At Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden Hitler hootenanny, one strange and ominous moment hasn’t gotten quite as much chatter as the ass-scorching racism: Trump’s blurbling about how he and House Speaker Mike Johnson have a special secret. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a little secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”
It could be that they’ve been using Covenant Eyes software to monitor each other’s porn use and doing the No-Nut thing, which they believe is giving them extra manly powers.
Have they discovered a magical closet in the Senate that transports them to an all-white paradise like Narnia? A copy of the self-help book about the “law of attraction”?
Or maybe, just spitballin’, the secret plan is about attempted election-stealery, and it goes something like this:
Step one, cause maximum chaos and confusion at the state level, with election-deniers on state boards refusing to certify a Kamala Harris win in their states. With enough states unable to certify to keep Harris from getting a majority of electoral votes, the Republican-majority House votes on the president instead, with each state getting one vote. That’s 26 votes for America’s sloppiest fry cook.
Step two, should Republicans lose their majority in the House, Johnson refuses to step down as Speaker or to swear in any Democrats on January 3. It’s not legal, but do Republicans give a fuck anymore? Is somebody gonna come arrest them if they have a sit-in? Who the hell knows.
Step three, get the Supreme Court involved to bless that mess.
Step four, Trump becomes Lord President Dictator on Day One!
It’s scary shit, but could it actually happen? Mike Johnson sure seems to leave open the possibility of making monkeyshines, and has repeatedly said he’d only certify the election conditionally. Most recently he told Kristen Welker he would vote to certify the election only if it is a “free and fair and legal election,” and then went into some whatabout-lies about how Democrats have objected to slates of electors, and so Proud Boys spraying tear gas, a guy in a buffalo suit and some “Hee Haw” rejects smearing poop on the walls of the Capitol on January 6 is basically the same thing.
Johnson’s been into election-denying for a while. He of course voted not to certify Joe Biden’s win in 2020, and his name was also at the very top of an amicus brief for that clownshow Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit in 2020, which tried to claim that Ken Paxton could nullify Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan’s electoral college votes. He was in fact one of the most important elected Republicans when it came to helping mount coups for Donald Trump.
So could he do it, might such a plan work?
There’s a few problems. One is that the part of Mike Pence will be played by Kamala Harris on January 6, 2025, and Mike Johnson actually has no official role in any of it, unless something happens to her or Joe between now and January, heaven forbid. And if Republicans lose the House (please baby Jesus), then he will not even be the speaker.
Second problem, the Electoral Count Act of 2022 raises the threshold for making objections, requiring that at least one-fifth of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then a majority of both chambers would have to vote to sustain the objection. While there’s a lot of election-deniers, they aren’t the majority.
And, the Act lets the total number of electoral votes needed to win to be decreased if some state decides to fuck around and flush their votes down the toilet. Georgia refuses to certify its election? Then it’s 538 minus 16 — 522 — and it will take only 262 electoral college votes to win. It also clarifies who has the power to appoint a state’s electors, making it clear it’s a state’s governor, or in the case of DC, the mayor, and definitely not some self-appointed randos meeting in the basement of the state legislature.
Still, a mess could be made, maybe one of a variety nobody’s thought of yet! Any dispute would go to a three-judge federal court, and then whatever that panel decided could be appealed to the Supreme Court, and who knows what the fuck they would do. They already threw out any notion of Trump being equal before the law a long time ago. Actually just June, but doesn’t that feel like a hundred years ago?
Anyway, that is just one theory!
Sure hope that dirty little secret is just those two doing some phone sex instead.
Or the dems could just wipe out the repubs with really strong turnout and independents being turned off by fascism. Please.
Does No-Nut November come after Orgasm October?
Trick question - it doesn't come at all!