How a bogus commission on voter fraud set the pretext for the Jan. 6 attack

Let’s spend the next five or six minutes talking about the truth … and then let’s spend the next 10 months up until our massive election in November talking about it even more.

If the truth will set us free, as history’s most notorious liberal, Jesus Christ, told us, then we could all stand to hear a helluva lot more of it.

Let’s get started …

Earlier this week, we hit an anniversary that went by very quietly. It was just more of the charred and smoldering remains of the failed, and very dangerous Trump presidency, that had but one very specific goal: trying to incinerate our Democracy.

Wednesday marked five years since the silent death of the traitor, Trump’s, very loud and costly “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.”

Remember that one?

You are forgiven if you don’t, but upon further review, it laid the groundwork for everything that has followed right up until today, where a majority of Republicans believe, despite abundant evidence and myriad court rulings to the contrary, that the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes was somehow stolen from them.

Led by their false idol, Republicans believe this so much that their corrosive claims have been appropriately written into the history books they don't want anybody reading under the heading of “The Big Lie.”

In the wake of the 2016 election, in which he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes, America’s orange gasbag decided he was going to use his new presidential powers to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to prove that he actually won more votes than Clinton.

Trump stood at the podium of the most powerful office in the world and lied to everybody that between 3 to 5 million votes had actually been illegally cast for Clinton.

This was actually coming out of his big, fat mouth.

He even had his White House staff write an official statement, that among other atrocious things, said there was "substantial evidence of voter fraud."

In fact, there was absolutely NO evidence of voter fraud whatsoever.

He tweeted in his own best words that “(he) would be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and… even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).”

I mean …

Can we stop right here for a second and ask what the reaction would have been if Joe Biden did something as ghastly as this shortly after taking the White House in 2021, and made the bombastic claim that there was "substantial evidence of vote fraud" in Texas and Florida and he was assembling a taxpayer-funded commission to look into it?

There would have been a nuclear-powered reaction to this in the press and a huge percentage of Americans in both parties (including me) would have been repulsed, and known for sure we elected a man who was completely unfit for office.

With Trump, it was just another miserable day …

And while we’re looking back at this incredibly painful time in American history and talking about truth, this voter fraud commission was assembled just four months after Trump’s ill-attended inauguration in which he again used his office to scream and cry that his crowds were huger than were being reported, despite the fact we all have eyes and could see how pathetic the attendance really was.

But really, who the hell even cared? THIS is what the guy was upset about? His crowds???

By whining about something as mundane as crowd size only hours after taking over the presidency, the odious Trump was making it crystal clear that truth didn’t stand a chance in his White House, and nothing in this country would ever be the same again.

If he’d lie about fucking crowd size, what else would he lie about?

Turns out, that lie would go on to be but one of the documented 30,573 lies he spewed during his terrible tenure. One more time for emphasis: TRUMP TOLD A DOCUMENTED 30,573 LIES DURING HIS TERRIBLE TENURE.

This is just breathtaking, and is equivalent to telling 21 lies a day, or nearly one every hour of his disgusting presidency. It is impossible to wrap your head around such an incredibly loathsome thing.

Of all of those thousands and thousands of lies, the one that led to this rotten commission on voter fraud was perhaps the most dangerous of all, because it set the pretext for every evil thing that was about to follow during the next four, hellish years leading to the traitor’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021.

Trump put his fawning and reprehensible vice president, Mike Pence, who would ultimately and ironically have his life threatened by Trump and his supporters in the January 6 attack, along with the pathetic Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, in charge of this dangerous, crackpot commission.

Just like the lie about his crowd size, which was almost certainly spurred by severe inadequacies elsewhere, Trump’s massive ego simply couldn’t accept losing to a woman by nearly three million votes.

It made him feel fraudulent, and less-than, even if the antiquated Electoral College sadly substantiated his gruesome victory.

Of course, there was something even more sinister underway besides Trump’s butt-hurt feelings, and his commission that ultimately turned up absolutely nothing.

The evil GOP powerbrokers who inhabit the darkness knew they finally had the blunt instrument they so desperately needed in office to make the case for yet more GOP voter suppression. They knew full well they were in the minority in this country, but if they could rip free just a shred of doubt about the legitimacy and integrity of our elections, then they could help ensure that nothing that happened at the polls could ever be believed again.

If the polls couldn’t be believed, then our elections were worthless. If our elections were worthless then so, too, was our Democracy.

They knew that if, God forbid, their useful power tool were to be defeated in the next election by, say, 7 million votes, it would only be because of our corrupt voting system, and not because of the corrupt bastard that Americans decided to vote against by the millions.

They knew they finally had the most notorious liar in the history of the world at their disposal to spout their evil and erroneous claims, and they were going to make good and damn sure to use him against us.

They knew in May of 2017, that they were setting the groundwork for the attack on this country nearly four years later on January 6, 2021, when hundreds of GOP lawmakers tried to throw out our vote, our Capitol was attacked, and law enforcement officers were stomped into the ground by radical rightwing thugs who their odious leader no longer wanted “to stand back and stand by.”

Yes, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity ended five years ago this past Wednesday with a whimper, but the damage it ultimately caused is still ringing in everybody’s ears.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.