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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — May 4, 2022

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Must Read Stories

Trump-Loving Election Conspiracy Theorists Win GOP Primaries For Senate And House In Ohio

  • OH-SEN: Washington Post: J.D. Vance, With A Trump Boost, Clinches Senate GOP Primary In Ohio: J.D. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, won Tuesday’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Ohio, affirming the influence over GOP voters of former president Donald Trump, whose endorsement boosted Vance over rivals with similar views. […]  The result of the Ohio Senate primary represents a political victory for Trump in his first big test ahead of November’s midterm elections. The former president took a risk by backing Vance, and his support made a clear difference in the final stage of the race. Trump has waded into a number of high-stakes primaries leading up to November’s midterms, at times selecting underdog candidates or ones who are in tight races But Tuesday’s outcome was hardly a guarantee of future success for Trump. He has continued to promote false claims that the 2020 election was stolen as he campaigns for his preferred candidates, and he has backed candidates who agree with him in many cases, including in Ohio. That position has alienated some Republicans. This month will offer early glimpses of the value of his endorsement in races from Georgia to Nebraska to Pennsylvania.
  • OH-09: The Intercept: Man Who Painted Trump’s Face On Lawn Could Be Headed To Congress: Then-President Donald Trump wasn’t shy about his adoration for the man who painted a giant “Trump 2020” sign on his front lawn ahead of the last presidential election. “Thank you to J.R. Majewski, a great Air Force Veteran and Trump Supporter who did a beautiful job of turning his lawn into a giant Trump Sign. Thanks also to your fantastic Ohio neighbors. We are making record progress on JOBS, etc.,” Trump tweeted in July 2020. “Big Silent Majority!!!” Majewski, of Port Clinton, Ohio, doubled down on his allegiance to Trump the following January, when he raised thousands of dollars to bring a group of people to Washington, D.C., to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally against certification of President Joe Biden’s election. (He told a local television station that he left before the attack on the Capitol began.) Eight months later, Majewski gave his lawn a new paint job — this time, a giant mural of Trump’s face. And he unveiled the new art under a new context: While he had rallied in January as a private Ohioan with no known political ambition, by September 2021 he had channeled his newfound recognition into a primary candidacy for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  [The Associated Press has called the election for Majewski] 

Associated Press Debunks The Latest Trump-Endorsed Conspiratorial “Documentary” About The 2020 Election 

  • Associated Press: FACT FOCUS: Gaping Holes In The Claim Of 2k Ballot ‘Mules’: A film debuting in over 270 theaters across the United States this week uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended. Praised by former President Donald Trump as exposing “great election fraud,” the movie, called “2000 Mules,” paints an ominous picture suggesting Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But that’s based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm that somebody deposited a ballot into a drop box, according to experts.

Trump’s DHS Covered Up Evidence Of Russian Interference In The 2020 Election 

  • The Hill: Watchdog Finds Trump DHS Altered, Delayed Report On Russia’s Election Interference: Former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf intervened to delay release of an intelligence report flagging Russian involvement in the 2020 election, while other DHS officials sought to “blunt” the focus on the country in the report, according to a government watchdog. A Tuesday report from DHS’s Office of Inspector General concluded that DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) wrongly let politics interfere with the dissemination of the report, which documented a Russian disinformation campaign surrounding President Biden’s mental acuity.  “I&A employees during the review and clearance process changed the product’s scope by making changes that appear to be based in part on political considerations, potentially impacting I&A’s compliance with Intelligence Community policy,” OIG concluded in a report that found that “DHS did not adequately follow its internal processes.”

What Experts Are Saying 

  • Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism on religious authoritarianism: November 2020: “[A] political system that gives disproportionate power to an immensely organized, engaged and loyal minority. One of the most reliable strategies for producing that unshakable cohort has been to get them to agree that abortion is the easy answer to every difficult political policy question. Recently, religious right leaders have shifted their focus more to a specious understanding of what they call ‘religious freedom’ or ‘religious liberty,’ but the underlying strategy is the same: make individuals see their partisan vote as the primary way to protect their cultural and religious identity. Republicans have long known that the judiciary is one of the most effective instruments of minority rule. Mr. Trump’s success in packing the federal judiciary — as of this writing, 220 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices — will be one of his most devastating legacies. The prospect of further entrenching minority rule in the coming years will keep the alliance between Republicans and the religious right alive. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Christian nationalist response to the 2020 election is that we’ve seen this movie before. The ‘stolen election’ meme won’t bring Mr. Trump back into the Oval Office. But then, the birther narrative never took President Barack Obama out of office, either. The point of conspiratorial narratives and apocalyptic rhetoric is to lay the groundwork for a politics of total obstruction, in preparation for the return of a ‘legitimate’ ruler. The best guess is that the religious authoritarianism of the next four years will look a lot like it did in the last four years. We ignore the political implications for our democracy at our peril.” The New York Times 

Headlines

Trump Investigations 

CNBC: Trump loses bid to stay New York contempt of court order and avoid $10K daily fine

January 6 Trials 

NBC: Ex-QAnon supporter pleads guilty to assaulting police with Trump sign on Jan. 6

Opinion

New York Times (Sarah Longwell) J.D. Vance Is More Proof That Trump Is King of the Republican Party