“Help Me, Ronna!” Trump and Ronna McDaniel Recorded Trying to Subvert Democracy in Detroit

When Der Gropinfuhrer hops on the phone to attempt a quick bit of extortion on a sovereign state or tries to subvert democracy in one of our fifty states it appears to be a pattern of his to rope other officials of his administration or the Republican Party onto to the call with him. Whether such action is an attempt to spread culpability for his coming illegal actions or to simply create witnesses that will later lie about the content of the conversation, I will leave to the reader, but it is a thing.

When drumpf called President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine in 2019 attempting to compel him to produce dirt on his presumed presumed opponent in the coming 2020 election, Joe Biden (or at least make an announcement of his intention to do so), with the implied threat of withholding U.S. aid if he didn’t, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Keith Kellogg were also on the line.

When he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Dec. 23, 2020, asking him to please “find” 11,780 votes to put into his Christmas stocking so he could illegally claim Georgia’s electoral votes as his own, he cajoled his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trade representative Peter Navarro onto the call, earning them both indictments in the subsequent election subversion case brought by Georgia’s Attorney General.

And now, thanks the stellar reporting by The Detroit News we learn that when he called two Republican members of the Wayne County (Detroit) board of Canvassers on November 17, 2020 asking them not to sign off on Michigan’s official election results and thus interject mayhem into the 2020 election, he recruited Michigan native and Romney name denier Ronna McDaniel to add her heft as Republican National Committee Chairwoman to his criminality.

“Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.

On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.

“We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.”

The fly in drumpf and Ronna’s election subversion ointment was that both Palmer and Hartmann had already signed off on the board’s official election tally, and though both desperately maneuvered after Trump’s call, to get a “do over”, ultimately the results were submitted to Michigan’s Secretary of State and Biden won Michigan by more than 180,000 votes:

Writing for The Daily Beast Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson recalls the drama of that night and of the heroes who showed up to make sure that their, and their fellow’s votes were counted and recorded correctly.

“For me, the lowest moment in the post-election battle to protect Michigan’s accurate and legitimate election results in 2020 was not when armed protestors stormed my home. It wasn’t when a gathering of Trump supporters showed up to Michigan’s State Capitol demanding to be let in as the state’s “true slate of electors” when we all were sheltered in the State Senate Chambers finalizing the electoral college. It wasn’t even when Rudy Giuliani came to town to headline a sham legislative hearing filled with lies about our elections.

No, the most challenging time for me was the night of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting.

I distinctly remember coming home that evening feeling completely defeated. We knew about the pressure on the two members of the Board not to certify. We were prepared to go to court to ensure certification at the local and state level—and we were confident we’d win. But blocking certification in Wayne County and pushing this to the courts was part of a bigger plan to delay the process and foster doubt and uncertainty that would enable the Trump campaign to push Pennsylvania, which was certifying the next week, to delay as well. After that, we knew other dominos would fall—Georgia, Wisconsin, maybe even New Mexico.

And it was never lost on me who we were up against. Yes, the law and the facts and the will of the voters were on our side. But how could we, obscure state election officials, overcome the pressure and cajoling of the then-President of the United States?

Then something happened that I will never forget. Hundreds of citizens showed up to the meeting of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers to remind them of their duty under the law to ensure their votes counted. One after another each made cogent arguments that their voices mattered. Their votes mattered. Democracy mattered.“

As we prepare for next year’s election and all the shenanigans that will accompany it if the Orangeutan does not keel over and is allowed to try his will again against the resilience of American Democracy once again, we should remember and honor the action taken by these hundreds who managed to thwart Trump and McDaniel that night in 2020.

Trump will not have the power of incumbency to use against the American electorate next year, but will still possess the loyalties of many of his compliant members of the majority in The U.S. House of Representatives and countless local GOP officials like Palmer and Hartmann in place to do his bidding. And if we do not all show up and show out, that might be enough.