Friday, July 31, 2020

"Dangerous Hack" Seems To Fit Like a Glove

So it's "Bash Jonathan Turley" week at Chez Adventus.  But when the target is this fat and easy, why not?

Turley avers:

Okay, fine; but the professor can't leave well enough alone:

The Raw Story account he tweets there contains the same quote as this tweet from Ben Siegel:

All Biden says there is that Trump will "try to kick back the election somehow."  I'd say even a tweet from the POTUS on that subject is "trying somehow."  Biden is not fueling a conspiracy theory; he's issuing a warning about Trump's propensity to run roughshod over Constitutional norms and barriers.

a)  federal troops in Portland acting in an extral-legal manner without consultation with, or consideration of, local law enforcement.  The canard that they are "protecting a federal building" doesn't justify seizing people off the streets of Portland in unmarked vans by unidentifiable officers, and then releasing them after they find no grounds to justify the arrest in the first place.

b) saying Thursday he'll do it again, this time with National Guardsmen (whom he will presumably nationalize, but same problem, as well as:  they aren't trained for law enforcement, as we found out at Kent State 50 years ago).

c) Saying also on Thursday that the election is "rigged" and "fixed" (conspiracy theories) and mail in ballots will come in so slowly it will be three months before the final count is known (which, among other things, would run up against the deadlines for the electoral college vote set by Congress in 3 U.S.C.). Another conspiracy theory, IOW, as grounded in reality as anything associated with Q Anon.

According to that Raw Story article Turley had written after Biden's remarks in February:

“The ultimate conspiracy theory was declared by the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, who warned that he was certain Trump plans to delay the election this fall,” Turley wrote. “It is a conspiracy theory utterly without factual or constitutional support, yet his warning was deemed a ‘prediction’ by Politico in a recent article.”
Now he adds, in his tweets, that Biden "was suggesting that Trump could unilaterally stop the election or use the Postal Service to steal it."  Which in a court of law would draw at least the objection that it assumes facts not in evidence.  I don't know where he got that idea, but probably from the same place Trump gets his ideas about coronavirus and who can get it (and who can't).

Turley wants to slice this so thinly it has only one side, but his razor isn't that sharp:

Trump is not claiming that he can unilaterally stop the election in this tweet.

No, he isn't; but neither is he clearly asking Congress to alter the law (the only way to postpone the election).  Nor did Biden say Trump would act unilaterally.  Biden said Trump would "try to kick back the election somehow."  Which is precisely what Trump did in that tweet.  Besides, if we're going to talk about conspiracy theories:

Maybe the professor can explain to the class the difference between a "mail-in ballot" and an "absentee ballot."  Because at least under Texas law, they are the same beast, at least as far as the "mail-in" part is concerned.  And why we are ignoring the multiple conspiracy theories of Donald Trump (he also said at his presser on Thursday that the Democrats are benefitting from the coronavirus hoax) in order to "both-sides" Joe Biden with this truly weak and untenable claim, is another question from the peanut gallery.

Because they seem to understand the situation better than the learned professor does.
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