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Visit Dr. Naomi Wolf’s Substack.com.
I am in a deep blue small town in a deep blue state, here on the West Coast.
The natives are jubilant today.
“Happy Indictment Day!” shouted the neighbor of my host, as my host and I sat out on a balcony. The neighbor was emerging from a car, three stories below us. The building must have contained thirty apartments. The man was certain that everyone who was in earshot of his joyous shout, agreed with his sentiments.
He witnessed my silence. “Don’t you agree?” he goaded me, a near-stranger, still shouting. “Don’t you?”
Finally I responded, “I am not sure that this sets a great precedent. Every sitting President in the future will try to indict his or her political opponent.” He cut off the discussion — a reaction, from the Left, to which I am getting accustomed — and headed inside.
Earlier, at lunch, an otherwise lovely lady had celebrated the possible-near-incarceration of “that criminal.” Again, she assumed that everyone present shared her view of the events of the day.
I am experiencing considerable inner turmoil at the spectacle of President Trump’s indictment, as well as at the almost animalistic glee that this spectacle has triggered in the solid bloc of Democrats that currently surround me.
I am extraordinarily sad — at the thickheaded ignorance of history that those who are celebrating tonight, reveal; and at what has become of our country.
Don’t people understand — much as they may hate this fellow — that this is exactly what coup leaders in every banana republic, do? Seek to imprison their political opponents?
Especially while the political opponents are on the campaign trail?
Another reason for my discomfort and misery is that I have a horribly guilty conscience, because of what I experienced two decades ago and what I know — things that not that many people have experienced or know. These memories bear directly on current events.
The indictment of President Trump is for the crime of “election denialism”, among other alleged crimes. It’s a thought crime.
It is quite odd that many major news articles have links when the word “indictment’ is mentioned, but these links take the reader to other news articles, and do not link to the actual indictment. DailyClout.io, in contrast, published the indictment. The first few paragraphs make your head explode, as they directly contradict — themselves:
“1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.
2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.
3). The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.”
So — you are allowed to challenge the vote, and you are allowed to say what you want about the vote count, because of the First Amendment, but in fact you are not allowed to challenge the vote count, and you can’t say aloud why you are seeking to challenge the vote count?
Other news stories, understandably, do not link to this word salad.
It’s odd, for instance, that Reuters itself presented what is in the indictment, as late as Aug 1, as hearsay, and simply paraphrased it:
“Based on the descriptions, they appear to include Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who called state lawmakers in the weeks following the 2020 election to pressure them not to certify their states’ results; former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who tried to get himself installed as attorney general so he could launch voter fraud investigations in Georgia and other swing states; and attorney John Eastman, who advanced the erroneous legal theory that Pence could block the electoral certification.”
It seems that people around President Trump tried to pause the certification process until the votes could be fully verified. It seemed that his lawyers tried a legal theory to delay certification.
Hasn’t a version of all of that happened before in our nation’s history?
Is that not what is supposed to happen when there are charges of problems with the vote? Is that not what we are tasked with doing? Calling a halt and stopping the process until every vote is recounted and verified?
I am having relentless flashbacks to where I was and what I was doing in late 2000, when I was a campaign consultant for Vice President Gore’s campaign for the Presidency.
As I’ve written elsewhere — and as I am trying desperately to remind everyone who will now listen, on every podcast that will have me — I was advising from a distance, and looped in, intermittently, to discussions within the campaign that were both public and private, about exactly the same issues that are now apparently criminal offenses even to entertain, let alone to mention in actual words.
So were almost all of the lawyers, campaign consultants, advisors and staffers of Gore 2000. So was the candidate himself, visibly.
So were almost all of the lawyers, campaign consultants, advisors, and staffers — and visibly, the candidate himself — on the other side.
The Gore campaign denied the claimed outcome of the election. The Bush campaign denied the claimed outcome of the election.
Both campaigns, both candidates, denied it up and down; they denied it on podiums, in front of crowds, on television interviews. They denied it in soundbites that sought to prejudice popular opinion — such as the brilliantly juvenile epithet via Team Bush, coined while it was still November, “Sore Loserman” for “Gore/Lieberman.” They both denied it via flotillas of highly compensated attorneys, gathering on both sides to spin and to find “legal theories”, legal loopholes. The Bush team denied it by sending an awkward, suburban version of Blackshirts — guys in Oxford shirts and khaki pants, the “Brooks Brothers Riot” — to create a noisy, menacing crowd outside the Miami room where the critical Florida votes were being recounted.
The Bush team astutely denied the claimed election results by inventing the phrase “hanging chad,” and then by popularizing it, to suggest that there was massive ambiguity in the casting of the vote, due to the reality of some unreadable, imperfectly punched paper ballots. The Gore team, for their part, denied the claimed outcome by seeking at one point to count only those counties in Florida that were most supportive of Vice President Gore. Both candidates denied the claimed outcome of the election, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Both stopped the process until every vote could be checked and rechecked.
Every conversation, public and private, for both campaigns, for both candidates, from the 35 days from the close of Election Day to Dec 12, 2000, the date of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v Gore, was about denying the claimed results of the election.
The drilling down — the need of the country to understand who actually won — went all the way to the level of a consortium of newspapers eventually recounting 175,000 “undervotes” and “overvotes”; and the margins of victory that they found, depending on how you are counting, were as narrow as triple digits.
And yet today, you are a criminal if you ask for everything — for anything — to pause so you can review reported voting irregularities in the tally of the race?
Why did the two sides fight so hard in 2000? Why did they battle for 35 days after the polls closed? Why go all the way to the highest court in the land?
Why?
Because that is how our system is supposed to work.
Today, based on the premise of President Trump’s indictment, all of those discussions, strategy sessions, consultations with attorneys, meetings with campaign staff, memos, emails, faxes, all of that litigation — would expose the candidates, and their campaign staffers, and their advisors, and their lawyers — to criminal charges.
Think for a moment, I beg you, about what President Trump’s indictment, for the thought crime of resisting — just as both Vice President Gore and George Bush Jr did 20 years ago — the pat, early declarations of CNN and Fox and The New York Times about who won the Presidential race, will do to the future of our nation.
In every future election, if both candidates, and all of their staffers, advisors and lawyers, do not immediately yield to the declarations of the official outlets — if they both don’t cave right away to early calls by CNN or The Washington Post or MSNBC regarding what the Powers That Be have decided for us in relation to whom our Dear Leader is to be — then they will face possible prison terms.
Why even have elections in the future, if this is the precedent that is now being set?
And there you have the answer. This kangaroo court, this 1930s-era show trial, is not about President Trump, though he is a convenient outsider to use as the much-hated exemplar for what The Powers That Be have decided needs to be done.
It is, as President Trump often reminds us, not about him; it is about us.
It is about setting a precedent that ends the right of the American people to ask any questions, in the future, about their election results.
Which is exactly how coups operate, once the coup leaders are in power.
In banana republics, they still hold elections.
You just don’t get to question who you are told the winners are.
So no, here in this beautiful deep blue state, in this mellow, sage-smelling, Western evening air, though people around me are festive and gleeful, I am not celebrating.
It is not President Trump’s funeral dirge, that I am hearing.
It is our Republic’s own.
Good description of the mentality of Democrats on the West Coast. They seem to be thoroughly brainwashed by MSM propaganda. They don’t seem to think critically about the propaganda, just internalize it like mother’s milk.
The deep state government officials took three years to come up with the that contradictory indictment.
Naw, they just had to wait until Trump was in an election campaign with which they could interfere.
It’s not just on the west coast. It is exactly the same where I live in the very Left Montgomery County, Maryland. The people with the “Hate has no Home Here” lawn signs are just filled with hatred. And, typically, what they know about any issue would fit on a bumper sticker.
Exactly. Thanks Kasandra!!!
I know many East Coast Democrats, intelligent ones, who also seem brainwashed by MSM propaganda. There’s no rational explanation for it that I can find. The best I can come up with is they live in a parallel universe.
“Don’t people understand — much as they may hate this fellow — that this is exactly what coup leaders in every banana republic, do? Seek to imprison their political opponents?”
No in a nutshell.
Every single person who is questioning the validity of the election is also questioning the safety of the vaccines. The deep state knows exactly who every single one of you are. If Trump calls you to provide evidence in court, you will be discredited as a conspiracy theorist.
I’m so shocked by what I just read. I’m always intimidated by legalese
but the first three paragraphs in the indictment are clear as a bell.
And they do contradict themselves! How would any American lawyer
anywhere not be embarrassed to present such confusion to a court of
law?
No wonder the Communist mainstream media is not printing the
indictment!
I was born free and don’t know if I’ll die free. Maybe that’s why –
although I know they’ve been railroading President Trump – I am
just amazed at the Commies’ arrogance.
The author of this article is now lamenting the behavior of the Left.
An organization that she prayed too every night since she became a member of this
Temple of the Devil now known as the Democrat party.
It’s to late Doctor Naomi your participation is no longer needed your Usefulness has expired.
David Horowitz was also on the left and learned from his experience. So did Naomi apparently, give her a break.
The list of those on the left with similar epiphanies is growing longer. Like those who escaped totalitarian regimes, they are empathetic in their warnings about the fate of our nation given its current path. Leo Terrell and Dave Rubin as examples.
If we can’r welcome political penitents, how do we ever win?
Sorry Joe, but being late to the cause does not make her evil.
Democ-rat voters will console themselves in the devil’s flaming Hell by mumbling over and over: “At least he ain’t Trump.”
There is a theory that every soul creates his/her own specialised hell.
If that’s true, then then the dhimmicrats will indeed be seeing President Trump everywhere!
Great comment Greg and sadly very true as they are so full of hatred.
What 2000 & 2020 both have in common, is that both had flaming democrats trying to undermine & steal an election – both times with the loyal aid & support of the press
The difference is that Sleaze-bag Biden’s handlers succeeded where Al Gore did not.
Norm Coleman had his Senate seat stolen because it was more important to that squish to be seen as “fair” to the press. (That can only happen if you give a concession speech.)
Dino Rossi had his Washington governorship stolen in 2004 by Christine Gregoire
It used to be the DNC would pursue endless recounts until they “found” enough votes to win.
Now, they stuff drop-boxes with fake votes in battleground states until they win on election month – no need for official recounts.
Bush43 seems to have forgotten the systematic “win by any means” the DNC has for stealing elections.
With all the in-our-face rigging beforehand, Bush chose to see no fraud, & did no research to find any.
We had his back in 2000; he turned his back on us in 2020, because he was still pissy about poor Jeb not getting “his turn” in the Oval Office.
Coleman’s seat was definitely stollen. Miraculously Franken’s team kept finding more ballots in the oddest of places. Theres no scruples in the Democrat party anymore, or the Uni-party for that matter.
I hope people understand, if the candidate is America First, the globalist One world seekers will not support them. Each Time an innocent man, Trump is indicted, he gains more support because people want fairness, the truth, and a lawful society. Most people are not onboard with Socialism and Communism, and total government control of freedoms.
We simply must peacefully go our own ways. We don’t inhabit the same universe any more. Thought leaders on both sides should be full-time at work on this as a way to avoid what is inevitably coming, should we not separate ourselves.
“Indictment Day” gets celebrated by the willfully ignorant, like the man described above and like the protestor in DC who carried the placard demanding “Death to the Traitor” last Thursday. How will it all end?
Naomi Wolf reminds one of a dim past where liberals were liberals, not the Marxist hacks they’ve become.
“Thick headed ignorance of history “ says it all about the left.. When it is finally their ox being gored they may wise up like Naomi. But thinking about those who still support Biden and voted in Fetterman and get their information from CNN and the New York Times. I sincerely doubt it. And they have the gall to call us conservatives mind numbed cultists. Lord forgive me, but sometimes it’s tough to love our fellow man. Particularly when they are out to destroy us.
Those Blue Slates run by the Democ-Rats and running into the ground with stupid laws and regulations that lead to total nothing
I woke up many years ago to the death of Truth in this country. I was in an upscale bar/lunch place in a prestigious office complex. The bar was full of managerial class men. The O.J. Simpson verdict came over the TV and everyone was shocked. There were about a half dozen black men in the bar of the same suited class who cheered and high-fived one another etc.
We whites looked at them with a sudden feeling of you are not us.
….and who would the systemic racist be?
What an opportune time to admire and reinstate a historic French practice that was honed to a fine edge during the French Revolution; we the rabid Democrats could celebrate Kathy Griffin and her legendary picture.
Just think of the full-on blow-out rage of these folk should Donald Trump actually return to the White House.
I mentioned this to my resident leftist and that this continued raging against him just might be fuel for his return – and no – my resident leftist was quite unable to hear that. We in this country are on the road to something quite horrible, and much of it will come from the left.
I was for McGovern in 1972 and Reagan in 1980. It’s called maturation.
Please stop the “communists” labeling. These people are “monarchists”. They have not the desire to be citizens, they assume their “leader” will put them first. Our Founding documents could set the ideas down but could not make some individuals abandon their belief in “a glorious leader” proven by their popularity. A smart guy once noted, after living under a regime that could do as he described; Any Government sufficiently strong enough to give you everything you want must therefore be sufficiently strong enough to take every thing you have. Government has no monies save what it receives/takes from the governed. This reality usually sinks in when individuality is ended. History shows that the governmental suppression of individuality has never been overturned without the shedding of blood through self sacrifice by the individual.
Every 2016 Trump rally we always heard chants from the crowd “Lock her up.” Nothing that bold directly from Trump in fact he seemed somewhat embarrassed by those chants against Hillary. What did Trump do after he got elected? He didn’t “lock her up.” He got to work to MAGA and was Mr. Nice Guy even though there were far more bona fide crimes that Hillary was guilty of— much more then we knew at the time. Under Trump the DOJ and FBI were independent…much to his dismay because they even came after him. In spite of his appointments of AGs, head of FBI and DNI they were total disappointments and either undermined him, covered up for the Democrat crimes or they ignored the massive fraud going on under their noses. Ratcliffe in particular apparently “saw nothin'” concerning the blatant 2020 Election fraud; in fact he gave a press conference in Oct. 2020 giving his seal of approval that the Election was completely “secure!!” He knew the Hunter laptop was not Russian disinformation but couldn’t seem to manage a major slap down of the notorious phony letter from the 51 ex-Intel agents who said that it was Russian disinfo. Ratcliffe even said later that it was “1 against 51!!!” Ratcliffe was also oblivious to all the FBI colluding with social media to censor conservatives.
Republicans just aren’t good at taking charge even when they are in charge. They’re weaklings; Democrats are far more ruthless and vicious. The Democrat FascistCommie dictators believe in survival the fittest. Conservatives believe in Constitutional fair play and are totally naïve.
Trump has to get tough when elected.
After all of this, do you still think Trump will get reelected? I think his plane will crash or his boat will sink first. That’s the way these people do things. If you can’t destroy him politically, just destroy him.
The unproportional, irrational hatred shown to Trump is staggering and stunning. It’s as if somehow so many of the left breathed an air contagion that corrupted all their thinking all at once. Simple biology is dissed, logic is dissed, mathematics is racist, physics is racist, reason is racist. The breadth and depth of this illness makes it seem impossible to heal in time to be corrected on November of 2024.
El Salvador president, Nayib Bukele, commented on the rapid decline of America. He also used measures to correct the staggering crime in that country. Notably, the American media criticized him for it in the same manner Venezuela’s Maduro criticized him. One could conclude, therefore, that the American media and Maduro have the same values on crippling crime. For sure, the American media carries a huge portion of the reason the left has become so widespread here. China was perspicacious a few years ago to deny big tech free access to that nation. Big tech has done nearly irreparable harm here. Foolish thugs.
Naomi, as I have listened to you on The Warroom discussing the Covid virus and especially the vaccines, you have become much beloved, by me, for your clear headed thought. Today, you have once again succeeded in cutting through the fog of the crowd, and getting down to the heart of the matter. I had a preacher friend close to forty years ago comment, that Democrats and Republicans just gave he boys down at the barbershop something to talk about because the actual selection was at a much higher level than that. I’m not sure he was right in his actual reasoning, but in overall sentiment he was on the mark.
We must reclaim our nation from the Deep State and the Globalists. If more people with your political background could just open their eyes, be more skeptical of what they’re told, we might have a chance. Keep on writing and keep on speaking out..
May God bless you!!!!
I have to give Dr. Naomi Wolf and RFKjr. credit and thanks for their mission to save humanity from destruction. They have pursued investigative honest measures to inform the public medically, and with (facts that don’t lie. and are proven.) We don’t have a media that is for humanity, we have a few good journalists and reporters, some on FPM, but the media is mainly on the dark side. Society became fear-based two years ago with the pandemic, which opened the door for government overreach and dependence on government. America and Capitalism must be taken down for a new world order to rise.
Excellent article! Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” – “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” We have not changed one bit. Indeed, this phenomenon has always been operating beneath the surface; just waiting for the right set of circumstances to bring it to the surface again. Events of recent years have made this very apparent. Erich Fromm, “Escape From Freedom” – “When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power…or such a yearning for [the] submission [of the population].” Covid was a clear indicator this; with many people being all too willing to forfeit their Constitutional and God-given rights of personal autonomy and of being self-reliant individuals who are responsible for their own lives; all for a false sense of being “safe.” The subconscious wish to be a slave still churns in the subconscious of many.. We have learned nothing. It is a mistake to assume that the masses would read educated, credible, sane writers of history.