What did Trump stooge Mark Meadows hope to gain from this?
In a somewhat explosive—though certainly not surprising—piece, the New York Times revealed just how far the last administration was willing to go to retain power. Donald Trump vehemently denied that he lost the race to President Joe Biden, going so far as to say the election was “rigged.” Had he stopped to look at his approval rating, he would have figured out why he lost, but his reaction was more of a state of disbelief that America could not stomach four more years of his failure to act and his penchant to divide. Understanding Trump’s reaction, especially considering his out-of-control narcissism, is one thing but learning that others behaved similarly is puzzling. One of the biggest supporters of Trump’s lies was his chief of staff Mark Meadows. His support of the election fraud lie was widely known, but just how far he was willing to go to support the lies has become known thanks to newly uncovered emails.
Following the election, Meadows began pushing Jeffrey Rosen, who was the acting attorney general, to investigate nonexistent election fraud. The Times reported that one angle Meadows offered Rosen was that people in Italy, using military technology, remotely tampered with voting machines on election day. This claim is right up (or down, as the case may be) there with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claims that Jewish space lasers caused the California wildfires. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Italian citizens cared enough about our election to tamper with it, but how they gained access to military technology makes the claim even more incredulous. This scenario reveals just how far these people were willing to go to stop President Biden from taking office.
One thing the Trump White House never understood is that the DOJ is to remain a bipartisan branch of the government. They are not a president’s personal legal team. The attorney general should likewise be bipartisan, though we now know William Barr was anything but. Though he, at the end, tried to redeem himself by not only refusing to get involved but by explicitly stating that the DOJ “had not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” Rosen used those words to avoid Mark Meadows, who was blatantly violating long-standing guidelines keeping the DOJ separate from the White House. None of that deterred Meadows. He made a surprise trip to Cobb County to view an election audit, and he was on the call when Trump tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger. Meadows was out of line in every case, and he frankly looked desperate to many, including officials in Cobb County.
Perhaps we might understand Trump’s desperation; regaining office would have held off the pending investigation in New York, but Meadows is a mystery. Why a career politician was willing to railroad his own career for someone who would not have done the same for him is perplexing. The good news is that he and the rest of these fools have exited the building.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years