Trump announces extortion of pandemic aid to MI and NV, unless they do a favor for his campaign
Absentee voting, which Trump and his family utilize every year, is critical during a pandemic. However, Trump just told the states of Nevada and Michigan that he is perfectly fine with thousands suffering and dying from the coronavirus because he plans to deliberately withhold needed aid to any state that expands absentee voting during this unprecedented crisis. He has previously stated that anything that helps more people to vote will be detrimental to Republicans winning elections—which isn’t necessarily true, but the truth has never stopped him before.
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) May 20, 2020
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First of all, this isn’t just garden variety ignorance and stupidity, which is how the media is treating this. Oh, just another wacky Trump tweet. No big deal. But, no…
This is extortion. This is targeting American citizens to die if the state doesn’t comply with Trump’s bizarre demands.
Of course, Joe would never, ever do such a thing; but just try to imagine if Joe Biden told Florida, which has a GOP trifecta, that they would get no aid with a hurricane unless they allowed same-day registration and mailed absentee voting applications to every citizen. Do you think Fox News might have a problem with that? Don’t you think our Republican senators might be screaming to high heaven? Wouldn’t that be a …. scandal?
More importantly, I guarantee that Democrats would be up in arms about it. They would all say this just isn’t who we are. We don’t punish red states with leaders we don’t like by hurting or killing their citizens. President Biden would be rebuked by every Democrat in Congress if he pulled such a stunt.
But Republicans and Trump? Nothing.
Nothing from Nevada’s or Michigan’s GOP.
Nothing from Nevada’s GOP Congressperson.
Nothing from ANY GOP representative or senator in Congress.
Not even “concern” from Susan Collins, who gave up even the pretense of having a shred of decency.
Sadly, our own Democratic leadership has gotten so accustomed to Trump’s descent into madness that this doesn’t register anymore as news, but this is a huge deal. I would expect at least one damn tweet from Pelosi or Schumer. Granted, they have their hands full dealing with Trump firing watchdogs left and right and self-dealing millions in relief for his own interests, but this is something that shouldn’t be ignored.
The good news is that even if the leaders in Washington aren’t taking notice, you can damn sure know that the people are.
The Wisconsin GOP literally congratulated themselves when conservatives on the Supreme Court ruling to force Wisconsinites to put their lives at risk to vote. Conservatives across the country celebrated—until the election results came in. Up till that point, Trump was polling ahead in Wisconsin, and the re-election of several GOP judges seemed like a sure thing.
But Wisconsinites were so pissed off that they were forced to put their lives in danger and stand in line for hours to vote at a handful of polling places, that the GOP lost every single important election. Furthermore, several polls since then puts Wisconsin in the Biden column.
Nevada and Michigan are critical swing states, and Trump’s antics have virtually guaranteed that they will be in Biden’s column, along with several other Democratic races. Trump is doing a spectacular job of pissing off the people he needs the most, but considering he’s been willing to kill off his own base, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.
That being said, this is a scandal that is too big to ignore. We simply can’t have our chief executive feel so blatantly comfortable to openly threaten state with emergency aid during a crisis in exchange for his personal ideological agenda.
Unfortunately, the Democrats don’t do outrage as well as the GOP. The Republicans have built an entire machine just to gin up outrage in their base. Once a scandal is concocted, they give it to Fox News to feature, which they promptly do. Then radio call-in hosts are told about it so they can scream to their listeners, and every GOP legislator is given talking points to parrot. At this point, the fanatics and Russian trolls descend on social media. Hashtags and facebook pages go up, and rallies of unhealthy, jobless people are deployed—which the media always breathlessly covers.
The Democrats have nothing like this. Look at all the so-called MSM “liberal” sites, and you will see hardly a mention. Democrats are all over the map on all the scandals, because Trump and the modern GOP gives us so much to be outraged about everyday that it all becomes background noise.
Yet this is something that cannot be ignored, and cannot stand. This is a direct assault on American citizens. The bastard-in-chief sent ventilators, that we paid for, to RUSSIA for Putin! Yet now says that he is okay with Americans dying without them because he hates the governor of a particular state. This should be the last straw.
There needs to be consequences and reform to ensure this never, ever happens again. The Democrats, when they sweep next election, need to put protections in place to prevent a more competent tyrant from ruining our government, and they need to go after every complicit official who allowed this treason to happen. For now, at the very least, Democrats need to do a better job calling this behavior out and shaming the Republicans for staying silent—especially the ones in the states he is attacking.
