Cowardly Trump official attacks reporter on Twitter after running away from his questions in real life
After being dutifully hounded for proof of the poorly-convincing allegations of voter fraud that he was disseminating for the Trump campaign in Nevada, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell took to Twitter to try to turn the tables on his journalistic interrogators with another wild accusation.
Grenell and other Trump campaign surrogates had been trying to peddle the woman in question’s claim that she was denied the opportunity to vote in person after a dispute with local election officials over whether she had already submitted a mail-in ballot as proof of widespread election fraud that should call into question the accuracy of the election results.
The local officials had examined the signature on the ballot the woman claimed that she had never sent in and determined that the signature was indeed a match for the one that they had on file.
Essentially their actions proved that the system in place to prevent voter fraud was working as it was intended to by denying a second vote to someone who had already cast their ballot.
One can imagine that the same woman would have been brought up to the podium if she had been allowed to vote a second time as an example of the illusory widespread number of illegal ballots.
For Grenell, his idea of what a journalist’s job should be seemingly consists of simply writing down and regurgitating whatever puerile pablum of lies and misinformation that the administration feeds them, accepted unquestioningly.
Grenell had earlier refused to even identify himself at a press conference unveiling a new lawsuit attempting to stop the ballot count in Nevada when asked his name by reporters and expressed his dismissive attitude towards the role of journalists in our society when he exclaimed “Listen, you’re here to take in information!”
The assembled press reportedly laughed in his face when he made that ignorant assertion about the nature of their roles.
After years of being subjected to — and dutifully reporting on — the partisan political propaganda that the Trump administration continually tried to shove down their throats without a shred of evidence for the president’s overblown assertions, reporters are at last becoming more aggressive in confronting GOP mouthpieces when they make clearly unsubstantiated claims about election fraud as the ballot counting comes down to the wire.
The Trump campaign — in a telling sign of how conspicuously they have blurred the lines between the supposedly non-partisan U.S. intelligence community and their efforts to ensure another term for the incumbent president — sent Grenell to Nevada to host a press conference to announce a lawsuit to stop the counting of what it calls “illegal votes” in the state.
Alleging that there are “tens of thousands” of people who voted in Nevada who no longer actually live in the state — a highly unlikely conjecture — the campaign claimed that it is not seeking to stop the vote but rather ensure that its own definitions of what does and does not constitute a “legal“ vote are followed by local election officials.
“We are confident that when all legal votes are tallied — and only legal votes are tallied — President Trump will win the state of Nevada,” Grenell told Fox News.
Grenell and his co-hosts of the press conference — former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, chairman of the American Conservative Union Matt Schlapp, and Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald — are trying to claim that Nevada election officials haven’t provided answers as to why they haven’t had a “check” on mail ballots, which the campaign alleges were sent to apartments where individuals no longer lived but were nonetheless subsequently filled out and cast, according to their desperate allegations.
“A source familiar with the lawsuit told Fox News that campaign officials have proof that people who have died have been found to have voted,” the cable news network reported, ignoring the fact that Republicans have actually sent a dead man to the state legislature in North Dakota, after he contracted COVID-19 and passed away in October after ballots were too late to be changed.
The same source also claimed that there has been “no observation for signature matches whatsoever” and said, in general, there have not been observers watching the counting — specifically in Clark County. “We have proof they are counting illegal votes,” the source said.
Rather than simply accept the assertions without proof — and in defiance of reporters’ own observations of the poll monitors from both parties during the ballot counting — MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff pursued Grenell after the press conference to confront him on the inconsistencies in his claims and to demand to see some proof of what the campaign was trying to sell to the American public.
Luckily, his encounter with the former acting intelligence chief was broadcast live as he intercepted and grilled Grenell while constantly peppering him with objective reality.
BREAKING: @jacobsoboroff demands evidence from Ric Grenell, Trump adviser and former acting director of national intelligence, to back up his assertions about votes in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/glaBjSHJk8
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 5, 2020
Add your name to states not to cave Trump. COUNT EVERY VOTE!
Bravo to Soboroff for countering the blatant partisan propaganda that the Trump surrogates were attempting to seamlessly peddle to the public.
If only the media could have done a more aggressive and convincing job of refuting the administration’s lies beginning four years ago, we wouldn’t be waiting breathlessly for the late tabulations from five states to figure out who actually won the election.
At least now they are finally stepping up to combat the libelous labeling of their investigative efforts as “fake news” and making a greater effort to call Trump’s lies out for what they are.
If only the 49% of Americans who believe that someone with Trump’s abysmal track record — in every aspect of his job — deserves a second term could be convinced.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by John Roberts and Brooke Singman at Fox News and by Jacob Soboroff at MSNBC.
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