TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2993. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
View in browser
NL-Header_DD-Premium2
January 29, 2026
Donald Trump recently told a group of New York Times reporters that he “should have” used the military in 2020 “to seize election boxes.” Yesterday, he made up for that earlier regret.
Around midday, the Department of Justice raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election office and seized ballots and other materials related to that election. The raid followed a failed attempt to have a federal judge order the materials turned over as part of a civil case.
None of this is a coincidence. It is a strategic effort to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 election. Never mind that Georgia conducted two full recounts — one by machine and another by hand.
Forget the fact that Trump and his allies filed, and lost, eight cases aimed at throwing out the results. In Trump’s mind, the facts are irrelevant. He is only concerned with his false narrative that he was the victim in 2020.
It would be easy to dismiss this as just another example of Trump’s deranged obsession with 2020. But I fear it is far more serious than that.
At a minimum, it represents a further weaponization of the DOJ against his political enemies. The government obtained a search warrant listing specific federal crimes that a partisan U.S. attorney in Missouri is apparently investigating.
We don’t yet know who the target of the investigation is, but we can expect it will be aimed at inflicting maximum damage.
Nor is there any doubt about Trump’s involvement in this effort to bolster his election denialism. Last week in Davos, he pointed directly to what he was doing:
“The 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”
He was right: Trump’s false and dangerous remarks should have been breaking news, but the legacy media failed to treat them as such. Nor were they particularly alarmed by yesterday’s search warrant.
I expected banner headlines. I assumed this would top the evening news. I watched for a flood of statements of condemnation from across the political and civil landscape.
None of those things happened. Yes, there was some press coverage. It was mentioned on cable TV. And a handful of politicians — all Democrats — denounced it. But outside of Georgia and a narrow band of democracy advocates, it was largely treated as just another current in Donald Trump’s strategy to flood the zone.
This has me deeply worried. I am left asking whether we have simply stopped caring enough about the truth to bother pushing back against Trump’s constant election lies. Has Trump worn so many people down that there just isn’t the energy to muster the necessary level of outrage and concern?
Most importantly, I am concerned about what this means for free and fair elections in 2026.
Marc Elias
First we get rid of the fascist. Then we make new rules to keep guys like him out.
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2993. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
TheOldGuy's choices:
