I must be dreaming. Perhaps I’ve finally snapped. Seven years of writing about Donald Trump will do that. But no, other people seem to see this too. And so I’m posting it here for you to see. This is hypocrisy on steroids. I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded of Donald Trump screaming in all-caps on Truth Social, “YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS.”
Remember that? Well, now watch this thirty second epic from the RNC.
Tell me you see it, too. Or, I’ll just call 911 and go bye bye. This is stunning.
In an about-face, the video marks a stark divergence from how the Republican Party has treated the practices for the last three years. After Trump and his allies launched a full-scale assault on mail-in voting leading up to the 2020 election, they subsequently falsely claimed that mail-in ballot fraud led to the former president’s defeat. That prompted the party to solidify its stances against mail-in and early voting, and Republicans nationwide passed dozens of laws restricting the practices. Even after the 2022 midterms, when the RNC seemed to be changing its tune on mail-in voting, Trump posted on Truth Social that “YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FREE & FAIR ELECTIONS WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS.”
Despite the change in rhetoric and the launch of the “Bank Your Vote” campaign, the RNC and its state party affiliates have not put their money where their mouth is as they continue to challenge early and mail-in voting laws across the country. Recently the RNC intervened in a Florida case to defend signature matching, a process that compares a voter’s signature on their mail-in ballot to a separate signature they have on record and in a Pennsylvania lawsuit to block the state from counting undated or wrongly dated mail-in ballots. Most recently, in Wisconsin the party is seeking to uphold three rules that pro-voting groups say make mail-in voting more difficult.
This is comical. This is the RNC attempting to right the ship that Trump crashed into an iceberg. And Ronna McDaniel tried to talk about this back when Harmeet Dhillon was challenging her for leadership of the party. This is from 2022, after the Republicans took a beating in the midterms.
On Tuesday, Dec. 6, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel spoke in favor of mail-in voting, despite her party’s repeated efforts to curtail the popular practice. GOP-affiliated groups, including the RNC itself, have filed a deluge of anti-voting lawsuits this year, many of which attack mail-in voting, but are now reckoning with these counterproductive efforts. McDaniel — currently running for re-election to RNC chair against far-right California politician and lawyer Harmeet Dhillon — stated on Fox News: “I have said this over and over again. There were many in 2020 saying, ‘Don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early.’ And we have to stop that.”
Due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, states shifted their policies regarding mail-in voting, prompting its widespread use. Immediately, former President Donald Trump attacked mail-in voting as insecure and wrong, even though laws that permit anyone to vote by mail (not requiring a delineated excuse, such as age or disability) have been around for decades. A 2015 study on no-excuse mail-in voting laws adopted between 1972 and 2013 found that there was no partisan influence on adoption. While party control of neither the state legislature or governorship determined enactment of mail-in voting, other factors did — including having a larger share of elderly voters, a rural geographic spread or being a Western state.
The policy was noncontroversial for years, but Trump and his allies made it so. In 2021 alone, dozens of restrictive voting laws were enacted by Republican-controlled state legislatures, a large portion of which curtailed mail-in voting. Five states enacted more restrictive mail-in voting laws in 2022, which were in effect for the midterm elections. As of mid-September, more than half of GOP-affiliated lawsuits sought to limit mail-in voting. Even more have been filed since then. Now, after significantly underperforming in the November elections, the shifting messaging on mail-in voting is part of a growing trend of Republican leaders walking back on their party’s voter suppression strategy.
And they got Trumpty to go along with it!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! OMG!!! This is wonderful!
Now this jewel you saw above is airing tonight, concurrent with the GOP primary. How oh how is Trumpty going to walk this one back? This is his 2,000 mules defense, the dead people voting, all that. Gone now. Gone up in smoke.
We don’t mind being the villain in their delusion because we rightly know they’re the idiotic clown team in ours. Those two have no moral compass. A sugared almond has more integrity than these tw, and it’ll last longer. Much longer.
It is some kind of a miracle that Ronna got Trump to do this. I’m not surprised about Pence. He’s a pragmatist. If it’s time to stop the b.s., he can be persuaded. But Trump is the surprise.
Well put, and plausible in regards to Pence. By contrast, this maybe a show and tell cameo as to the mounting level of desperation, on Trump’s part.
A person who stands for nothing will fall for anything. Malcom X
Once in a great while baby huey phucks up and unintentionally tells the truth. Years ago, in an interview I was watching, he was asked if he stood by some bullsh*t he was spouting…and he literally said “I stand by nothing.” If only people had listened.