This time there was no chaos at the Kabul airport to distract from another failure to deliver the “receipts”. For those unfamiliar with Steve Bannon’s podcast, War Room Pandemic, the “receipts” are proof that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Ever since November of last year, Bannon has been claiming that the receipts were about to be delivered. First, they were going to be delivered during the various hearings Rudy Giuliani held around key states. Then they were going to be presented on January 6th, as Congress undertook the task of certifying the election. After the storming of the Capitol, no one was in the mood to look at receipts or anything else.
After months of allegations and frustration, it seemed that finally Bannon was going to have a venue to present the receipts. Led by its president, Karen Fann, the Arizona State Senate authorized and funded a forensic audit of Maricopa County. The audit began in April and it was slow in delivering any results. As the weeks and months dragged on, Bannon reassured his War Room Posse (the name he has given to his audience) that it was going to be worth the wait. The auditors were double and triple checking the results so that the they would be beyond reproach. Buckets of liberal tears on the horizon.
In the meantime, Bannon took a detour in the fantasy world of conservatives’ favorite pillow salesman. In August, Mike Lindell announced he would hold a Cyber Symposium where “100% proof” would be presented that China hacked the election to deliver the Oval Office to Beijing Biden. Lindell even upped the ante by offering a $5 million reward for anyone who would debunk his claims. Lindell didn’t stop there. He claimed that the evidence in his hands was so overwhelming that, when presented before the Supreme Court, the Justices would shout “WOW” and vote 9-0 to remove Biden from the White House.
The event turned out to be a complete fecal show. Lindell’s own cyber expert admitted there was no proof that the election was hacked. No PCAPS were ever presented. As the event kept spinning out of control, Lindell blamed Antifa infiltration and claimed that he was assaulted for trying to get the truth out. The condition for winning the $5 million was reduced to simply showing that the data presented was not from the 2020 election.
Fortunately for Bannon, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan hit the headlines and he quickly changed the subject. As the Posse in his chat room demanded an explanation of what happen at the Cyber Symposium, Bannon kept putting them off. There were more pressing matters. Americans were being held hostage in Afghanistan. Election fraud can wait. The Taliban, now armed with American military equipment left behind, is able to carry out terrorist attacks on our homeland. Patriotic music was cued up for every commercial break featuring the latest deal from My Pillow (be sure to mention the promo code WARROOM!).
That brings us to yesterday, when the much awaited results of the Arizona audit were announced. For months, Bannon had guests on praising the professionalism and thoroughness of the exercise. He called it the gold standard of election audits. Republican politicians wanting to ride the “election was stolen” gravy train, made pilgrimages to Maricopa County. After lauding the undertaking, they promised to do the same in their states.
What did the gold standard of audits find? Nothing that reversed the official results. Biden is still the winner of Arizona. The main finding of the first presenter, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, was 17,000 duplicate votes. Dr. Shiva did not provide the breakdown of the votes. That task was performed by the main auditors, Cyber Ninjas, who stated that duplicate votes favored Donald Trump.
The auditors did find several discrepancies that President Fann has forwarded to the Arizona Attorney General for further investigation.
President @FannKfann‘s letter to the Attorney @GeneralBrnovich ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/WH1SBPdKyE
— AZSenateRepublicans (@AZSenateGOP) September 24, 2021
Trump diehards have now pinned their hopes on the Arizona Attorney General taking action. They are coping with the bad news by saying that the auditors did not have the authority to de-certify the election or make legal determinations. That is correct. However, the auditors had the authority to determine whether the final figures are correct.
I never had a dog in this fight. Neither candidate appealed to me and I did not bother to vote. Moreover, I strongly felt that the election was illegitimate before the first vote was cast. Voters base their choices on the information that is available to them. In our case, the only information available to the masses was that Trump was a bad person and anyone who voted for him was equally a bad person. There was no balance. Only a relentless attack on one candidate while the other was allowed to remain largely invisible. What happened in 2020 is essentially the equivalent of only one side in a trial being allowed to present its case. Would you consider the verdict legitimate? I would not.
Nevertheless, I was willing to entertain the possibility that election fraud made a the difference last year. I have seen evidence of plenty of incompetence and an electoral system that deserves to be the laughing stock of the world. I lived in Costa Rica and even with their limited resources they avoided the clown show we witnessed of weeks of voting, ballots turning up weeks after election day, inability to perform basic clerical tasks such as reconciling records. However, I have not seen evidence of massive fraud as alleged. After yesterday, I think it’s time for Trump supporters to move on. He lost and if you are the great patriots claim to be, begin answering the question: Why did voters prefer Biden?
