Crooked Media - What A Day: Exit through the grift shop

Here on the third day of Tuesday, Joe Biden continued to inch towards indisputable victory, Donald Trump continued to throw a confusing, ineffectual tantrum, and the rest of us completed our transformations into living statues of the Anthony Adams meme. 
 

• While Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia remain too close to call, new mail ballot dumps (sorry) have made all three states look increasingly promising for Joe Biden. Biden’s lead in Arizona has diminished and some outlets still consider the state in play, but Fox News said it stands by its early call for Biden—meaning that if Nevada becomes the next state to fall into the Biden column, we would wind up with a truly chef’s-kiss situation in which Fox is the first network to officially declare Donald Trump a big ol’ loser. Of course, if Biden wins Pennsylvania first, we’ll find a way to manage our disappointment. (We could have that Pennsylvania result by tonight.)
   
• Trump made his first public appearance since late Tuesday night to falsely claim victory again, and attribute Biden's lead to fictional "illegal votes." The president has continued to face his impending defeat with grace, humility, and above all, coherence: “STOP THE COUNT,” tweeted the man substantially behind in votes, earlier on Thursday. “STOP THE FRAUD,” tweeted the same man a few hours later, earning his third Twitter warning label of the day. Trump’s awkward demand that vote counting continue in states where he’s behind and stop in the states where he’s ahead has given rise to a) a series of meritless, chaotic lawsuits with no clear goal, and b) a literal re-enactment of a Veep episode. Biden has serenely stuck with a simpler message: “Be patient, folks. Votes are being counted, and we feel good about where we are.”
   
• Here’s how that legal strategy’s going: A judge in Michigan has dismissed a Trump-campaign request to halt the vote count after...all the votes had been counted. A judge in Georgia denied the campaign’s efforts to toss out a batch of ballots that a Republican poll watcher claimed, without evidence, had arrived after the deadline. A Pennsylvania appeals court did rule in Trump’s favor, allowing GOP poll watchers to stand closer to the ballot counters; that ruling delayed the count in Philadelphia for a few hours, but it sure won’t keep Trump in office. We now go live to Trump’s lawyer’s facial expression. 

Trump and his allies will do their best to manufacture chaos, but it all falls flat when no one else plays along.
 

• The Justice Department notified federal prosecutors on Wednesday that they should feel free to send armed officials to ballot-counting locations to investigate “voter fraud,” based on a squirrely interpretation of a statute which, in fact, prohibits that. There haven’t been any reports of federal officials trying to interfere in the vote count, though, and state attorneys general have made clear they wouldn’t tolerate it. It’s another dangerous attempt to undermine faith in the legitimacy of the election, but it’s no match for simply counting the votes. 
   
• Taking it one notch crazier, Trump’s allies and sons are now openly calling for a coup. In a tweet reposted by Don, Jr., Fox News host Mark Levin called for GOP state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters and appoint Trump electors. Former NSC spokesman Marc Anton has urged the same. Great news for your blood pressure: A spokesman for Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (a Republican) announced there is not a chance of this happening. Anywho, this feels like a good time to point out that foreign election observers are not thrilled with Trump’s behavior, vis-a-vis his repeated punching of democracy in the groin.
   

The waiting is agony, but we should now be just hours away from Joe Biden hitting that 270 electoral mark, one way or another. It may bring you peace to know that the Trump team is having a much worse time, and even greater peace to actively help protect the vote. 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in a position to win this election, but the Trump team is essentially throwing a legal tantrum. Our Every Last Vote Fund protects the results of the election by supporting the Biden campaign and the Democratic parties in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in their legal fights against the Trump campaign’s unfounded claims and in their voter protection efforts. Chip in to help make sure that these teams can conduct any recounts and fight Trump's legal team in court: votesaveamerica.com/protect  

Folks, we’ve got ourselves two runoff elections in Georgia, which will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Ballots in Georgia are still being counted, but it’s now clear that incumbent Sen. David Purdue (R-GA) will finish with less than 50 percent of the total vote. Now that Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) has successfully held onto his seat in Michigan, Democrats still have a path to controlling the Senate if both Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win their runoff elections in January. As soon as we know who the goddamn president is, we’re all going to take a nap and then turn our full attention to Georgia, where residents have until December 7 to register to vote in those elections. (If you’re ready to jump in, here’s where to donate to Ossoff and Warnock.) In the meantime, a moment of awed appreciation for the tireless work of Stacey Abrams, and the Black organizers and voters who overcame a mountain of voter suppression to put this state in play.

• The U.S. reported a record-high 102,831 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, and at least 11 states reported record hospitalization numbers on Thursday. Just as Donald Trump predicted: Now that the election is over, coronavirus has completely disappeared. 
   
• Philadelphia police have released body cam footage of an officer fatally shooting Walter Wallace, Jr., marking the first time that department has publicly released footage of a shooting. 
   
• Defense Secretary Mark Esper has prepared a letter of resignation, reportedly because he expects Trump to fire him after the election. 
   
• Former acting DNI and Trump stooge Richard Grennell ran away from a reporter asking for any shred of evidence for his accusations of voter fraud in Nevada, as all of us do when we are in the right. 
   
• Jared Kushner’s management company has submitted hundreds of eviction filings against tenants who fell behind in rent during the pandemic. (Nathan Fielder voice) The plan: Mismanage a pandemic so badly that nobody can afford their rent for months, then make a side-profit by kicking them out of their homes. 
   
• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional career is off to a strong start!
   
• Denmark plans to cull all 17 million mink in the country in order to contain a mutated form of coronavirus, and head off another pandemic. Mink….we owe you one.
   
• A French bulldog named Wilbur has been elected mayor of Rabbit Hash, KY. The attacks on the USPS from elected officials show no signs of slowing.
   
• Scientists have found a hell planet worse than Earth. The oceans are lava! The rain is made of rocks! Rick Santorum is on every channel! 

Great news, election disinformation campaigns did not stop after the election! On Tuesday night and into Wednesday, Spanish speakers were targeted on social media with posts falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won the election, that social media was censoring his victory, and that Joe Biden was cheating to rob him of the win. That Spanish-language disinformation reached a huge audience, generating far more traffic than Russian trolls managed ahead of the 2016 election. It’s impossible to know how much Spanish disinformation affected the outcome of the election, but Latino voters in South Florida had been flooded with fake news trying to tie Biden to socialism. Social-media platforms never shut those claims down, and accounts with large followings have now pivoted to the potentially explosive narrative that the election was rigged. 

No U.S. election has been as polarizing as this one. The risk of post-election violence hasn’t been this high for nearly 150 years.

There’s a lot we couldn't control about this election. But there is one thing we do control: what kind of people we choose to be.

Our team has stood on the frontlines of conflict for over a decade—from political instability to all-out war. We know how to wage peace across enemy lines, in moments of upheaval. We know that what we do on November 4 matters as much as what we do on November 3. 

Will you give in to fear? Will you isolate yourself with only those who think like you, believe like you, vote like you?

We are building the most diverse community of peacemakers on the planet to meet this moment—to stop the next war before it starts, to build connection across lines of division, and to move forward together. 

Register today for our upcoming post-election workshops and join a community of peacemakers working to bridge the divide.

Maureen Turner, a 27-year-old queer, Black Muslim activist, was elected the first nonbinary state lawmaker in the country—in Oklahoma.

Facebook shut down a huge “Stop the Steal” group that was organizing rallies to challenge the election results across the U.S.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will be composed entirely of women for the first time in its history. 

“Get ready to celebrate.”