MSNBC cut away from El Caudillo Del Mar-a-Lago after 15 seconds. I timed it. It was right after he began his remarks with a profoundly dishonest assertion:
If you count the legal votes, I easily win.
I think cutting away was a mistake. The audience needed to see the whole thing so we could all have a good look at the nature of the ongoing threat. From the White House, the President* of the United States attempted to convince the country—and probably did convince a good piece of it—that the ongoing national election is a sham and a fraud, as well as sending out unmistakable signals to his more rabid followers to take direct action to stop the rigged election. It was the most amazing performance by an American president since Jack Nicholson's in Mars Attacks. It also was the reflexive lashing out of a very dangerous man.
This is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election. We can't let that happen. Detroit and Philadelphia, known as two of the most corrupt political places in our country, cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of the presidential race. In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state supreme court to try to ban our election observers very strongly. We won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots. And I can't imagine why. There is no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process. Because if it's straight, they should be proud of it. Instead, they are trying obviously to commit fraud. There's no question about that. In Philadelphia, observers are kept far away, very far away. So far, that people are using binoculars. There's been tremendous problems caused, paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and have become somewhat violent.
State officials around the country already have armed bodyguards. The people counting the votes, volunteers most of them, are escorted to their cars every night. And from a podium in the Executive Mansion, the President* of the United States dropped a bullseye on all of them, people he doesn't even know, and about whom he couldn't care less. They are going to come out of this mess as heroes, because they're standing up against the mob, unlike the Palm Beach and Miami-Dade election boards 20 years ago. Because the threat is ongoing. He will bring the temple down on his own head if he's given the opportunity. The whole country should have watched, and learned, and been preparing.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
