Editor's Note: This column is co-authored by Loyd Pettegrow
Hillary Clinton counseled then-candidate Joe Biden not to concede, “no matter what!” That was before myriad video accounts, poll worker claims and sworn affidavits attesting to illegal and fraudulent conduct in the 2020 presidential election. The “never concede” wise advice to Joe Biden has since been considered unpatriotic, even seditious behavior for President Trump. Ah, Democrat hypocrisy!
When President Trump called for Georgia's officials to verify voter signatures and to make sure all voters were legal residents of the state, his request was denied. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger boldly stated, “truth matters." Does it really? That truth matters, is exactly the foundation of President Trump’s refusal to concede the election. President Reagan advocated the practice of “trust but verify." In the wake of a global pandemic and the most problematic election in the nation’s history, one can reasonably legitimize President Trump’s reluctance to trust, and certainly his persistent call to verify. After all, a federal commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter had warned of the potential dangers of wise-spread mail-in balloting.
To the mainstream media and the Democrats, President Trump had no right to challenge the veracity of the unorthodox 2020 election practices. Christopher Krebs, Deep State Director of the Cyber Security Agency – a department in Homeland Security, called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.” That was certainly a bold statement coming from a man who was at the helm when the largest security data breach of the federal government was reported on December 13, 2020, several months after it occurred. His credibility was certainly questionable!
Conrad Black opined that the Democrats only won by a whisker after recourse to questionable voting methods under cover of the pandemic, and with Joe Biden invoking the virus as his reason for staying at home while the rabidly partisan media campaigned for him. They lost ground in the Congress and the country. Instead of a blue tidal wave generated by Trump-hate, almost half the country believes, for the first time in American history, that they were cheated.
Because of the “go along, come along” attitude of many neo-cons, and a strong desire to get the taste of this election out of their mouths, President Trump has been widely criticized for continuing his challenge of the election. Even reliably conservative people like Heather Mac Donald noted, “The nadir of Donald Trump’s presidency occurred at 4.17 p.m. EST on Wednesday, hours after a pro-Trump mob had stormed the American Capitol.”
His last-ditch appeal on January 6th went badly and was used by his enemies in the mainstream media, Congress and his neo-con enemies as proof-positive of his unworthiness for office. The vast majority of the many thousands were at the Capitol merely to show their strong, but peaceful support for the president. A much smaller number, however, were intent on expressing their anger in the form of violence and trespass into the Capitol building despite the president’s clarion call for peaceful protest.
Actions by a small part of the pro-Trump crowd that day were wrong, despite them being significantly less destructive to life, personal property and business owner livelihoods than those across the many months during the “Summer of George Floyd”—with the thousands of acts of violence and property destruction committed by BLM and Antifa rioters. Somehow, our nation’s capitol became miraculously sacrosanct to the usual suspects (Dems, mainstream media, Big Tech, and the violent Left), whereas months earlier it was a symbol of racism and its statues were worthy of being demolished and Democrat congress creatures ignored it. None-the-less, all such actions are unlawful and morally wrong. What is now being lost in the condemnation of the January 6th violence is the truth of the 2020 election.
To the “go along, come along” crowd the issue has been settled resolutely. For those who believe that a totally transparent, honest, and fair election is essential to democracy and the freedom of the people, there are still many questions that must be answered before the 2022 election. Sadly, an honest and comprehensive forensic investigation of the 2020 election may never take place because the Deep State (DOJ, FBI, NSA) has turned a blind eye to the nefarious actions against Donald J. Trump and his voters. The same is true of Hunter Biden’s laptop data. Until such trustworthy investigations occur, there will be no trust, no verification; truth will appear not to matter.
To all those now claiming it is better to just “go along and come along” without such a rigorous forensic investigation, the thoughts of Sir Thomas Moore are appropriate before being beheaded. When Moore was asked by colleagues to endorse King Henry VIII’s unorthodox marriage to Anne Boleyn for the sake of fellowship, he responded, ”and when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me for fellowship?”
As Dennis Prager said in a recent Epoch Times video, “The parallels between what happened at the Reichstag and today are frighteningly accurate. The curtailing of free speech was the first thing the Nazis did… anywhere the Left occurs they suppress free speech and there’s a reason for that because they cannot withstand intellectual argument…they’re using January 6th as the reason to do so everywhere, there isn’t an exception.” The Democrats aided and abetted arrested protestors and rioters by establishing bail funds while the leftist prosecutors refused to charge the “summer of hate and violence” perps but are now prosecuting full-throttle MAGA demonstrators.
The Democrats’ Russiagate lies, as well as their encouragement, incitement, and tortuous “justifications” for Black Lives Matter and Antifa’s ongoing, “mostly peaceful” riots, were organized through Big Tech platforms. Their oligarchs then offered “grants” to state secretaries of state and local clerks if they would implement electoral “reforms” the Democrats have long wanted. In accepting these grants with strings and citing the pandemic as an excuse, arbitrarily and without the legal authority to adopt them, these Democratic-elected officials leased their offices to progressive bidders, thus undermined public confidence in the fairness of our elections perhaps in perpetuity.
Yes, January 6th did matter! It remains to be seen if the truth behind that day will ever be known, and just how much truth, if any, will matter in American politics in the future
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