hour with a deeply unsettling news-making piece reporting today in Politico on organized, calculated efforts by the Republican Party that could throw the 2024 presidential election into chaos. A plan with roots deep in Trump world and fueled by the big lie that the last election stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats from the supposed rightful victor, Donald Trump.
The reporting comes from our old friend Heidi Przybyla, for Politico. And she says this, quote, “Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts. The plan as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establish a network of party-friendly district attorneys who can intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.”
(…)
4:02:18 p.m. Eastern
HEILEMANN: Election experts are – not surprisingly – alarmed, horrified, terrified by this effort on the right to undermine free, fair, and non-partisan elections. And they are deeply concerned that chaos at the precinct-level can ultimately lead to statewide election results being overturned.
Once again from Heidi Przybyla in Politico, quote, “‘This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together,’ said Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One, an election watchdog group.
Peddiman goes on, ‘it looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself and that should concern everyone.’ Penniman believes the strategy is designed to create enough disputes to justify intervention by GOP-controlled state legislatures who declined to take such steps in 2020, quote, ‘come election day, you create massive failure of certification’ in Democratic precincts, Penniman said. Quote, ‘the real hope is that you can throw the choosing of electors to state legislatures.’”
And that, that is where we begin today.
(…)
4:05:34 p.m. Eastern
HEIDI PRZYBYLA: These folks are being trained in what are called workshops by the RNC on how to contest voters, how to contest voting processes, and they're being given new tools that they haven't had before including, John, a hotline as well as a website that's being developed by a company named Zen Desk. You may be familiar with it and if you ever been online and wanted a live chat with a live operator on a retail site. They're actually working with that company so that folks who are in these centers could be in real-time contact with lawyers who are on the ground.
(…)
4:07:42 p.m. Eastern
HEILEMANN: Heidi, I want to ask you – I'll give you a chance to reply here to Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee who has a seven-part thread on Twitter attacking the piece. She says, “Today’s story in Politico about the RNC election integrity operation shows a complete misunderstanding of the law, best practices, and election processes, while exposing an extreme bias clearly distorting facts.”
I'm not going to read all seven of the things in this Twitter thread. But the core of it is – she gets to a place where she says, “In the state of Michigan, poll watchers are part of the law and legal process to ensure transparency, ensure election integrity est. est. is literally how elections are run, a fact that is completely misunderstood by Politico. She says, “The RNC is following precedent. the law, and best practices.” She says you “should know better.”
You know, I'll note Josh Holmes, an adviser to Mitch McConnell weighs in the same way and says, “In the year of our Lord 2022, it appears Politico has discovered Election Day operations.”
I just want to give you a chance to reply to that, which is – to both of those tweets which are essentially saying the same thing. This is business as usual here, Heidi. This is what the law says you can do, this is basically what we always do. Grow up.
PRZYBYLA: Interesting that they did not address the crux of the story which is they're not poll watchers and they're poll workers and there's a distinction and they know that. And so, a lot of the pushback that they gave us in advance – which, by the way we included their response in the story – had to do with poll watchers.
That's what we had in 2020 with these poll contesters and poll watchers. This is very different because this is recruiting and placing people into these positions to have authority such as election inspectors.
(…)
