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Al Schmidt
A week ago, the vast majority of Mediaite readers would likely say, "Who?!" in response to Al Schmidt's name -- and many of you undoubtedly still are. President Donald Trump, at least, knows Schmidt's name now.
Schmidt is one of the three Philadelphia City Commissioners on their election board and the only Republican. He has been an unflappable presence in several recent televised interviews as he attempts to urge calm and defend his fellow city officials as they tirelessly work to complete processing and counting the ballots.
“From the inside looking out, it feels all very deranged,” he told 60 Minutes. “At the end of the day, we are counting eligible votes cast by voters. The controversy surrounding it is something I don’t understand. Schmidt also shared details of death threats they had received.
Wednesday morning, Schmidt was on CNN with a more direct critique of the Trump campaign's efforts to question the election. “People should be mindful that there are bad actors who are lying to them,” said Schmidt. “And they need to turn to people that they trust and to sources of information that they trust, and not rumors and not nonsense included in lawsuits or anything else like that.”
Predictably, the president did not appreciate these comments, and fired off a Trumpian tweet slamming Schmidt as a RINO who was "being used big time by the Fake News Media."
Schmidt surely knew he risked Trump's ire by speaking out, but he did so anyway to defend his hardworking colleagues and the integrity of the election. |
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 | MEDIA LOSER:
Joy Reid
Everyone makes mistakes. "Pobody's nerfect!" as The Good Place once quipped. But a recent flub by MSNBC's Joy Reid was especially embarrassing.
"Here's the thing: the reason there's a thing called @FiveThirtyEight is because 538 was the margin in FL when the Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election during a recount, making Dubya the president," tweeted Reid. "That's the kind of margin where races can flip. That's not what's up now."
Reid's broader point, that the existing margins in the remaining states were far, far beyond any plausible likelihood that a recount would flip the results from Trump to Biden, was correct, but pretty much everything else in the tweet was wrong, and Twitter users swarmed.
"This isn't accurate," tweeted CNN's Jake Tapper, explaining, "The margin in Florida was 537 votes (538 is the number of electoral college voters); the SCOTUS didn’t reverse the 2000 election (Bush always led in every count)." Many, many others joined in.
Reid still has yet to delete the tweet, presumably because it was the first in a thread making points about the complete weakness of Trump's claims the election is being stolen. Which, again, are valid points, but Reid's argument is getting lost amidst the noise over the way she decided to kick off that thread.
If you're on Twitter, you're on the internet. A quick Google search before you tweet can save you from a lot of pain. |
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| It's called a "Hail Mary" because it takes a miracle to happen Trump and his allies have been feverishly throwing anything and everything against the wall, hoping something will stick and undo Biden's victory. The president had a new Hail Mary tweet Wednesday morning, claiming that the polls taken before the election were illegal.
“The Fake Pollsters at @ABC/@washingtonpost produced a possibly illegal suppression Poll just before the Election" in Wisconsin, Trump complained, and then claimed he was "now preparing to win the state."
Fact check: Trump is not winning Wisconsin.
If you missed it, Mediaite's editor-in-chief Aidan McLaughlin conducted a detailed review of the most viral Trump campaign claims of voter fraud. Spoiler alert: he describes them as a "deluge of bullsh**."
The New York Times went even further, calling top election officials in 46 states to ask if they had evidence, or even suspicions, of voter fraud. They got replies from 45 of them and not one state had found any fraud that would change the reported results in their state. (Texas didn't reply but that state went for Trump, so we can assume the president isn't interested in challenging it.)
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, a former elections lawyer who said he voted for Trump, wrote a tweet thread and appeared on Fox & Friends to make the argument that while voter fraud happened, it was rarely to a level that would overturn even local races. "Joe Biden is President-Elect of the United States and it is not going to change," tweeted Erickson.
Tweet tweet tweet
Trump is unhappy and tweeting about it. Lots and lots of tweets last night. And Twitter smacked nearly every single one of them with a misinformation warning label.
Sexy Time!
Inadvertent Borat movie star Rudy Giuliani is a big star at the Philadelphia sex shop next to the Four Seasons Total Landscaping that was the scene for a bizarre press conference where the Trump campaign attempted to present claims of rampant voter fraud. The adult business is reporting they get “at least 10, 15 calls a day” asking if Trump's personal attorney is there.
Giuliani, of course, did not remain behind in Philadelphia, but if he does want some sex toys he can now get them from Buzzfeed. The website has seen increased traffic on posts discussing and reviewing sex toys as Americans have been stuck at home during the pandemic, and decided to get into the business themselves.
Georgia on everyone's mind
Joe Biden maintains his narrow lead in the Peach State, and the Georgia Secretary of State says they will undergo a "full, by hand recount." The process is expected to take a week or two, but viewed as highly unlikely to overturn Biden's win.
Meanwhile, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was in Georgia for a rally for Sen. Kelly Loeffler, one of two Georgia Republicans fighting to keep their senate seats in a January runoff.
The rally was indoors, many attendees were not wearing masks, and Georgia is experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases.
CNN decided it was unsafe and pulled their entire crew from the event.
Putting people on lists
CNN host Jake Tapper called out Hari Sevugan — a former spokesman for President Barack Obama — for promoting a revenge list of Trump administration staffers and employees.
Pandemic party planning
The Biden inauguration planning team is facing a unique challenge in American history: how do you plan an inauguration that is normally attended by hundreds of thousands of people, when there's a pandemic going on -- and your opponent's supporters are far less likely than your own to take precautions?
“What do you do if our people don’t show up and his do?” worried one anonymous Democrat official, reflecting their worry that Biden's inauguration could end up looking like a "MAGA rally on The Mall." 6.5.0 |
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| Another 9/11? CNN's Jim Sciutto offered a sobering warning Wednesday, saying that Trump's refusal to acknowledge Biden's victory and cooperate with the transition put America at risk for another 9/11 type of terrorist attack.
Sciutto quoted the 9/11 Commission Report, which detailed how the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore "cut in half the normal transition period...this loss of time hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees.”
“The fact is, we have experience for how shortened transitions make a difference in national security,” said Sciutto.
Watch the segment, and the responses from the panel, here. |
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