What The Hell Is Wrong With Republican Voters?

I live in a deep blue community in L.A.. My neighborhood is about as anti-Trump as you'll find anywhere. There is one house up the street however, that still sports a huge Trump flag from the balcony. People walk by and take pictures of it-- or cross the street and avert their eyes. I've lived here 30 years and know everyone on this hill-- except the people who live in that house. I walk the hill everyday and know every dog who lives here but I've never seen these people. Putting up a huge Trump flag-- and keeping it there for 10 months after he lost and for 8 months after his violent failed coup attempted, is like putting up a sign that says: "We are seditious morons."

Why do they believe his obvious lies? What's missing in their brains-- not just my neighbors, but all the millions of Trump fans who refuse to get vaccinated and refuse to understand that when 81,268,924 (51.3%) people vote for the other guy and just 74,216,154 (46.9%) vote for your guy and when that amounts to 306 electoral votes for the other guy and just 232 electoral votes for your guy and when recounts by Republican state officials and court cases presided over by Republican judges all-- all-- conclude your guy lost... your guy lost-- and, in this case, it wasn't even close. He lost by a lot. 4 points is a lot. In 2016, he "won," even though Hillary won the popular vote by 2 points.

Trump is still lying his orange lard ass off about the absurd 100% Trumpist Maricopa County audit that found that Biden won with even more votes than was originally reported! The day after the audit was "officially" released, Trump spoke to a crowd of maskless rednecks in rural Georgia and flat out lied to them: "We won on the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn’t believe. They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit."

The new polling from YouGov this week for The Economist asked respondents if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Trump. Although a healthy majority of registered voters have an unfavorable view of him (57%), 25% said they have a "very" favorable view and another 15% said they had a "somewhat" favorable view (so 40% favorable). Even with that low favorability score, you can see why he's still the head of his party when you see what voters think of others in GOP leadership roles polled this week:

• Kevin McCarthy- 22% favorable

• Mitch McConnell- 19% favorable

• Brett Kavanaugh- 32% favorable

• Neil Gorsuch- 29% favorable

• Sam Alito- 30% favorable

• John Roberts- 30% favorable

• Amy Coney Barrett- 37% favorable

• Clarence Thomas- 37% favorable

• The GOP as a whole- 32% favorable

The same poll showed that 62% of registered voters believe that Biden legitimately won the election but that 38% believe his win was NOT legitimate. And among Republicans, 76% say his election was illegitimate! In fact, 20% of Republicans said they think Trump will be "re-installed" as president.

Where do they get these ideas? Sure, Trump's blog, Fox News, Hate Talk Radio all contribute... and psychopaths on the internet. Brad Friedman reported on his Pacifica radio show yesterday that "perhaps the top wingnut website responsible for false reports of 'fraud' in the 2020 election, Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit-- is now circulating a phony 'draft' of the Cyber Ninja audit report. The fake report is being characterized as the 'real' report by Hoft and friends. One of them, Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan Attorney General(!) who Trump recently endorsed, posted it to Twitter claiming it was the 'real' report from the Ninjas that RINOs in the GOP state Senate tried to "censure" [sic].

The fraudulent "draft" claims that the 2020 election in AZ "should not be certified," even though it already was, ten months ago, by the state's Republican Governor. A Ninjas spokesperson denies having anything to do with it, claims the very real looking "draft report" is "absolutely false," and "that it was not written by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, nor was [the call for decertification] in any version that was ever sent or shown to the [state] Senate for review."

Thankfully, Hoft, often referred to as the dumbest man on the Internet, isn't buying it! He and his site are furious that the national GOP and Republicans in Arizona are hiding the truth and "are working for the other side!" He's totally right! Hopefully Republican voters won't stand for it any longer and will vote all of them out of office next year to show 'em!

Let's get to that very well-researched Politifact deep dive into what the Cyber Ninja Turtles report in Arizona actually said. Their top-line is that the review in fact found "the exact opposite" of what Trump claimed in Georgia.

Biden had 45,469 more votes than Trump in Maricopa, roughly in line with the official results certified in November 2020. According to the report issued by Cyber Ninjas, the firm hired to conduct the review, Biden’s margin of victory was 360 votes larger than the county’s official canvass showed.

"There were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official election canvass results for Maricopa County," the firm’s report said.

Trump’s statement is "complete nonsense," said Benny White, a Republican and longtime volunteer data analyst for the state Republican Party. (White had offered to help check the report’s findings but was turned down.)

"The official results are correct," White said. As for Trump, "he lost."

Biden beat Trump in Arizona by about 10,500 votes, the first time a Democratic presidential nominee had won there since 1996.

Trump spokespersons didn’t respond to our email asking for his evidence.

While the Republicans have referred to the ballot review as an "audit," election experts say that it did not follow typical post-election auditing procedures and lacked credibility.

Meanwhile, during the rally, Trump made other claims about the review. We have fact-checked two of them:

Trump said "there were 17,322 duplicate ballots" which a computer scientist identified as having "surged right after the election was over."

This is misleading. A scientist who has spread conspiracy theories in the past claimed that he had identified over 17,000 duplicate ballot envelope images. Duplicate ballot images aren’t the same thing as duplicate votes, and there is no evidence that illegitimate votes were duplicated as part of a voter fraud scheme. (There has been scant evidence of any voter fraud in Arizona.)

Duplicate ballot envelopes are created when election officials contact voters with inconsistent or blank signatures to cure their signatures. Each set of "duplicate" images is counted only once. Arizona state law gives Maricopa County staff five business days after an election to contact voters with inconsistent signatures. As a result, there was a spike in duplicate envelopes after the election as workers contacted people who had cast their ballots on or shortly before Election Day, said Megan Gilbertson, a spokesperson for Maricopa Elections Department.

Trump said that "millions of election-related files were deleted," including "a purge of the 'election management system' ... the day before the audit began."

The Maricopa County Elections Department has denied this, saying its 2020 election data was not deleted and instead was archived and backed up elsewhere, as is standard procedure before a forensic audit of ballot tabulation equipment, such as the one the county commissioned in February.

Our ruling

Trump said Biden "didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit."

That’s not true.

The review found that Biden won Maricopa by 45,469 votes-- a slightly larger margin than the county’s official canvass.

And Biden won Arizona. Nothing in the report written by the Cyber Ninjas contractors stated otherwise.

We rate this statement Pants on Fire!