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Mike Lindell’s ‘Thanks-A-Thon’ expert admits voting machines aren’t actually connected to the internet
November 25, 2021
According to Mike Lindell, Thanksgiving was supposed to be the day that former President Donald Trump was brought back into the White House. The Supreme Court was supposed to usher Trump in based on the lawsuit that Lindell filed. It was going to be the most explosive revelation ever. It hasn't worked out that way.
Lindell revealed his lawsuit this week ahead of the holiday but didn't even name a plaintiff to sue the states he took issue with. He claimed that no attorneys general in the United States wanted to work with him. The Supreme Court snubbed him, he claimed, but the reality is he didn't even file the lawsuit.
Thursday, he held his infamous Thanks-a-thon, a kind of hours-long telethon where he'd celebrate a victory that never came. Like the play "Waiting for Godot," Lindell continues to wait for an outcome that never arrives. At the end of the play, one character says, "let's go," The other agrees, "let's go." The stage direction says, "they do not move." The implication is that they wait for the infamous Godot forever, just as Lindell continues to wait for Trump to be miraculously re-established as the president without an election.
In one case, Lindell welcomed an expert in electronic voting machines. Even his own expert agreed that the machines aren't actually connected to the internet.
"They are all machines... they all are built to do the same thing and that's steal elections," Lindell persisted.
If his theory were true, it would mean that to hack the election, the "hacker" would have to go to each electronic voting machine in each polling place in every state.
He then went through each of the electronic voting machine companies and called them out by name. Lindell is currently facing a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for disparaging the company with his conspiracy theories.
See the Lindell video below:
lindell internet www.youtube.com
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Yale psychologist walks through the difficulty of dealing with those who deny reality
November 25, 2021
As families come together for the holidays, some are being forced to face off against those who deny reality due to belief in conspiracy theories.
Sarah Lowe is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health, and in an interview with CNBC, she explained that things like natural disasters just like Jan. 6 can cause trauma and when people deny the reality it makes it even worse.
As natural disasters increase, more people are facing fears of losing everything they own, their homes, their communities, and even their family and friends. Hearing people deny the cause or even the news makes it even worse.
The Sandy Hook families just won a lawsuit against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who led a movement of people who claimed that the mass shooting wasn't real. Parents who lost their young children were forced to endure claim after claim that their children somehow weren't dead. Then Jones' followers went on the attack against the families, attacking them online, issuing threats, and more. One Sandy Hook father is still living in hiding because of the attacks from conspiracy theorists.
On Jan. 6, police endured beatings, tasing and abuse so bad that some even committed suicide after their experience. Today, members of the far-right have conspiracy theories that the FBI caused the Jan. 6 attacks, a Fox News myth. Another is that the Jan. 6 attack didn't even happen at all and those who attended the rally were nothing more than tourists who never did anything violent.
There are also the pandemic deniers and anti-vaxxers, who believed that COVID-19 was nothing more than the flu, overblown by politicians. Now that the vaccine has been offered around the world, there are theories that it injects a tracking device or that the vaccine will kill you.
"Disasters are fundamentally stressful," CNBC explained. "And for some people, they can be traumatic both directly — by leading to direct threats to one's life, for serious injuries, bereavement, destruction of one's property — or indirectly. We know (and this is true with the pandemic as well, just as an aside) that when people are faced with stressful situations, some people who might have a tendency for aggression and violence can be tipped due to stress."
The report noted that cases of child abuse and domestic violence dramatically increase in wake of disasters and in extreme heat.
"In terms of the mental health consequences, we know that PTSD can result from disasters," CNBC also explained. "Disasters are also associated with increased rates of a variety of psychiatric conditions and symptoms: depression, generalized anxiety, substance use, disruptions and health behaviors, like healthy eating and exercise. And these can all have downstream impacts on mental health in the long term."
COVID-19 denialism prompted Prof. Adrian Bardon to explain that some humans have brains that are hardwired to dismiss facts that don't follow their worldview.
Dr. Anthony Fauci went so far as to blame the poor pandemic response on "anti-science bias." The same science denialism that disputes climate change, vaccines or evolution can all be similar to those who dispute the effectiveness of masks and social distancing.
Facing off against family truthers seems like an easy challenge. In theory, all one would have to do is present facts and evidence that explain the reality. But what happens if an entire group of people refuses to agree on the facts?
In an interview with former Gov. Chris Christie this week, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace pushed the Republican on the GOP's turn to denying reality.
"He did not really put much distance between himself and Donald Trump on the Big Lie or the Deadly Insurrection, in which police officers were maimed by flagpoles," she said of Christie after the fact. "I think the real ominous thing is that critical race theory, which isn't real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump insurrection-endorsed Republican. What do Democrats do about that?"
She went on to say that people will never be able to come together if people deny reality.
"They are so far from the truth that you can no longer have a conversation with them about how to solve anything because they don't agree on what the problems are, and that terrifies me," Wallace told Stephen Colbert after her interview.
She explained the idea of "critical race theory" or CRT is the same problem. Kindergartners aren't being taught CRT. It's a theory that's taught in law schools. The right-wing has turned CRT into a kind of boogeyman for anything they find offense about people of color. CRT was cited as the reason that one Black Texas principal was put on leave after posting a photo of him with his white wife. He was told to delete the photo and ultimately was shoved out of his job. A Pennsylvania school banned children's books teaching about Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now Virginia conservatives are suggesting a book burning for those stories that involve people of color that they find offensive. All cite CRT as the reason.
So, as people come together for the holidays, it might be worth trying to find things that can be agreed on. The sky is blue. The grass is green.
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Ex-House counsel obliterates Trump's complaint that denying him privilege would 'damage' the presidency
November 25, 2021
On CNN Thursday, former House impeachment counsel Norm Eisen tore into former President Donald Trump and his legal team for his executive privilege claims to block information from the House committee investigating the Capitol riot would pose a threat to the executive branch as a whole.
"Let's talk about President Trump's legal team," said anchor Jessica Dean. "They're making the case the January 6th Committee could permanently damage the presidency. Do you see any legal merit to that claim?"
"The permanent damage to the presidency that was done was when ex-President Trump incited an insurrection on Jan. 6th to attack his own government," said Eisen. "The disclosure that Congress is seeking here has the exact opposite effect, Jessica, of what Trump is arguing in his papers — as is so often the case, the truth is the opposite. Getting these documents out will advance the interests of the presidency by helping Congress to legislate and prevent this from ever happening again."
Watch below:
Norm Eisen swats down Trump team's claim that denying him privilege will "damage" the presidency www.youtube.com
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