Zachary Petrizzo, Salon

Pillow merchandiser turned 2020 election denier Mike Lindell neither endorsed nor rejected the prospect of a military coup if the Supreme Court refuses to accept his long-awaited case on purported election fraud, which he plans to make public just before Thanksgiving.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Lindell's still-hypothetical case, assembled by a team of pro-Trump lawyers, will apparently argue that the Chinese government or its agents rigged the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, perhaps through the now-infamous machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. Presumably he will ask the court to overturn or set aside the election results as certified by Congress, something it has no legal or constitutional power to do. ...

Longtime GOP operative resident Roger Stone announced that he's considering a campaign against Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis over his frustrations that the state has not yet implemented a statewide audit into its 2020 election results, which former President Donald Trump won.

"If Florida governor Ron DeSantis does not order an audit of the 2020 election to expose the fact that there are over 1 million phantom voters on the Florida voter rolls in the Sunshine state," Stone wrote on Gab, "I may be forced to seek the Libertarian Party nomination for governor Florida in 2022."

Stone went on to include the hashtag "#ByeRon" in the Gab post, complete with a picture of himself....

The twice-impeached former President Donald Trump announced he will phone it in for Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin during a Monday evening tele-rally event as the race tightens in its final days.

This article first appeared in Salon.

While the Youngkin campaign has maintained a healthy distance from Trump so far, it appears that firewall is breaking down as the candidate gains ground — a Fox News poll out Thursday reflects momentum being on the side of Youngkin, with an eight-point spread between the candidates, whose views couldn't be more ideologically split....

Right-wing radio star Dan Bongino is now embroiled in a surprising public feud with a fellow Cumulus Media host over the fraught subject of vaccine mandates — and may be at risk of losing his job.

Bongino declared two weeks ago that he planned to defy a company-wide coronavirus vaccine mandate, and was willing to lose his gig on that principle. Now he faces pushback from an unlikely opponent: Alabama-based Cumulus host Dale Jackson, whose views are at least as conservative as Bongino's.

Jackson has called Bongino's position "virtue signaling," saying that the thrice-failed congressional candidate had deliberately avoided an opportunity to speak out against Cumulus before the company began letting employees go over the vaccine mandate. ...

A friend and employee of far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert who works as the general manager of Shooters Grill, Boebert's bar and restaurant in Rifle, Colorado, is mounting a campaign for city council even though he does not meet the residency requirements.

This article first appeared in Salon.

According to a series of Facebook posts initially discovered by Salon, Bud Demicell — an apparent devotee of the QAnon conspiracy theory —moved to Rifle with his wife Mona late in 2020, not in time to meet the residency requirement for local elections....