Sure, But What If Nikki Haley IS Trying To Steal The Indiana Primary From Trump?
Super stupid, but just complex enough for idiots to point and scream 'Rigged and Stollen!'
Donald Trump has never met a claim of election-rigging he could resist, not even when people take the time, using small words and illustrated graphs, to explain to him why there was nothing wrong. So it should be no surprise that, according to Politico, Trump has spent the last week or so raving about a nonexistent “conspiracy” to steal the 2024 Republican primary in Indiana from him and hand it to Nikki Haley.
It’s bullshit, of course, but that hasn’t kept Trump from fuming over it and insisting that Haley is ineligible to run in the state, because he is A IDIOT. Worse, people who should know better have echoed his stupid wrongness, including one of his million or so attorneys and and an actual Republican member of Congress who’s running for the US Senate from the Hoosier Daddy State. And of course it’s just one more bit of confusion and misinformation that’s bound to make voters inclined to believe Trump’s lies that everyone is out to rig elections against him.
Oh yes: This is where we remind you that Indiana holds its presidential primary elections in May.
As in three months from now. As in by then, Nikki Haley will have either sold what’s left of her soul and endorsed Trump, or perhaps accepted the No Labels nomination to help Trump win in the general election. We are just speculating.
Here’s the dealio: Indiana’s deadline for filing to be on the primary ballot is this Friday, February 9. The date for nominating petitions to be signed was January 30. But either Trump or someone in his orbit confused the two dates, claiming that Haley had already failed to qualify for the primary, so why is she still pretending she can be on the ballot, huh, HUH?
Haley’s fine, she’ll get all her paperwork in by Friday and should qualify easily, even though it’s unlikely she’ll still have an active campaign by May. But this won’t go away, because once a lie starts spreading in Trumpworld, it becomes true forever, and just more proof that voting doesn’t work so we should instead have a great man who’ll vote for us.
Politico explains,
Even the longtime Republican voter registration board member at the center of the dispute told POLITICO in an interview that Trump appeared to have false information and that the process is designed to prevent the kind of conspiracy the former president is alleging.
“I think somebody gave him incorrect information based on lack of knowledge, and he went with what he was told,” said Cindy Mowery, the Republican board member on the Marion County Board of Voters Registration.
Just to confuse things even more, the alleged “proof” of something rotten in Indiana involves a combination of mistaken identification, information that was still being updated, and either genuine confusion or deliberate bad faith assumptions on the part of Team Trump. You know which one we’re inclined to think is the case.
Y’see, kids, on Friday, Indiana political reporter Niki Kelly tweeted that she had emailed Mowery to ask whether Haley had qualified for the ballot in Marion County, home to Indianapolis. Hilariously, as Mowery later confirmed to Politico, she thought the inquiry was from Haley, and emailed back, “Niki. As of this writing you are short on signatures.” Kelly then twote, in error, that Haley was “likely not on the ballot.”
As it turned out, once all the signatures were verified by Monday, Haley had enough to make it onto the ballot in Marion County and the rest of Indiana, and that shoulda settled things.
But over the weekend, a Trump lawyer glommed onto the email and wrote a dumb letter to Demand Answers: Why wasn’t Haley flat out disqualified since the signature deadline was January 30, and on February 2 you said she was short of signatures, HUH? But January 30 was only the deadline to turn in the signatures for verification by county elections offices, and it’s no big deal anyway since the actual filing deadline, again, is Friday, February 9. Nonetheless, the letter accused Marion County of “improperly allowing Nikki Haley and/or her campaign to supplement or correct her submission,” and demanded that the office preserve all relevant records because you are all in BIG TROUBLE, YOU.
Worse, the Trump lawyer, Gary Lawkowski, sent the huffy nastygram to the wrong person, Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell (her skin is fair and her eyes are well), who is not actually involved in ballot certification stuff. That’s handled by the bipartisan “voter board of registration,” which has one Democrat and one Republican (the aforementioned Ms. Mowery). Other counties’ elections do go through county clerks, but some, like Marion, have separate elections offices. That’s probably a plot, too.
Ms. Sweeney Bell let Lawkowski know his inquiry should go to the registration board and that, again, should have been that. Ah, but then there’s this: Sweeney Bell is also a Democrat, so even though she had nothing to do with ballot certification, Trump got on his Fake Twitter and got to slinging insane accusations about how Haley was
“still scrambling in Indiana with democrat county clerk offices to ‘verify’ signatures and qualify for the ballot three days after the deadline. Not a good look!”
Again: No deadline missed, and the “democrat county clerk” in Marion County has nothing to do with the ballot. But why bother with reality when a juicy made-up conspiracy is available?
The obvious bullshit prompted Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney to tell Politico,
“This is more nonsense and confusion from Trump. We have more than enough verified signatures in each congressional district, and we will be filing this week before the Feb. 9 deadline. You should be asking whether they are simply confused or whether they were lying and misleading people.”
Oh come now! Why not both? Team Trump, despite having plenty of time to figure out reality, is going with the bullshit:
Asked to clarify Trump’s remarks, a Trump campaign spokesperson skirted the issue. “No amount of crying from Nikki Haley supporters hoping that Democrats interfere in Republican elections can erase the fact that President Trump will beat the brakes off Joe Biden and take back the White House,” Steven Cheung told POLITICO.
We are so innocent. We didn’t realize that “beat the brakes off” is slang that can mean either a literal beatdown, or alternatively, violent sex. Ha ha, the Trump people know how to connect with the youngs, who listen to the hippety and the hoppity.
As we mentioned, Trump’s loony lies also got boosted by Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) — unless maybe they originated with him, who knows? Last Thursday, Banks retwote a Trump lie about Haley having “missed the deadline,” even though the actual filing deadline was still a week and a day away, claiming
[two siren emojis] Donald J. Trump is the only candidate who qualified for the Indiana GOP presidential primary.
Nikki Haley didn’t get enough signatures. It’s over. She needs to do what’s best for America and call it quits.
Indiana is Trump country and I’m proud to have his endorsement in my race for the U.S. Senate.
Tomorrow I’ll be honored to drop off President Trump’s signatures at the Secretary of State’s office to make his victory in Indiana official! [Two US flag emojis]
Banks repeated the lie on Friday, and even pushed the conspiracy story to Politico directly, because even routine elections office operations can be made to seem sinister if you try:
He said that his sources told him election officials moved 40 signatures from the neighboring 6th district to get Haley over the finish line. Mowery confirmed that indeed happened but noted it was because they were tied to voter’s addresses who lived in that district, not the 7th.
So hey, just another nine months of this shit, should be fun. We just feel sorry for Ms. Sweeney Bell, who did her job but is catching hell.
[Politico / Photo: Kalle Gustafsson, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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While Trump himself might believe the stollen election claims, I don't think the elements among the GOP that constantly promote claims of electoral fraud really do.
It's more insidious than that. They're trying to create the impression that elections themselves are untrustworthy, and either need to be drastically reformed to prevent any possibility of fraud (by making sure only the right people can vote), or even eliminated entirely -- witness the increasingly common "we're a republic not a democracy" rhetoric.
Ah, well, at least they'll probably consider me as part of the right people -- I'm a middle-aged white guy, good income, live in the suburbs, originally from the Soutth. I sound like their ideal voter, as long as they don't notice I'm married to another man.
A much happier topic than PAB's latest blast of watery shit from his mouth hole, is the prospect of his insolvency. He has to post an 83 million bond soon in order to appeal the Carol verdict. We are awaiting a potentially much larger judgment in NY Federal Court, maybe over 300 million. He would need to post that PLUS anticipated interest at 9% in advance! Then there are a slew of suits behind that, including 1/6 suits, which could be even bigger. He is sweating all this, guarantee, because his actual liquidity has always been a real question, but putting up 400 million cash is a heavy lift for legitimate billionaires. He may have to liquidate real estate and, guess what? Values for commercial real estate in NY are way down.