Election rhetoric from some big-name Trumpers starting to turn sinister; Update: WH slams diGenova

I mean, it’s been sinister from the start inasmuch as the core claims of rampant election fraud have been made in bad faith, designed to delegitimize Biden and protect Trump’s ego rather than win in court. But until now most of the rhetorical energy has been channeled into lawsuits. Rudy and Jenna Ellis are aiming to appeal to the Supreme Court, Sidney Powell’s going to expose the great Venezuelan election scam with her “Kraken” complaints, and so forth. The allegations may be bogus but the preferred method for challenging the election results, by litigating them in a courtroom, is perfectly fair.

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But inevitably we’ll reach the point where all legal options have been exhausted. SCOTUS either won’t hear Giuliani’s appeal or they’ll laugh him out of court. Powell’s lawsuit will end up being tossed in Georgia. What happens to the “fight” when lawsuits aren’t working?

Maybe nothing. Maybe Trump just keeps filing lawsuits all the way up to Inauguration Day (or beyond?) knowing he has no leg to stand on. He has an incentive to do so: This legal battle has turned into a very lucrative grift for him, raising more than $150 million online since Election Day ostensibly for his “Official Election Defense Fund” but in reality for the RNC, the Trump campaign, and for his new Super PAC. If he keeps this up for another month or two he might crack half a billion dollars.

Which would be fine if that’s all this was, a scam. If you believe CNN’s White House sources (which I don’t), the president himself knows that he’s lost but is keeping up appearances partly because he doesn’t want to face the hard truth but partly too because of the money pouring in. The flaw in wanting to keep this “election fraud” kabuki going because it’s a sweet payday, though, is that lots of people don’t realize it’s kabuki. They believe it sincerely and some have concluded as a result that it would be intolerable for the country to allow such an audacious crime to go unpunished by swearing in Biden on the 20th.

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And so, as the legal options fade, true believers will start getting noisier about extra-legal solutions. That seems to have picked up in the last 24 hours, starting with this pungent comment from Trump lawyer Joe diGenova yesterday:

Attorney Lin Wood, a favorite of Sidney Powell fans, seems to be done with courtrooms as well:

Eric Metaxas insists that Jesus is on Trump’s side in this and that he’s willing to “die” if it comes to that:

If Biden ends up being sworn in on January 20, asks Jonathan Last, will Metaxas conclude that Jesus was on Biden’s side all along?

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Some of the rhetoric isn’t explicitly violent so much as fascist, whether vaguely or overtly. Last night Lou Dobbs had Powell on and argued that Trump should take “drastic action, dramatic action” to expose the alleged crimes that have been committed during the election and that “if the Justice Department doesn’t want to do it, if the FBI cannot do it, then we have to find other resources within the federal government.”

I don’t know what “other resources” he has in mind but maybe this deep thought retweeted by Powell provides a clue:

That’s where we are today, segueing predictably from “we’ll overturn this election in court” to “we’ll overturn this election by any means necessary” as the court battles reveal there’s nothing to Trump’s case. People like Chris Krebs and entities like Dominion Voting Systems have been admirably patient as this tidal wave of demagoguery crashes down on them day after day but it may be time for them to pursue some legal remedies of their own:

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There’s no appeal to decency that’ll make a demagogue stop. If you want to stop them, you have to make it costly for them to continue to defame and threaten you. Once the election lawyers are done defeating Giuliani and Powell, hopefully they’ll throw some pro bono defamation work Krebs’s way. Dominion, I assume, can take care of itself.

Update: This is a start.

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