- PoliticsThe New York Times
As Trump Rages, Voters in a Key County Move On: 'I'm Not Sweating It'
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. -- Even before the presidential transition was underway, Mike Carr had started to move on with his life.It is not as if much about U.S. politics had changed in the immediate aftermath of the election, he noted. President Donald Trump was still tweeting baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud in all caps; cable news panels were still debating the effect the frenzy of accusations would have on democracy.These were the kinds of things that, before the election, would have demanded Carr's full attention. For most of the president's term, Carr, a 53-year-old real estate lawyer, had been relentlessly attuned to the news cycle and the damage he felt that Trump had done to the country. But ever since Nov. 7, when the election was called for Joe Biden, Carr has given himself permission to keep the television on mute.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times"It's like a weight has been lifted," said Carr, who voted a straight Democratic ticket Nov. 3, as he did in 2016. "It's so nice not to be as plugged in."In Bucks County, a suburb of Philadelphia and one of Pennsylvania's most consistently competitive counties down ballot, ardent Biden supporters like Carr could be forgiven for not unplugging entirely. Their candidate may have won their state by 1.2 percentage points, their county by more than 4, but Trump and his legal team have continued to dispute the results, filing multiple lawsuits, losing multiple lawsuits and parroting unfounded allegations of fraud in the parking lot of a landscaping business not 45 minutes away.By trying to sow distrust in America's electoral infrastructure and egging on his advisers as they speak openly of a second term, Trump has confirmed some of his detractors' worst fears.Yet even in a state at the center of the president's attacks, in a county where preelection tensions ran high, many Biden supporters find themselves increasingly comfortable tuning out, moving on and looking forward to January.As in other counties across Pennsylvania and the country, Bucks County has seen a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks, with about 64 residents dying from the virus in November, the highest toll since the spring. For many voters here, worries about the virus, coupled with an overwhelming sense of Trump fatigue, have relegated the president to little more than a postelection footnote.Sure, these voters acknowledged, Trump may still hold the power of the presidency and may, in their estimation, have no qualms about abusing it. But when it comes to the results of the election, they have taken to viewing his message as more of a nuisance with a sell-by date than a lasting danger to democracy -- the rantings of a sore loser rather than the opening act of a coup by the leader of the free world."He's just a whiny kid who didn't get his way. I'm not sweating it," said Blake Lertzman, 39, while taking a smoke break outside his technology repair shop in the Bucks County seat of Doylestown. "Right now it's all about the virus. I worry about me and my girlfriend and my community."As for Trump's fervent efforts to overturn the election, "nobody cares," Lertzman went on, "unless you're the kind of person who goes on Newsmax."Doylestown, which has about 8,300 residents and is more than 90% white, leans further left than many other boroughs and townships in Bucks County. Nevertheless, many residents take pride in their region as an incubator of centrist politics, citing the county's record, for instance, of voting for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 while helping reelect Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican.Republicans and Democrats alike here recall Mike Fitzpatrick, the moderate Republican congressman who died of brain cancer this year, with fondness. And while many Democrats lament that his brother and successor, Brian Fitzpatrick -- a Republican who represents Pennsylvania's 1st District and just won reelection by 13 points -- voted against impeaching Trump, they will also note unprompted that Fitzpatrick was recently ranked by the Lugar Center, a nonprofit in Washington, as the most bipartisan member of the House."We generally produce candidates in both parties that are pretty moderate," said Ron Strouse, the mayor of Doylestown, a Democrat who describes himself as a "practical progressive." "The history of ticket-splitting certainly showed this year."Still, like a number of other self-consciously moderate locales across America, Bucks County was not insulated from the partisan and cultural crosscurrents that defined the presidential election. And as the county seat, Doylestown played host to their suburban Philadelphia iteration."Rallies, counterrallies, protests, demonstrations -- we've had more than 45 since the beginning of this year alone," Strouse said.In early September, hundreds gathered in the borough for dueling Black Lives Matter and "Back the Blue" demonstrations, the latter of which included a sea of Trump merchandise and a man reportedly shouting racial slurs and displaying a Nazi salute.In October, as part of a pro-Trump "road rally," more than 1,000 of the president's supporters clogged traffic for miles as they converged on Doylestown, where they were met by a counterdemonstration of Biden supporters.Local businesses boarding up in anticipation of summer protests, Trump supporters brandishing Confederate flags as they cruised down Main Street: Doylestown residents recited no shortage of ways their typically placid borough had seemed "tense" in the lead-up to the election.But in the weeks since, even as Trump has electrified much of his base with his false claims of fraud and his campaign's harried appeals via text to "chip in $10" to "STOP THE RADICAL Left from counting any ILLEGAL ballots," Doylestown has remained at a calm remove. Demonstrations by Trump and Biden supporters alike, once a near-constant presence across town, have ground to a halt."People are more willing to tune out the theater now," said Anthony Palazzolo, 30, who is a volunteer at the Doylestown Historical Society and a registered Republican who voted for Biden. "I've noticed it in small things, like people are less on their phones and interacting more on the sidewalks. People are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."According to Palazzolo and others, the growing sangfroid about Trump's conspiracy-mongering, even among the area's most ardent Democrats, is in part a credit to local party leadership, members of which were quick to present a unified front after the county's votes were tabulated -- offering Bucks County residents a bipartisan show of confidence in their own results even as the president tried to seed doubt and promote division across the state."Our county had a great election, and that's all I can say," said Pat Poprick, chair of the Bucks County Republican Committee. "I do not think there was any quote-unquote fraud here."Yet for all their fears of Trump, many Biden supporters here also expressed confidence that the country's democratic institutions and traditions were robust enough to withstand the president's attempts to subvert them -- if only for two more months.Larissa Hopwood, 41, a children's musician and teacher, was among Biden's most vocal supporters in Doylestown, taking the lead in organizing pro-Biden rallies to counteract the steady stream of Trump demonstrations.Hopwood said the stakes of the presidential election could not have felt higher, particularly because she is the mother of a gender-nonconforming child. The day after the election, she attended a "Protect the Results" rally in town. But armed with a confidence that, come Jan. 20, Biden will be president of the United States no matter how many lawsuits Trump files, she has found herself embracing a new sense of lightness, however incrementally."I didn't even realize it for awhile, but for a week after Biden won, I posted zero Instagrams," she said. "I think my mindset was, 'Let's just tune it out; we had our victory.'"Still, despite feeling perhaps a bit less compelled to post and engage daily with political content, she admitted being frustrated by how "puffy" her social feeds seemed shortly after the election -- posts about lighter topics like, say, "The Crown," or People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" cover.But any concerns about complacency among fellow progressives seemed to stem less from concerns over Trump's language and actions in this moment and more from a desire to maintain momentum heading into the Biden era. In other words, Hopwood said, she's not terribly worried that a presidential coup is afoot."There are government employees in charge of making this transition happen," she said. "I mean, we are still the United States."And ultimately, for Biden's supporters here, blocking out the president is all the easier when even the neighborhood's most outspoken Trump supporter seems to have moved on.Daniel Compain, 65, a Cuban American who fled Fidel Castro's regime as a child, beamed as he recalled how pedestrians would grimace as they passed the enormous Trump flag he'd hung outside the window of his apartment near Main Street.In an interview at a Starbucks nearby, he maintained that he would not accept the results of the election until the Electoral College officially voted in mid-December. He also had questions, he said, about whether Dominion voting machines had deleted ballots cast for Trump, echoing false claims made by the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.And yet when asked why he had decided to take his Trump flag down, Compain responded as if the answer were self-evident."Well, the election is over," he said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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Rudy Attempts to Shush Unhinged ‘Witness’ During Election Fraud Hearing
In yet another unhinged election fraud hearing on Wednesday night, Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani—who recently had hair dye leaking down his face during a press conference in which he quoted My Cousin Vinny—appeared to be so embarrassed by one of his witnesses that he tried to shush her.With Team Trump’s lawsuits and legal challenges repeatedly getting laughed out of court, the legal team’s latest gambit to keep President Donald Trump in the White House is to try to convince legislatures in states President-elect Joe Biden won to dismiss their states’ certifications and flip their electoral votes to Trump.After holding unofficial “hearings” in Arizona and Pennsylvania hotels, Giuliani and fellow Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis appeared in front of a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday. The hearing comes amid pressure from Trump and his Republican allies for the GOP-led state legislature to step in and give the state to the president, despite Biden’s 154,000-vote victory.One of the witnesses the Trump legal team presented on Wednesday night—the second day of hearings—was Mellissa Carone, who claims she worked as a contractor for Dominion Voting Systems.Despite struggling to coherently explain her job duties during her first day of testimony, Carone was brought back by the Trump team—and again had trouble articulating what exactly she did as a Dominion contractor. That, however, did not stop her from confidently insisting that she did indeed witness blatant and massive fraud when ballots were being counted.> Holy smokes the sequel is even better! > > Rudy Giuliani tries to shush her to calm her down and the Republican even tries to reel her in! > > She treats this Republican* like he’s a Chick-fil-A employee and the milkshake machine went down. > > *corrected pic.twitter.com/CK1HqGpp2d> > — Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) December 3, 2020Alleging that she witnessed poll workers running the same ballots through voting machines “thousands of times,” Carone—noticeably slurring— took issue when a state representative said that she should be “under oath” during her testimony."I have an affidavit!" Carone exclaimed. “I am a mother, I have two children, I have two degrees. I don’t know any woman in the world that would write an affidavit under oath just to write it. You can go to prison for this!”The affidavit Carone is referencing was included last month in a Michigan lawsuit that sought to stop the election certification of Wayne County. The request was denied by the judge, who deemed her allegations as “simply not credible.”At one point, during an exchange with GOP Rep. Steve Johnson, Carone grew animated and began yelling when the lawmaker questioned how her claim that a batch of 30,000 votes counted multiple times wouldn’t be reflected in the poll book.“We’re not seeing the poll book off by 30,000 votes,” Johnson said.“What’d you guys do, take it and do something crazy to it?” Carone fired back, dramatically raising both of her eyebrows.“I’m just saying the numbers are not off by 30,000 votes,” Johnson calmly replied.“I’d say that poll book is off by over 100,000 [votes],” she declared with an air of complete confidence. Then she started lecturing the lawmaker, telling him there were “zero registered voters” in the county’s poll book.When Johnson tried once more to ask her about her outlandish claims, Carone loudly wondered about the turnout rate being “120 percent,” prompting Giuliani to reach over to calm her down, all while audibly “shushing” her.Needless to say, the rest of Carone’s testimony was just as fact-free, unhinged, and jaw-dropping. And she continued to deliver it with an amazing amount of self-confidence.Giuliani, meanwhile, made a point to note during the hearing that he had just met Carone that day and had first spoken to her on Tuesday.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.












