Sympathy for the Despots
By 
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told a federal court that hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines he ordered removed cannot be returned to service because they were stripped for parts.
DeJoy and the U.S.Postal Service presented the excuse in a response filed Wednesday to a nationwide order issued by U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, last week demanding the return of some 700 machines that had been taken out of service.
“Dismantled machines ‘are generally dissembled for their usable parts, with such parts being removed to maintain or enhance other machines,’” DeJoy, a loyalist and major contributor to President Donald Trump’s campaign, stated in his response. “It is therefore not possible to return such machines to service.”
But witnesses reported that many of the expensive machines were quickly dismantled and tossed into dumpsters as scrap. The injunction noted that 72% of the ripped out machines were in counties Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election.
Oh, hey!
Joe Biden on Thursday night warned donors that President Trump will try to “indirectly steal” the 2020 election by making a case against mail-in ballots, a voting method that many are expected to use to avoid exposure to the novel coronavirus during November’s election.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee asked donors attending a virtual event to spread the word that “this president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work.”
Trump will present mail-in ballots as fraud by making the argument that “they’re not real, they’re not fair,” Biden said.
For Trumpian commentators, Democrats and the president’s other critics are only raising these concerns because they want to orchestrate a coup of their own. In a recent essay, “The Coming Coup?,” the former Trump-administration official Michael Anton warns his readers that Democrats are laying the groundwork for the “unlawful and illegitimate removal of President Trump from office.” Their tactic, he says, is to condition the public into thinking that Trump will try to steal the election so that if he wins, they can cry foul. They will then, Anton predicts, organize “a ‘color revolution,’ the exact same playbook the American deep state runs in other countries whose leadership they don’t like and is currently running in Belarus. Oust a leader—even an elected one—through agitation and call it ‘democracy.’” Anton advises Trump to prepare now to determine who will be loyal in the days after the election so that he can prevail.
Hmmm.
President Trump said on Wednesday that he wants to ensure confirmation of a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by the Nov. 3 election because he expects disputes over who won the White House to be resolved by the Supreme Court.
“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a White House event on social media, adopting an argument for quick action made by his ally, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,” instead of the eight seats currently filled.
The president again asserted without evidence that Democrats were trying to rig the election and said he wants a high court that will agree with him. “This scam that the Democrats are pulling — it’s a scam — the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said.
I find myself truly worried about only one scenario: that Trump will win reelection and Democrats and others on the left will be unwilling, even unable, to accept the result.
