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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — October 24, 2022

By October 24, 2022No Comments

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Must Read Stories

In An Echo Of 2020, Trump And His Allies Are Preparing To Try To Overturn The Results Of The Midterms 

  • Rolling Stone: Trump Plans to Challenge the 2022 Elections — Starting in Philly: In recent months, Trump has convened a series of in-person meetings and conference calls to discuss laying the groundwork to challenge the 2022 midterm election results, four people familiar with the conversations tell Rolling Stone. In these conversations, pro-Trump groups, attorneys, Republican Party activists, and MAGA diehards often discuss the type of scorched-earth legal tactics they could deploy. And they’ve gamed out scenarios for how to aggressively challenge elections, particularly ones in which a winner is not declared on Election Night. If there’s any hint of doubt about the winners, the teams plan to wage aggressive court campaigns and launch a media blitz. Trump himself set the blueprint for this on Election Night 2020, when — with the race far from decided — he went on national television to declare: “Frankly, we did win this election.” Trump has been briefed on plans in multiple states and critical races — including in Georgia. But Pennsylvania has grabbed his interest most keenly, including in the Senate contest between Democrat John Fetterman and the Trump-endorsed GOP contender Mehmet Oz. If the Republican does not win by a wide enough margin to trigger a speedy concession from Fetterman — or if the vote tally is close on or after Election Night in November — Trump and other Republicans are already preparing to wage a legal and activist crusade against the “election integrity” of Democratic strongholds such as the Philly area.
  • Fox News: RNC Has Launched 73 Election Lawsuits In 20 States: ‘Most Litigious’ Election Cycle: The Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched 73 lawsuits on election integrity issues in 20 states during the 2022 midterm election cycle, an increase from 2020 that has already secured GOP victories in battleground states this year. The scope of the legal challenges stretches from the rights of poll watchers to observe the counting of votes to the illegal counting of mismarked absentee ballots. This aggressive legal approach is an effort to meet RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s vision of making this cycle the RNC’s “most litigious,” according to an RNC spokesperson. The strategy includes offense-minded lawsuits, such as suing Democratic secretaries of state and challenging Democrat-friendly election laws, and defensive actions that include intervening in lawsuits brought by the Biden administration in Republican states.

False Claims Overwhelm Local Election Officials As Critical Poll Workers Leave Their Posts In Droves 

  • Associated Press: False Claims Overwhelm Local Efforts To Ensure Voters The Elections Are Secure:  Republican county commissioners in this swath of ranching country in New Mexico’s high desert have tried everything they can think of to persuade voters their elections are secure. They approved hand-counting of ballots from the primary election in their rural county, encouraged the public to observe security testing of ballot machines and tasked their county manager with overseeing those efforts to make sure they ran smoothly. None of that seems enough. Here and elsewhere, Republicans as well as Democrats are paying a price for former President Donald Trump’s relentless complaints and false claims about the 2020 election he lost. Many Torrance County voters still don’t trust voting machines or election tallies, a conspiracy-fueled lack of faith that persists in rural areas across the U.S. Just weeks before consequential midterm elections, such widespread skepticism suggests that no matter the outcome, many Americans may not accept the results.
  • Boston Globe: America’s Election Workers Are Leaving In Droves: A Globe review of the ranks of top county election officials in five hard-fought battleground states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia — found a dramatic jump in election official turnover. A similar trend held for the municipal election officials of Massachusetts, which of course is no battleground. Between the 2016 election and the 2018 midterms, the six states saw about 18 percent of those top officials depart. In the nearly two years since the 2020 election, that figure has risen to roughly 30 percent. These figures do not include turnover in the lower ranks of election administration, which could be even higher. The pattern is by no means limited to battleground states. In South Carolina, just four out of 46 county election directors left their jobs in the two years after the 2016 election, the Globe found, compared to 19 counties that have seen vacancies in those roles since 2020, state figures show. In Utah, 17 out of 29 county clerks who administered the 2020 election have either quit or plan to leave at the end of their terms, according to state figures; the Globe could find only one who left within two years of the 2016 election.

Election Deniers Working On The Inside Are Preparing To Sabotage The Midterms 

  • Washington Post (Dana Milbank): In Nevada, Election Deniers Prepare To Sabotage The Midterms: If the midterm elections degenerate into chaos in a couple of weeks — a very real possibility — then Nevada is poised to lead the way. Indeed, the chaos here has already begun. The election supervisors in 10 of the state’s 17 counties have already quit, been forced out or announced their departures. Lower-level election workers have quit in the face of consistent abuse. The state’s elections staff has lost eight of its 12 employees. The (Republican) secretary of state, who vigorously defends the integrity of the 2020 election, is term-limited, and the GOP nominee to replace her, Jim Marchant, leads a national group of election deniers running for office. Marchant is on record saying that if he and his fellow candidates are elected, “we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again.” In Reno’s Washoe County, the state’s second largest, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist led a harassment campaign against the registrar of voters, accusing her of treason and addiction, and she quit in fear for her family’s safety. In her absence, the county recently mailed a sample ballot to voters laced with errors: a missing contest, a missing candidate, a contest that didn’t belong on the ballot and a misspelling. In Storey County, the clerk resigned earlier this year and was replaced by Jim Hindle, vice chairman of the Nevada GOP and one of the fake electors put forth as part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Officials expect the eventual losers of several contests, perhaps a dozen, to contest the results, and they are bracing for the possibility that conspiracy-minded county commissioners might refuse to certify the results, as several threatened in 2020. This raises the likelihood that the state legislature could step in and throw out the results in any contested state election, from Assembly up to governor, and install the candidate of their choice — something that is allowed under Nevada law.
  • CNN: Election Deniers In Charge Of Some County Election Offices Are Continuing To Sow Mistrust In The Electoral System: Pop into a meeting of the Board of Elections in Spalding County, Georgia, and it may appear like any other eye-glazing gathering of bureaucrats being led by a no-nonsense chair. “We hang our political hats at the door when we come in and do the people’s work,” Board Chairman Ben Johnson said at one meeting earlier this year. “There ain’t no room for politics in elections.” But Johnson’s stated beliefs don’t appear to be so easily left at the door. An election-conspiracy believer, Johnson has authored a social media post to “fellow insurrectionists” and proclaimed that Joe Biden “is an illegitimate president.” On social media, he has called for banning electronic voting machines, early voting and mail-in voting; echoed debunked claims about “ballot trafficking;” and proudly posted a photo with MyPillow founder and election conspiracist Mike Lindell. Among other actions since taking office, Johnson has voted not to renew the county’s maintenance contract with Dominion Voting Systems – a frequent target of election conspiracy theories. As chairman, Johnson will have charge of the county board’s certification of the November midterm results – and his actions and continuing claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent have raised concerns over how he and the Republican-controlled board will handle the upcoming election. Johnson is far from the only MAGA conspiracist inside the election process in a key battleground state. In Colorado, Michigan, Nevada and elsewhere, elections officials already have seen MAGA-leaning insiders allow election equipment to be breached, spread baseless fears about voting machine and election security, or take other actions that could stoke voter distrust.

Michael Flynn Is Launching A Multi-Pronged Assault On Democracy 

  • Bloomberg: Michael Flynn Group Funds Effort to Put Military Vets at Midterm Polls: A group co-founded by Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, is funding a new campaign to recruit military veterans and police officers to work at the polls for the midterm elections. The effort, called One More Mission, describes itself in a press release as a “non-partisan, non-party affiliated campaign providing an opportunity for your service to matter” and the “perfect apolitical solution to a national issue.” Its website urges people to sign up to become “a patriot poll worker” on Nov. 8. One More Mission says that it is funded by The America Project, an organization co-founded by Flynn and former Overstock.com Chief Executive Officer Patrick Byrne, both prominent backers of the former president’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. On Dec. 18, 2020, Flynn urged Trump to consider seizing voting machines, according to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The America Project website encourages poll watching and challenges to voters. It includes a series of “election integrity” manuals for nine states, including the swing states Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The organization also recently funded a Georgia group that unsuccessfully challenged tens of thousands of voter registrations in a Democratic county in suburban Atlanta. 
  • Washington Post: Right-Wing Roadshow Promotes Christian Nationalism Before Midterms: Since April of last year, the ReAwaken America Tour has brought hardline-election deniers, anti-vaccine doctors, self-proclaimed prophets and conspiracy theorists to enthusiastic crowds across the country. The central message is that America’s white, evangelical Christian way of life is under threat from the globalist cabal on the “woke” left. The traveling carnival of misinformation merges entertainment, politics and theology and makes the existential argument to those attending: The debate is no longer about Republican vs. Democrat, they say, it’s about good vs. evil. And it’s time to pick a side. Since its inception, the tour has been denounced by mainstream religious leaders because of its extremist views. Its organizers have been forced to move venues twice — in New York and Washington state — due to community concerns. The Anti-Defamation League has targeted it in a report. This stop at a sports complex in Pennsylvania was the penultimate of the midterm season organizers hope will result in a “red wave” of victory for Republicans. “We face a battle in our country,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser turned election denier, told the crowd. “I mean, Christianity is under attack. Honestly, it feels like everything is under attack.”
  • Reuters: Pro-Trump Group Gathers Intel For Its War On Voting Machines: In June, a man and a woman turned up unannounced at the office of Catherine Roeske, the city clerk in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. They wanted to ask Roeske detailed questions about how local elections were run. “We’re pretty much these grassroots people,” the man said, according to an audio recording of the encounter. “We’re nonpartisan,” the woman added. All they wanted, she said, was to educate citizens about the electoral process. Roeske dutifully answered their questions. Only later did she learn from a Reuters reporter that the couple were part of a national effort to gather intelligence for prominent allies of former U.S. President Donald Trump who promote stolen-election conspiracy theories. And that intelligence would be used primarily to campaign for radical changes in the U.S. voting system that election officials overwhelmingly oppose. Roeske got another surprise when she reviewed a summary of her interview posted online by the surveyors: It was riddled with mistakes, potentially fueling the misinformation that many voting administrators are struggling to combat. The Oak Creek survey was one of more than 260 conducted with county and city election officials across eight battleground states and sponsored by the America Project. The influential right-wing group was co-founded by Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s national security advisor, and wealthy businessman Patrick Byrne. The organization told Reuters it is using the information to fuel a multi-state campaign to promote the Trump-backed agenda of eliminating electronic voting machines and returning to hand-counted paper ballots.

Democrats Are Locked In Close Races For Key Positions Against Election Deniers 

  • Politico: Democrats Locked In Close Contests With Election Deniers For Key Secretary Of State Posts: Secretaries of state have never gotten more attention than now. Yet Steve Simon is still introducing himself to the voters who elected him four years ago in Minnesota. It’s emblematic of a broader challenge for Democrats trying to beat back a wave of Trump-aligned candidates for the roles. The once-obscure offices have been on the front lines of politics for two years, after then-President Donald Trump tried to sway state election officers to subvert the results of the vote in 2020. His followers then backed pro-Trump candidates running for the posts this year. But despite Democrats sounding alarms and raking in cash, there is mounting evidence that voters are still not dialed in on a slate of these key battleground campaigns. The race to be the top election official in several 2024 swing states remains tight — including in Minnesota, where the Democratic governor has a polling lead on the same statewide ticket as Simon.

Criminal Fraud Trial Against Trump’s Business Starts Today

  • New York Times: Trump’s Business, Under Threat, Faces A Tough Test In Court: At the dawn of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, his family business appeared poised for a windfall: It unveiled new hotel lines, held ribbon-cuttings around the world and attracted major tournaments to its golf clubs, enough for Eric Trump, who ran the company while his father was in the White House, to remark, “The stars have all aligned.” Five years later, those stars have faded. The former president’s company, grappling with legal and political scrutiny, has halted its expansion to concentrate on its existing properties. It even sold the Trump hotel in Washington, once the center of the MAGA universe. This week will drive home that stark reversal of fortune as the company faces a highly public reckoning: a criminal trial in Manhattan, where the district attorney’s office will accuse it of tax fraud and other crimes. Although Mr. Trump himself was not indicted, he is synonymous with the company he ran for decades, a business that bears his name and served as a launching pad for his presidency. The trial in State Supreme Court will present an embarrassing scene for the former president, pushing to the forefront one of several criminal investigations swirling around him.

In The States 

ARIZONA:  Tensions Mount As Armed Groups “Monitor” Ballot Drop Boxes 

  • KTVK: Tensions High After Armed Individuals Reportedly Watch Ballot Box In Mesa: Multiple incidents of possible voter intimidation have been reported this week, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors released a statement saying they will do anything to ensure a fair election. Sheriff’s deputies were called to an incident Friday night at a ballot box in Mesa and said two individuals wearing tactical gear were armed. The Sheriff’s office said the individuals were standing outside the 75 limit at the Maricopa County Juvenile Court Building and told Arizona’s Family they weren’t breaking any laws. On Saturday night, there was a group of four people watching the ballot box in Mesa, and two were armed with concealed handguns. There was a confrontation that resulted from the group being there. Arizona’s Family spoke to an activist in a nun outfit who said she went out to the location to watch the watchers and ensure voter intimidation wasn’t happening. She said they were covering their license plates with pieces of cloth, and when she tried to take a picture of the license plates, she was grabbed and chased by one of the group members. She said, “I just felt fair is fair, they’re video taping voter’s license plates, so I didn’t think it was really a big deal to photograph theirs.” The activist said she felt like the group was trying to keep people away from the ballot box. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, chairman Bill Gates and recorder Stephen Richer said in a statement: “Uninformed vigilantes outside Maricopa County’s drop boxes are not increasing election integrity. Instead they are leading to voter intimidation complaints.” “Although monitoring and transparency in our elections is critical, voter intimidation is unlawful.” Both Gates and Richer said they would do anything to protect voters, election workers, and fair elections. 

FLORIDA:  Ron DeSantis’s “Election Integrity” Crackdown Falters As Judge Drops Charges Against Miami Man Accused Of Illegally Voting 

  • New York Times: G.O.P. Voter Fraud Crackdowns Falter as Charges Are Dropped in Florida and Texas: Dealing setbacks to Republican-led voter fraud prosecutions, judges in Florida and Texas this week dropped charges against two former felons who had been accused of casting ballots when they were not eligible to do so because of their status as offenders. Robert Lee Wood, one of those two felons, was part of an August roundup spearheaded by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, on voter fraud. On Friday, a circuit court judge in Miami-Dade County granted a motion to dismiss two felony charges related to voter fraud against Mr. Wood, 56, who spent two decades in prison for second-degree murder. Mr. Wood was among the 20 people who were recently arrested in Florida on voter fraud charges and became the first defendant to have them dropped. And on Monday, a district court judge in Texas set aside the indictment of Hervis Earl Rogers, a Houston man who gained widespread attention for waiting seven hours to vote during the 2020 primary election. Last year, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a Republican, charged Mr. Rogers with voting illegally because he was on parole.

GEORGIA:  Early Voters Face Challenges Under New Election Law 

  • The Guardian: Early Voters In Georgia Face Obstacles Under State’s New Election Law: Jennifer Jones, a Morehouse School of Medicine PhD student, showed up to her precinct in Fulton county, Georgia, on the second day of early voting for the midterm elections. She was excited to cast her ballot for her chosen candidates in the gubernatorial and Senate races, Stacey Abrams and Senator Raphael Warnock. However, when she reached the check-in station at the polling site, she was informed that she would be unable to cast a regular ballot because her validity as a voter was challenged. “When I handed in my ID, the poll worker said I was being challenged,” said Jones. “They said I had to complete a provisional ballot, but I wasn’t really comfortable doing that, so I didn’t get to cast my ballot that day.” Under the state’s new Election Integrity Act, Georgia citizens can challenge a voter’s eligibility on the state’s voting rolls an unlimited number of times. Right-wing groups, spurred by baseless claims that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud, have mounted thousands of organized challenges across the state, putting even more pressure on the election process for voters, poll workers and election officials. While most have been dismissed already, more challenges cropped up ahead of early voting. In most cases, voters like Jones don’t know why their status is being challenged in the first place, causing even more confusion. “The poll worker didn’t tell me why I was being challenged, even after calling someone else for assistance,” said Jones. “They just kept telling me I would have to vote with a provisional ballot.”Georgia voters turned out in record numbers for the first week of early voting, casting their ballots in the two critical elections, the gubernatorial and Senate races. However, as the election progresses, the impact of Georgia’s new voting laws continues to unfold. Election and voter protection organizations across Georgia have been preparing for moments like this, working to educate voters on what to do if they experience issues when voting.

NEVADA:  Jim Marchant Pushes Bizarre Claim That Key Democratic Leaders Were Not Legitimately Elected 

  • CNN: GOP Candidate For Nevada Elections Chief Pushes False Claim That Pelosi, Schumer And Schiff Weren’t Legitimately Elected: Jim Marchant, the Republican candidate for Nevada elections chief, has repeatedly promoted false conspiracy theories about elections in his closely contested state. Now, with the November 8 midterms fast approaching, Marchant is going further – pushing a preposterous claim that prominent congressional Democrats in California and New York did not legitimately win reelection, though they actually won fair and square by overwhelming margins. Marchant is one of at least 11 Republican candidates for state secretary of state in 2022 who have rejected, questioned or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He is the first, though, to run a campaign ad rejecting the legitimacy of the dominant victories earned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff of California and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York.

What Experts Are Saying

Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian: “‘50 years after the election of 2022, what a historian is likely to say about this election isn’t how high the inflation rate was, [but rather,] ‘why was democracy teetering on the edge in 2022 and what happened after that?’— @BeschlossDC to @PreetBharara” Tweet | Interview on CAFE’s ‘Stay Tuned with Preet’ 

Hannah Fried, All Voting Is Local executive director: “Hannah Fried, who runs the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, sees what’s happening in Nevada as part of a proliferation nationwide of ‘efforts to create chaos in our election system in service of undermining election results.’” Dana Milbank’s Washington Post column: In Nevada, election deniers prepare to sabotage the midterms 

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian at Boston College: “The presence of armed vigilantes outside of voting places is a scene directly out of the 1876 ‘redemption’ of the South…In 1876, ‘Redeemers’ set out to put an end to the southern governments that were elected in systems that allowed Black men to vote. ‘Rifle clubs’ held contests outside Republican political rallies, ‘Red Shirts’ marched with their guns in parades. Their intimidation worked. Democrats took over the South and created a one-party system that lasted virtually unbroken until 1965. Without the oversight that a healthy multiparty system provides, southern governments became the corrupt tools of a few wealthy men, and the rest of the population fell into a poverty from which it could not escape until the federal government began to invest in the region in the 1930s.” Letters from An American 

Joshua Tucker, politics professor and co-director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and politics, re: polarized political rhetoric: “Political scientists at New York University reviewed and corroborated The Times’s findings and said the results underscored a broad shift in Republican rhetoric. ‘We are clearly living in a time in politics where this kind of aversion is increasing, and also where we are seeing the emergence of an extreme faction in the Republican Party,’ said Joshua Tucker, a politics professor and co-director at the university’s Center for Social Media and Politics.” New York Times 

Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University: “Mr. McCarthy’s rhetoric is in line with that of other Republicans who objected to the election.‘They are using what are called ‘devil terms’ — things that are so unquestionably bad that you can’t have a debate about them,’ said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who studies the history of political rhetoric.” New York Times 

Barbara McQuade, former US attorney (MSNBC Video): “Disinformation is fueling political violence. I discussed this threat with ⁦@AliVelshi⁩, who was in Detroit this weekend for ⁦@VelshiMSNBC⁩. @MSNBC.” Tweet 

Joyce Vance, former US attorney: “[I]n many of these investigations, it’s not just Trump who’s on the minds of prosecutors, and certainly not when it comes to the January 6 committee. If the (possibly) final hearing made anything clear, it’s that the committee has a conspiracy’s worth of targets in sight. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise with Obama-era U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy in place as Chief Investigation Counsel for the Committee. And Heaphy onboarded a staff flush with former prosecutors. Prosecutors think conspiracy any time they see two or more people involved in a potential crime. Committee members seem to be thinking conspiracy too. In previous hearings, Liz Cheney invoked specific crimes, like conspiring to obstruct the electoral vote certification, and she squarely rejected the idea that Trump was being led by people around him. Instead, the committee had a laser beam focus on Trump’s central role in events. In the subpoena they sent to him on Friday, they clarified any doubt. In their view of the evidence, he ‘personally orchestrated and oversaw’ the conspiracy.” Civil Discourse 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

ABC: Anti-gun violence group will spend $1M against election-denier secretary of state candidates

Associated Press: GOP voters told to hold onto mail ballots until Election Day

CBS: Trump Is Encouraging Pennsylvania State Lawmakers To Repeal Mail-In Voting Law: 

The Guardian: The ‘Election-Denier Trifecta’: Alarm Over Trumpists’ Efforts To Win Key Posts: 

Mother Jones: A Disturbing Number of Americans Endorse Violence to “Stop Voter Fraud” and Return Trump to Power

NBC: ‘Anger on their minds’: NBC News poll finds sky-high interest and polarization ahead of midterms

New Yorker: Behind the Campaign to Put Election Deniers in Charge of Elections

New York Times: Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated.

New York Times: Fears Over Fate of Democracy Leave Many Voters Frustrated and Resigned

New York Times: The Ins and Outs of America’s Shrug at the Threat to Democracy

New York Times: For Trump’s Backers in Congress, ‘Devil Terms’ Help Rally Voters

Rolling Stone: Inside the Effort to Protect the Election — One State at a Time

Vox: Curtis Yarvin wants American democracy toppled. He has some prominent Republican fans.

Wall Street Journal: Republican Election Skeptics Propose Changes That Could Affect 2024 Vote

Washington Post: Cheney criticizes Youngkin, others campaigning for election deniers

Washington Post: Trump’s rally schedule slows as GOP sees narrowing demand for his help

January 6 And The 2020 Election

Associated Press: Bannon gets 4 months behind bars for defying 1/6 subpoena

Axios: Emails reveal warning to Trump team about fraud claims

CNN: Sen. Lindsey Graham asks the Supreme Court to block a subpoena from an Atlanta grand jury investigating 2020 election interference

NBC: ‘Loudmouth’ Jan. 6 rioter who climbed Capitol wall gets four years in federal prison

NBC: Jan. 6 rioter who brought two guns to Capitol sentenced to five years in prison

Politico: Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Donald Trump

Other Trump Investigations 

Washington Post: Mar-a-Lago classified papers held U.S. secrets about Iran and China

Washington Post (Analysis): Trump allies have amassed nearly 30 years in prison sentences

In The States 

Albany Times Union: Supreme Court justice rules part of N.Y. absentee voting law is unconstitutional

Arizona Mirror: Arizona ‘ground zero’ for extremist, anti-government sheriff movement

Arizona Mirror: Secretary of State’s Office threatens lawsuit if Cochise County conducts hand count of ballots

Arizona Republic: In interview, AZ governor candidate Kari Lake says ‘I don’t have faith’ in election system

Associated Press: Utah Senate race: Referendum on direction Trump has led GOP

Boston Globe: In the wake of Trump’s lies, a brain drain of local election experience in Georgia

The Guardian: Miami judge dismisses voter fraud case trumpeted by DeSantis

The Guardian: Judge dismisses fraud case against Texas man who waited seven hours to vote

MLive: Michigan election challenger rules invalid, improperly enacted, court finds

New York Times: The Proud Boys Presented Dan Cox With a Gift. Now, He Says He Didn’t Keep It.

WHP: Mastriano slated to speak at controversial right-winged event, but doesn’t show