Stop the presses! Sound the alarm! Wake your children! Gasp audibly! Collect on all the things you were promised “when hell freezes over,” because it appears it has. According to newly surfaced reports, Donald Trump’s desperate attempts to overturn the results of the totally legit 2020 presidential election became so unhinged that even Rudy Giuliani was apparently taken aback.
According to The New York Times, the former New York City mayor—who will now forever be known as the guy who held a press conference next to a dildo boutique—actually voiced his reluctance when Trump and his cronies were talking about all sorts of wacky plays to declare the 45th president the winner of the 2020 election. Which he most definitely was not. One of the most popular ideas was for Trump to send in the military to collect the voting machines in states where the incumbent nominee lost bigly to preserve as evidence of “fraud,” despite the fact that no such evidence existed.
The New York Times reports that it was retired Army colonel Phil Waldron, a former colleague of Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who initially floated this idea. As the NYT writes:
“According to people familiar with the accounts, Mr. Waldron, shortly after the election, began telling associates that he had found irregularities in vote results that he felt were suggestive of fraud. He then came up with the idea of having a federal agency like the military or the Department of Homeland Security confiscate the machines to preserve evidence.”
Trump liked what Waldron was selling, and had reportedly already been thinking about trying to persuade the Justice Department to confiscate the machines from states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, where the mere fact that Trump lost led him to conclude that something fishy was happening. Yet, all along, it was Giuliani—Mr. Hair Leak, the guy who farted during a public hearing—who was buzzing in their ears as the voice of reason. As the Times writes:
Mr. Giuliani was vehemently opposed to the idea of the military taking part in the seizure of machines, according to two people familiar with the matter. The conflict between him and his legal team, and Mr. Flynn, Ms. [Sidney] Powell and Mr. Byrne came to a dramatic head on Dec. 18, 2020, during a meeting with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office.
At the meeting, Mr. Flynn and Ms. Powell presented Mr. Trump with a copy of the draft executive order authorizing the military to oversee the seizure of machines. After reading it, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Giuliani to the Oval Office, according to one person familiar with the matter. When Mr. Giuliani read the draft order, he told Mr. Trump that the military could be used only if there was clear-cut evidence of foreign interference in the election.
When Waldron altered his plan to appease the naysayers, he suggested that Trump ask the Department of Homeland Security to do the dirty work—a task Trump reportedly delegated to Rudy, who obliged but reported back that that was a no-go, too. According to an inside source, while Flynn and Powell continued to push a military interference as the president’s best hope at not having to fill out a change of address form for the post office, Giuliani—despite being one of the biggest pushers of The Big Lie—was stating behind the scenes that these unnecessary shenanigans were likely to get his pal Trump impeached.
Six words I never thought I’d type: If only Trump has listened to Rudy.
(Via The New York Times)