Day 1,400: Trump lures Michigan GOP leaders to Washington for unprecedented attempt to overturn vote of 5.6 million residents
Don’t tell Donald Trump that 5.6 million Michigan residents legally cast their ballots in the 2020 election and Joe Biden got more votes than he did.
Don’t tell Donald Trump that his legal attempts to get the results of the election overturned have repeatedly failed, including in Michigan.
Don’t tell Donald Trump that the U.S. is a democracy where citizens choose their leaders and elections matter.
In a totally unprecedented, nakedly partisan and profoundly un-American scheme, Trump has summoned Republican leaders from the Michigan legislature to the White House. Under no obligation to go, they’re gladly going.
Trump’s ultimate goal?
Get state legislatures to bypass the will of the voters and, with regard to the Wolverine State, get Michigan’s 16 electoral votes awarded to Trump.
Trump’s campaign is openly floating the notion of trying to get friendly state legislatures to appoint electors who would overturn the will of the voters. If Trump succeeds in convincing Michigan’s state board of canvassers not to certify Biden’s victory in the state, state lawmakers could be called on to select electors, but such a brazen move would be unprecedented and possibly illegal. It would be certain to draw a swift legal challenge.
The 2020 election is over. Recounts, where necessary, are largely over. All that’s left is to certify votes and let electors vote. In Michigan, Biden beat Trump by more than 150,000 votes, or 14-times the margin that Trump beat Hillary Clinton by in 2016.
What Trump is trying — and the GOP is gleefully going along with — is one of the most brazen and undemocratic efforts in the history of the country. It is overwhelmingly likely to be unsuccessful.
This time.
But Republicans are sowing discord and future losers know that tens of millions of their voters will swallow anything that the party feeds them. Trump is laying the path to overturn future elections with sham challenges and baseless claims of fraud. Even if that means tearing at the very thing that makes the United States the United States.
1,400 days in, 62 to go
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