The Trump team is spreading a new election conspiracy theory: Brian Kemp is defending the results of the 2020 election because he is hiding the fact that Kemp stole the 2022 race from Stacey Abrams.

That’s pretty impressive. Stone apparently believes that Kemp somehow invented 300,000 votes out of thin air, but left Trump behind. If he can do that then maybe he should be the next Republican candidate because he is a sure thing.

The alternative, of course, is simpler: Trump isn’t as popular in Georgia as Brian Kemp is, and I would suggest that it is because of this sort of crap that he isn’t.

Stone is one of the loonies that Trump likes to hang around with because they enable his worst characteristics, not his best. They tell him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear. Stone and Trump have been political allies since the 1990s and he is often by his side, so it’s not like this is some deviation from the Trump team line, just as is true with Laura Loomer’s insanity.

Trump is at his best when his instincts and bias for action are married to the wise counsel of the more sober around him. Many of the people that Trump now disdains and calls traitors from his time as president are the ones who helped him be a very good president most of the time. As much as Trump likes to assert that he is and was surrounded by traitors, he also keeps reminding us that he accomplished a great deal.

He did so with those people by his side. As each of them has abandoned him during his post-presidency because of his quixotic and often self-destructive behavior he has become more and more nasty and surrounded himself with sycophants like Laura Loomer and Roger Stone–the kind of people who bring out the worst in Trump rather than the best.

I liked Trump at his best, and loathe him at his worst.

Brian Kemp didn’t steal the 2022 election from Stacey Abrams. The truth is that rightly or wrongly Kemp believes that Trump lost Georgia fair and square and is unwilling to lie about it.

Guess what? Lying is a bad trait, and while common enough in politics it is hardly something to be admired. How many of us hate politicians because they are a bunch of liars? Count me in that camp.

I know I spend too much time on Twitter–it is an occupational hazard that allows me to write so much about such a wide range of topics. A side effect of spending so much time there is that I have grown more sour on Trump and his minions every day. In 2019 and 2020 I was doing the impossible every day with my friends: defending Trump against the constant smears. I had a hard time not hating the people who were so indifferent to the truth that they would say anything if it harmed the other guy.

That is what Trump and his minions are doing now, and it is just as disgusting. Every Trump “influencer” repeats the same tired lines about Trump’s opponents and regurgitates the most fanciful and slanderous attacks.

It works, apparently, but it is disgusting. It worked against Trump during his term–millions of Americans still believe that the 2016 election was stolen by Russia–and just as that infuriates Trump supporters this slander by Trump’s team should infuriate you too.

Roger Stone, Laura Loomer, Alex Bruesewitz, and the Trump team are liars and grifters. They have contempt for you, clearly, since they think you will buy anything no matter how insane.

If Trump is the Republican nominee I will vote for him while holding my nose, but every time I encounter another slanderous attack from a Trump influencer it makes my blood boil.

Trump and his minions have specifically targeted the best the Republicans have–Kemp, Youngkin, DeSantis, and Kim Reynolds specifically because they are exceptional at governing. The better they are the smaller Trump looks by comparison. That doesn’t mean they would be better presidents–you never know for sure until somebody actually does the job–but Trump has an obvious need to be “the only one” who can save us.

That is his pitch, so he has to ruin everybody else who looks good.

Some of you think I am a never-trumper and take cheap shots. If so, defend against these sorts of attacks.

Trump and his influencers have suggested that Kemp stole the 2022 election, that Stacey Abrams and Charlie Crist would be better governors than the Republicans kicking butt in their offices, that Ron DeSantis is light in his loafers and has a “tiny D,” and that Casey DeSantis faked her cancer diagnosis.

Do you admire that? And if not on what moral high ground do you stand if you dislike others saying they don’t?

Trump has a record to run on, and until 2020 it was a very good one. Why isn’t he running on it?

I want to see the best from Trump, not the worst. I haven’t seen that particular Donald Trump in a long time. I would like to see him again.

UPDATE: Changed the dates on the Kemp/Abrams election.