Trump Admits It's Not Rigged

Former president only had to keep up the lie -- which he needs to steal the election -- for one more day

Nov. 5: Trump admits Harris can’t steal the vote … GOPers say they won’t let county officials delay certification … Call for Harris to pardon Trump … Rogan hilariously endorses Trump when it’s too late to matter …

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A few notes to get you through today…

One: It’s extremely unlikely anything gets decided today. Don’t think of it as Election Day. We may not know the outcome for days, given procedural and legal hurdles in vote-counting. If there is a blowout, you’re likely to enjoy it. Aside from the historic fuckedupitude of 2024 polling, there’s no indication that two-time popular-vote loser Donald Trump has a landslide in his pocket. 

All of which = much less reason to stress yourself out today. Breathe. Stretch. Walk away from the info-firehose. Definitely turn off the TV. Or watch Shoot ‘Em Up (Clive Owen plays Bugs Bunny). All the things that feel like they’re telling you what will happen aren’t reliable anyway.

Two: We are fucking here for you. TFN is doing an Election Night live chat right here. Not sure when we’ll officially kick it off, but we’ll set up the official thread by 5pm eastern time. That’s when the earliest exit polling — not about results but about turnout — will start coming out and the TV people (you know who I mean) will start pretending it means something.

Also, we’re spending the day compiling a fucking Election Day/Night/Late-Night/Early-Morning Guide for all you Newsfuckers to have on hand as we live-fuck this thing together. We’ll email it to you and then update the web version as you annoyingly well-informed Newsfuckers point out all the shit we missed or fucked up.

Okay? You got this. We got this. We got you. You got us. Goo-goo-ga-joob. Let’s do this.

Trump Admits It’s Not Rigged

Former Pres. Donald Trump at last night’s rally in Raleigh, NC, where he probably accidentally forgot not to say that the only thing that will cost him the election is a lack of votes. (Screengrab / RSBN video.)

The thing about impulse control is that it’s harder to maintain the less you practice it. And last night, the final night of his third presidential campaign, former Pres. Donald Trump made the biggest slip of all.

In a healthy, civically educated society, Trump obviously wouldn’t be a major-party nominee, let alone a front-runner. But in a country that believes crime is up when crime is not up, continues buying SUVs and factory-farming meat on a planet that’s coming to a boil, and that doesn’t realize it’s doing to immigrants the same bullshit that was done to their forebears, why wouldn’t a con man successfully gull half the country into thinking a dictator is just what’s needed in a country that’s prospered and weathered challenges for a quarter-millennium by being a democracy?

Trump had so much running well, and then in the campaign’s final days he blew so many things. He blew his gains with Latino voters by platforming a podcaster who called Puerto Rico garbage. He blew his own advantage on the economy by talking about other shit. Hell, he even blew his own microphone. Allegedly.

And then, last night, he blew the biggest thing of all: His best hope at stealing the election if he loses the vote. The only way he can motivate a thousand vote-counters and county clerks and state secretaries of state and fake electors and governors and members of Congress to steal the presidency for him is if he supplies them with the armor of the lie that Vice Pres. Kamala Harris stole it first.

And last night he set that armor on fire, like a man whose lack of impulse control is giving free reign to his internal self-hatred, his desire to be caught, to be punished.

Or, less armchair-psychologistly, Trump was trapped in the dilemma of needing to get out the vote now and simultaneously claiming votes don’t matter.

Because if it’s rigged, systemically, that means it doesn’t matter whether people vote. And last night, in Raleigh, NC, Trump said voting does matter. A lot.

Worse (for him), he said there’s nothing that can prevent a fair Trump victory.

Here’s the exact quote from his rally, which your newsfucking Fucking News hasn’t seen¹ anywhere else in the fucking news:

“It’s ours to lose. Does that make sense to you? It’s ours to lose. If we get everybody out and vote, there’s not a thing they can do.”

There! He admits it! There’s not a thing they can do…because it’s not rigged!

And Trump goes on. Or tries to. He says if he doesn’t get “everybody” out to vote, then Democrats will still have to win by…cheating? Nope!...by getting their voters out. Or at least it seems like that’s what he was saying. Harder to tell these days, right?

“And if we don’t [get out and vote], they [Democrats] have to get every person that ever signed anything in a horrendously dangerous party that’s just… [never finishes the thought but appears to have meant Democrats wll have to get out the vote].”

So bookmark that, Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty, because when Trump re-starts re-claiming it was re-rigged, America needs to see that Trump admitted there’s no systemic rigging. Granted, the lack of evidence ought to be sufficient for media not even to give his claims oxygen, but it’s not, because epistemology is hard!

So now we help.

The Real Cheaters

Confession time! TFN has been tilting its coverage the past week or so. Gasp.

People have been anxious to the point of jeopardizing mental health, so TFN has endeavored to share reasons to be hopeful. In fact, however, there are also reasons for dread. Fair and balanced!

It’s not because there’s some Donald Trump secret strategy or surefire indicators predicting a Trump victory. Just the opposite. It’s simply the abundance of uncertainty. That supply chain is doing just fine, thanks.

Today we’ll see the usual stuff. Long lines. Allegations of voter suppression. Officials turning away some voters. Rejected provisional ballots. Judges refusing to extend voting hours to accommodate voters who were on line to vote before the polls closed.

This all happens every election year. So be thou calm unto thyfuckingself, stalwart Newsfuckers! The TV will yell many a thing at you as if you’re supposed to pop a vein. Don’t reward them for it.

One piece of good news: We already know a lot about where the dangers lie. And remember, the danger is inversely proportionate to its potential impact. What I mean by that is that the greater the danger — e.g., the corruption of election officials — the greater the odds they’re fucking with votes somewhere where it won’t matter.

The states and districts where it could tip the vote are those where the vote is close, which means there’s Democrats in them thar hills. And that means lawyers. And that means fighting.

For instance, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington estimates that since 2020 more than 30 county officials in swing states — e.g., Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — have tried to steal elections by withholding vote certification. And there will, inevitably, be new aspiring criminals this time out.

But since 2020, Democrats have spent four years mobilizing to prepare legal defenses. And offenses. There will be legal fights, but remember, when Shakespeare wrote the words, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” that was dialogue for the bad guys.

And even Republican state officials are telling Politico that they won’t let county officials hold up certification of state totals. Courts, too, have girded states to resist unhinged county officials gumming up the works, issuing rulings on past attempts and even some preemptive rulings to safeguard 2024.

Okay, Back to Cherry-Picking Reasons for Hope

There’s a lot of reporting out there suggesting that Vice Pres. Kamala Harris’s campaign feels good about where they are. Former Pres. Donald Trump’s people, meanwhile, are stopping people on the street just in case they’re reporters and sharing their fears with them.

Now that could just be message discipline. Maybe Harris’s people have just as much reason to worry, but the presence of mind to lie put on a brave face.

Reportedly, Harris campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon last night briefed the media on “grassroots enthusiasm that we are seeing everywhere.” And Team Trump?

One Republican operative who’s worked with the campaign but may be pulling this out of his ass anyway told The Independent, “He’s realizing that he could lose the election, go to prison, and maybe die there.”

Imagine how bad the polling has to be for Trump to confront his own mortality?

The big, final, public polls (as opposed to internal campaign numbers) are showing a deadlock or breaking Harris’s way. The New York Times and NBC polls are calling it a toss-up. But then there was that jaw-dropping Iowa poll. And yesterday we got the final NPR/PBS/Marist poll.

Keeping in mind that polls are useless and don’t justify certainty about anything, let’s pretend they kinda do!

The Marist poll puts Harris up by four points nationally, which means shit because we still have states for some reason probably slavery. But here’s what it looks like because it feels nice looking at it:

One potentially but probably not significant data point here is that most likely voters — 55% — say they already voted. Harris got 56% of that 55%. Of those who haven’t voted, most back Trump, meaning Trump gets 53% of that 45% That = a Harris victory, if it’s accurate, which it probably isn’t.

But victory isn’t the point. The point is that Trump voters are already generally less likely to vote. Women vote more than men do, for instance. And Trump’s voter enthusiasm is not helped when on the day most of them plan to vote they’re waking up to newspapers notifications saying that Trump thinks he’s gonna lose.

Some more Marist highlights:

• Non-white voters – Harris 63%, Trump 34%

• White voters – Trump 54%, Harris 45%

• Gen Z – Harris 56%, Trump 44%

• Millennials – Harris 56%, Trump 44%

• Gen X – Trump 51%, Harris 48%

• Baby Boomers – Harris 55%, Trump 45%

• Really old people – Trump 53%, Harris 47%

• Women – Harris 55%, Trump 44%

• Men – Trump 51%, Harris 47%

Check those gender gaps. Harris’s support among women is actually softer than it was earlier in the race. But man she picked up men. Trump used to have a 16-point brovantage. Harris has whittled that down to four.

Now, at this point your otherwise hygienic TFN feels like it’s covered in a patina of snail goo from talking about polls this much.

So why is TFN doing it? Selling out, obvi! In a flood one swims. Your TFN has steadfastly — dare we say courageously — resisted the tide this election season, mostly neglecting daily poll obsessions to focus instead on climate policy, Gaza, poverty, financial regulation, and so on.

Today, alas, there’s no point. Nothing to do but put on the flippers and mask. Perhaps someday we’ll have a fucking Newsfucking media empire capable of counterprogramming. (As a former TV news producer I have entertained and come thisclose to executing multiple visions for a different kind of Election Day coverage!)

But we’re not there yet and all you ravenous feral newsfuckers are howling for red meat in the form of data. So now you have it, and we’ll have plenty more today in the live chat. Mangia!

Democracy Turns Out to Involve More than Just the Presidency!

For decades now — think World War II — Democrats have been steadily unbalancing America’s checks and balances by helping Republicans shift power from Congress to the executive branch.

It’s an inequitable power imbalance that’s further fucked by the imbalance between how presidents use power. Republican presidents use the power Democrats give them to its maximum. Democratic presidents do not, eager instead to win gold stars and head pats from Teacher and Jesus, mistaking compromise for the goal, rather than an outcome you reluctantly accept after fighting like fuck not to.

That said, Congress can still be a check on presidential power. But, terrifyingly, we’re in a position where Democrats could fail to take back the House and lose control of the Senate.

A rePresident Donald Trump could have a Congress that’s not only compliant but indebted to him for their power, and unlikely to keep the filibuster around if Senate Democrats actually stand up to the worst Trumpian excesses or young Trump Supreme Court nominees like Tony Hinchcliffe.

And the fate of Congress is just as maddeningly up in the air for the prognosticators as the presidency is. (See Politico’s reporting on how all the people whose job it is to know do not.)

The fate of the Senate lies with a big number of races, including some expected Republican pickups (we’ll dive into some of the intriguing details with a little more, um, detail, in today’s coming Fucking News Fucking Election Guide). That said, some Democrats are sharing dreams of picking up Florida or Texas in hushed whispers to their favorite plushies.

The House, weirdly enough, may very well be decided by two of the unswingiest swing states: Those coastal oases of sanity, California and New York. Both states have enough close-fought House districts to determine whether House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) goes back to just worshiping Jesus instead of letting Him run the lower ring of Hell chamber.

What If It’s a Harris Landslide?

If Vice Pres. Kamala Harris wins the White House in a landslide, the most important thing is to govern with a spirit of compromise and inclusion of all perspectives, appointing Republicans to crucial posts – including the cabinet – and meeting them halfway on all major policy decisions.

In fact — and as Americans should let President-elect Harris know — compromise is undemocratic. It robs the landsliders of their vote and hands it to the tiny, dying minority. And it robs the majority of their voice even more effectively than if Donald Trump just stole it because in this scenario the media will applaud it.

But, sure enough, the right is already out there selling weakness to Democrats, compulsive shoppers of weakness.

Yesterday, British MP Nigel Farage — whose brilliance includes such masterstrokes as Brexit — floated a trial balloon that needs shooting down faster than an “errant weather balloon” from China.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Farage actually said with his farace that if Harris wins she should pardon former Trump, presumably for his past conviction and coming ones:

“If she gets in on Tuesday I hope she pardons him. She could look magnanimous and it would dampen down potential tensions.”

Let it be heard from the green hilltops of North Carolina to the golden valleys of Arizona: There shall be no pardon. For one thing, presidents can only pardon federal convicts. But conceptually it stinks from both head and feet.

Pardoning Richard Nixon was ruinous for the nation and that shit was fertilizer for the rise of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

Pres. Ronald Reagan got away with drug-dealing and selling weapons to the Iranian regime that had just held Americans hostage in their own embassy for a year. 

Pres. George W. Bush sent the U.S. military to invade a country because he was afraid of it at best and to auction off its oil at worst. He also kidnaped and tortured people and literally hated the Constitution so much that he created a tropical resort where America could escape it.

And then Bush and his accomplices weren’t prosecuted except in other countries. Do ya know which advanced civilization had the fortitude and integrity to convict Bush? Kuala fucking Lumpur.

To the credit of Pres. Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland and other prosecutors in New York and Georgia, things have changed. Democrats impeached Trump twice — which took no small measure of guts. Despite the Supreme Court’s undemocratic upending of two centuries of no-one-is-above-the-law-ism, Trump is being criminally prosecuted. Has been criminally convicted.

So let’s get out there and nip this pardon bullshit in the fucking bud right fucking now because it’s exactly the kind of fucking thing a certain brand of please-don’t-hate-me Democrat just lurvs.

Farage, it’s worth noting, is a leading conservative voice on the global stage and also dumb. Y’know another word for “look[ing] magnanimous”? Politics.

Farage is literally suggesting that Harris politicize the justice system. But wait, there’s more dumb.

Pardoning is supposed to be a process. Processes involve things. In the case of pardons it involves serving your time. Admitting your crime. Atoning for it. When Trump’s checked off everything on the Justice Department’s pardon checklist — that you better fucking believe poor Black convicts are held to — then we can talk pardon. And still say no.

Because the supply chain for reasons not to pardon is also robust today, Newsfuckers!

Pardoning Trump would be a spit-covered slap in the face to every single prosecutor, legal aid, elected official, unelected official, security officer — every single person who stood on the front lines of our justice system to apply justice to the once-most-powerful man in the world. These people stood up against Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and virtually the entire Republican Party inciting violence against them — and you’re gonna tell me Harris should drop a hot squat on their sacrifice? You know The Fucking News just hates vulgarity but fuck you and that hard and sideways.

One more thing: Pardons don’t dampen tensions. Accountability dampens tensions. How many organized national efforts at violence have we seen since Jan. 6? Pretty sure even Farage can count to zero.

One Quickie

• Alleged bro-fluencer Joe Rogan last night announced he’s endorsing former Pres. Donald Trump for president. The night before Election Day. After a majority of likely voters have already cast their ballot. When it’s too late for the Trump campaign to get the word out about Rogan’s endorsement. Genius knows genius.

TCB

ELECTION DAY IS HERE Join your fellow Newsfuckers tonight as we fuck Election Night in the TFN live chat! We’ll provide information, perspective, and cursing to keep your calm on and counter the flood of rampant bullshit.

Bookmark the TFN live-chat link in your calendar because the only way to fuck the news is together.

IT’S NOT OVER TILL IT’S OVER EVER If you missed it, your ever-working TFN wrote last night about how we end the cycle of MAGA-victory/MAGA-governance/MAGA-loss. Spoiler: The answer is to stop treating Election Day like the Super Bowl and more like draft day. We pick our teams, but that doesn’t mean we leave the field.

Successful politics is like housecleaning. It’s routine maintenance of our democracy. That’s how we empower not just parties but the causes that matter, so that they — and we — get to pick the teams on Election Day. And we get to call the plays.²

If it sounds exhausting to think of politics as a never-ending fight that we engage in till we die, I get it. And the piece I wrote last night offers ways of thinking about it so it’s inspiring rather than depressing.

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TFN will be working all day and all night tonight to help get us all through the tensions of this rollercoaster day and your support would mean a lot along the way.

And we see all you Newsfuckers restacking your favorite TFNs! Thank you! Substack is really where TFN is thriving, but we’re also on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, and (still) Twitter. so we’ll see any newsfucking you’re sharing there, too. Thank you!

Go get ‘em, kids!

1. UPDATE: Every word Trump says publicly does get reported, so while I’ve seen the quote reported, I’ve yet to see anyone else note that he’s conceding Harris can win fairly.

2. These sports cliches are killing me.