Efforts that followed Donald Trump’s re-election defeat weren’t successful, but it was not for lack of trying. Descriptions of the former president’s henchmen (and women, we haven’t forgotten you, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis) plotting to use fake alternate electors, rogues within the Defense Department – which even former Trump attorney and future masked singer Rudy Giuliani rejected – or the Department of Homeland Security have been leaking out over the past week.
Latest is from The Washington Post, which Thursday revealed a Trump White House memo suggesting the National Security Agency and the Defense Department sift through raw electronic communications in search of proof that foreign powers had interfered in the presidential election. Such proof (assuming, of course, that it actually existed) would “support next steps to defend the Constitution in a manner superior to current civilian-only judicial remedies,” says the memo circulated December 18, 2020 “among Trump allies.”
No doubt those interfering countries would not include Russia or any other authoritarian-led nation whose leaders Trump admires. …
Meanwhile, in case you thought the Republican Party’s love affair with Russia’s longtime authoritarian leader President Vladimir Putin came and went with the Trump administration, you have not been paying attention. Now comes Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), he of the fist-pump proffered to January 6 Capitol insurrectionists, who is presuming to tell the president – the one who actually won the election -- to back off on talk about the Ukraine joining NATO.
Specifically, The Hill reports, in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Hawley says President Biden should abandon support for Ukraine’s eventual admission to the NATO -- even though neither Biden nor anyone else on our side is talking about Ukraine entering NATO.
This prompted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to admonish; “If you are digesting Russian information and parroting Russian talking points you are not aligned with longstanding bipartisan American values, which is to stand up for the sovereignty of countries like Ukraine, but others.”
Later, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), the 1/6 House Select Committee member who apparently has been disinvited to this weekend’s Republican National Committee annual meeting in Salt Lake City, tweeted “I hate to be so personal, but Hawley is one of the worst human beings, and self egrandizing (sic) con artists. When Trump goes down I certainly hope this will be layed (sic-after all, this is a tweet) in the open for all to see, and be ashamed of.”
Hawley is presuming to tell the president to stop doing what he already is not doing. (Perhaps he’s also angling for more invites to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show). All part of the “let’s make stuff up and thereby magically make it real” approach that served Trump so well for so long….
Remember the Trumpian-driven outrage about “mainstream” social media — like Twitter and Facebook? Remember how there would be a phalanx of right-wing alternatives that would bury what eventually became outlets that banned the lies and misinformation being promulgated by Trump and his allies? It turns out that those alternatives had their moment. Publishers Daily, citing data from TheRighting, a site that monitors website traffic, found that several sites had serious declines in unique visitors in December 2021 compared with the year earlier.
As in Newsmax down 36%, The Blaze down 23%, Washington Examiner down 56%, Brietbart down 52%, and The Federalist down 49%.
However, it is not that there weren’t some gains, as it found that four of the 20 sites it tracks have increased visitors: The Daily Signal, NewsBusters, The Daily Wire and Townhall.
To be fair: it was also calculated that The Washington Post, HuffPost, CNN, and The New York Times all saw declines.
Traffic on DonaldJTrump.com was down 69%.
--Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash