Are Democrats ready for what Trump and his cronies may pull this fall?
Opinion by
Columnist
September 1, 2020 at 4:26 p.m. CDT
Are
Democrats doing enough right now to create a conceptual foundation for
communicating it adequately to voters, if and when President Trump and his
cronies go through with the plans to corrupt the election that they themselves
have telegraphed is coming?
Two
important developments just took place that raise the sense of urgency we
should feel around this question.
The
first of these is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam B.
Schiff (D-Calif.) just sent a
scalding letter to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe over
the news that intel officials will no longer give verbal briefings
to Congress about foreign interference in the election.
The
second is that Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, went on an
authoritarian nationalist’s widely watched propaganda show and flatly
declared that the attorney general of the United States is
investigating the leaders of Black Lives Matter and antifa, and that
prosecutions might be forthcoming.
The letter from
Pelosi and Schiff points out that the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence itself has already warned that
Russia is interfering in the election with a “range of measures,” with the goal
of harming Joe Biden, i.e., helping Trump. And yet, the Democrats note, the
ODNI made the “abrupt” decision to cancel further verbal briefings to Congress,
instead promising only written ones.
As they
point out, verbal briefings allow “the people’s elected representatives”
to directly question intelligence officials about their
conclusions on electoral interference, about what is being done about it and
about whether their conclusions are being “influenced or skewed for political
purposes.”
Given
that Trump has openly
invited more foreign interference and has raged when
intel officials have tried to inform Congress about Russia’s intention to boost
Trump, it seems reasonable to conclude that those are exactly the sort of
questions Trump doesn’t want Congress asking.
Again,
to reiterate, Trump’s own officials say Russia is currently interfering.
And Attorney General William P. Barr will soon announce the results of a
“review” of the origins of the Russia investigation that appear designed to
discredit it — and discredit its findings about Russian interference in 2016,
which of course could provide cover for more interference this time.
Meanwhile, on Fox
News, Tucker Carlson had the following exchange with the homeland security
secretary:
CARLSON:
Why haven’t we seen the leaders of antifa and BLM arrested and charged with
conspiracy under, say, RICO like the heads of Mafia families were?
WOLF: Well, this is
something that I’ve talked to the A.G. personally about. I know that they are
working on it.
The
Justice Department put out a statement on
this that claimed: “We are investigating coordinated criminal activity, not
First Amendment activity, and violence related to riots.”
That
doesn’t say whether the leaders of BLM, as opposed to isolated
violent actors, are being investigated.
Let’s
note how insane it is that the homeland security secretary, who is supposed to
be apolitical in his oversight of an agency that protects the homeland, is
publicly announcing that the leaders of political groups are being investigated
by the Justice Department and might be prosecuted.
Susan
Hennessey, the executive editor of the Lawfare website,
pointed out to me that Carlson essentially suggested to a senior official that
the administration should be “using law enforcement to target groups that
politically oppose the president,” as Hennessey put it.
“And
the acting secretary of homeland security basically says, ‘We’re on it,’”
Hennessey continued. “That’s a pretty disturbing exchange.”
It is
plausible, of course, that Wolf might have just been placating Carlson and
energizing his right-wing audience with bluster. But the possibility cannot be
dismissed that Barr might announce investigations or even indictments along
these lines to give Trump a propaganda victory in his reelection campaign.
It is
also possible that Russian efforts to sabotage the election may prove
ineffective. But what’s inescapable right now is that so much is happening on
so many fronts that it would be foolish not to be prepared for
the worst.
In
addition to possible surprise announcements from Barr and a failure by intel
officials to adequately communicate ongoing electoral sabotage to the public,
Trump has openly telegraphed that he’s hoping to
cast untold numbers of late-arriving mail ballots as illegitimate.
The
crush of disinformation and agitprop could be overwhelming, and it’s unclear
whether the media is prepared to inform the citizenry amid such a crisis:
All
this means thinking now about how to communicate adequately with the public if
the poop does hit the fan in one or more of these ways.
Democratic
strategist Simon Rosenberg, who was involved in the spin wars over the disputed
presidential vote in Florida in 2000, argues that Democrats should develop a
bigger narrative right now about all the ways Trump is trying to corrupt the
election, to make it intelligible to voters if specifics do unfold.
“Prep
the public now,” Rosenberg told me, “so that if he tries to steal it a majority
of the country will understand what is happening and reject it with prejudice.”
Get on
this, Democrats.
