Who's who in desperate last stand

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By Michael Warren and Kevin Liptak, CNN
Updated 5:40 PM ET, Tue December 22, 2020

... Trump is looking for support from his last-ditch kitchen Cabinet, many of whom gathered in the Oval Office late last week for a contentious strategy session. As the President enters his final weeks in office, this remnant of advisers is falsely telling him exactly what he wants to hear: that he can still reverse the election results ...

... Sidney Powell ... has been at the White House for three of the previous four days, including during the Friday Oval Office meeting in which she and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, faced off against Meadows and Cipollone ...

... Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired Army general ... On December 1 he tweeted a press release from a pro-Trump group calling on "limited martial law" to conduct a "new election." Flynn made an explicit call for Trump to declare martial law on the right-wing cable network Newsmax last week ...

... Giuliani ... Last week .. called the Department of Homeland Security's Ken Cuccinelli and asked if it was possible for DHS to seize voting machines ...

"As I strongly recommended to the President, we need a special counsel named immediately -- a special prosecutor just on election fraud and voter fraud -- they're two different things, election fraud and voter fraud -- you need to do that immediately," Bannon said .. Sunday night ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/politics/trump-sidney-powell-rudy-giuliani-election/index.html

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1. Feces-flinging stage of election "fraud" fight

BY BESS LEVIN
DECEMBER 22, 2020

... Despite being completely and fully in denial about the fact that he’s not going to be president anymore, it appears that some tiny part of Trump knows things are not looking great for him, hence his increasingly desperate efforts to invalidate the will of tens of millions of Americans. One thing that’s included is his meeting with Sidney Powell—the lawyer deemed too crazy by Rudy Giuliani—multiple times at the White House and allegedly proposing her appointment as a special counsel to investigate nonexistent voter fraud. Then, of course, there’s the news that he’s been discussing invoking martial law with disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn. And naturally, like a madman who’s gone too far even for his most loyal foot soldiers, Trump has reportedly lashed out and turned on everyone who won’t go along with his attempted coup ...

Trump is reportedly outraged that Pence has, in his mind, not fought hard enough for him and is preemptively enraged at the prospect of the V.P. presiding over the January 6 session of Congress that will officially certify Biden as the Electoral College winner, something Pence is constitutionally required to do. (Perhaps having heard this, Pence pretended at an event on Tuesday that Trump could totally get another four years.) Supporters of Cipollone are worried he’s on the firing block. And when it comes to McConnell, who traitorously acknowledged Biden would be the next president last week, Trump has unleashed his inner Regina George, dispatching his personal assistant on Monday night to email Republican lawmakers a slapped-together PowerPoint slide attacking the majority leader for being “the first one off the ship,” and claiming credit for his reelection in Kentucky.

Meanwhile, he’s apparently hatched another harebrained scheme to overturn the election, meeting with House Republicans on Monday about overturning the result on January 6. While some reliable toadies like Matt Gaetz are proudly on board, there’s obviously zero chance of the stunt resulting in Trump serving a second term. And as the crazy no doubt escalates over the next four weeks, there’s one person in particular who should probably consider calling in sick every day until the inauguration ...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/donald-trump-election-tantrum

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2. Conspiracy theories and talk of martial law grip the White House

PUBLISHED TUE, DEC 22 20201:49 PM EST
UPDATED TUE, DEC 22 20204:45 PM EST
Dan Mangan

... Trump reportedly has mulled the idea of appointing her as special counsel to investigate purported election fraud. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another person who has pushed Trump to ignore the more-moderate suggestions made by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other advisors is Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com.

Byrne’s admitted affair with Russian asset Maria Butina while giving the FBI information about her plays a key role in his conspiracy-minded worldview ...

Byrne later wrote, referring to Powell and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, “For the first time in my life I feel sorry for Donald Trump. He is standing up to his waist in snakes. Trust Rudy and Sidney only” ...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/22/martial-law-conspiracy-theories-rattle-white-house-as-trump-seeks-to-undo-biden-win.html

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3. Republican leaders in Congress could stop this but choose not to

By Sean Neumann
December 22, 2020 01:13 PM

... “In the Senate, it would go down like a shot dog,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber, told CNN this week. “I just don’t think that it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be” ...

Meanwhile, however, a group of Republican representatives met with the president at the White House on Monday. There they reportedly discussed a plan to object to the Electoral College results during a Jan. 6 congressional meeting to officially count the electors' votes showing Biden beat Trump 306-232 ...

https://people.com/politics/top-gop-congressman-says-donald-trump-last-hope-to-challenge-election-will-fail/

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4. It's time for Pence to choose

Edward B. Foley
Dec. 22, 2020 at 7:26 p.m. EST

Mike Pence’s conduct on Jan. 6 matters.

Not to the outcome of the presidential election, but to the process of its resolution. The vice president can either facilitate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, or he can resist it. Which he chooses will either help or hinder the Republican Party’s recovery from the electoral denialism that afflicts three-fourths of its voters.

The Constitution directs states to send their electoral college votes to Congress to be counted in a special joint session. An 1887 statute requires Pence, as president of the Senate, to chair this joint session.

Typically, the session is a formality, but this year, a group of House Republicans, led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), are planning to use the event to try to force Congress to vote on whether to accept or reject the electoral college results. If they can get just one senator to object to the electoral votes of a state, then both congressional chambers will have to debate and vote on whether to accept that state’s submission ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/22/its-time-mike-pence-choose-trump-or-truth/

[42bambi]

8. He will be doing some heavy lifting praying to his God, then confer with

Mother to aid him on which one of his flip-flop decisions he should make.

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5. Trump says maybe the next administration 'will be me'

Julie Gerstein 15 hours ago

... More than a week after the Electoral College certified Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, Trump is still publicly vacillating over whether he'll actually leave, and on Tuesday he suggested he would be a part of the next administration ...

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-maybe-next-administration-will-be-me-denies-election-results-2020-12

[Arne]

7. I actually think there is a position for Trump in the new administration.

It includes waist baskets, guess what his new title will be.

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6. Waffles R Us