Trump Sends 1,000 Federal Monitors Across America on Election Day

>> Hello, everybody. Welcome to an emergency. Bullwork takes live stream. I was live with Bill a little bit earlier. We'll all be live tonight as the election results came in. But we had to get on Will's summer and myself, Andrea, with the Bullwork. We had to get on to talk about a little bit of an election fraud narrative that is already starting to get kicked up on the right, and it is happening among the poster class, and it is happening among some of these political operatives, and some of these former political operatives who now are mostly posters. And most importantly, it is happening among the White House and the Justice Department who are already gearing up. It looks like to do yet another round of stop the steel type argumentation at least. We'll see how far they will go with this. But the every early indication is that the Trump administration is out here gathering string, preparing the way, trying to get as many eyes and as many places as possible, in order to gather grist to start claiming that this election was stolen as early as possible. So Will, this is the first headline that we are seeing here. DOJ election monitors to all 50 states. Justice Department announced today it's going to deploy about a thousand election monitors to all 50 states for the first time ever to watch the polls. Many may not be allowed, will not be allowed to enter polling sites. Can you tell me a little bit about what we know about what's going on here? How unprecedented is this? And is this itself sort of an ominous move or does this just sort of show that they are getting ready to do? What can we know about this story? Yeah, I mean, in the past, DOJ has sent election monitors to locations, jurisdictions where there's like a history of voter suppression. In this case, that's not what's going on. I mean, they appear to have targeted really populous areas, presumably democratic areas. It's obviously unclear what will come of that. I mean, I could imagine that if a race is close and the Trump administration wants to intervene and try to throw to the Republicans, you could have some of these monitors say, oh yeah, I saw there was like some weird thing that happened with the machine and then they could build off of that. Already, there's been a little bit of drama around this in Michigan. Some DOJ monitors were sort of overstepping their bounds in Flint and Dearborn and asking about what the poll workers training was, asking to see training materials. And finally, DOJ rained them back after local officials complained. So, you know, it's sort of hard to know at this point how this is going to play out, whether this will matter in any kind of contested election scenario. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely something new. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so interesting to hear things like that. I'm almost reminded a little bit of like the giant build out of ICE that we saw last year, where it's, you've just, you've hired up to an unprecedented level, you're deploying people at sort of an unprecedented level. And when things go wrong, it's almost like to what extent is this part of the plan, to what extent is this, you know, your, your actual training? And to what extent is this just the fact that you have, you know, put a million new fellow travelers, a million mega true believers in this position of authority and then just kind of let them loose, let them loose to see what happens. So, this is going to be something we'll be watching throughout the day. There's a lot of stuff that's up in the air in terms of, as the article mentioned, in terms of who's going to be allowed where, and how much access these people actually get to the polls. In a vacuum, you know, election monitoring is fine, right? I mean, this is the thing that everybody does. This is a, it's, it's, there are, there are procedures in place to allow, you know, the, the various parties to put their own poll watchers in, in place. So like, this is certainly not on the same level as if we saw headline that was, you know, the National Guard is marching out to the polls or something like that, right? But, but it definitely is, is the first, the first sort of aggressive forward posturing move that we're seeing from the White House today. And it's not the only one. I want to talk a little bit about the, about, well, we'll get to that in a little bit. There's, there's other moves that the White House has been making. But I do want to turn to this, to what we've been seeing from basically the MAGA media ecosystem, because even though it is very early in the day, you know, polls are nowhere near closed, but we have already begun to see a number of places where we're very small, basically technical malfunctions that, that at, at worst, you know, made people have to use a fallback method of voting rather than just, you know, fill out your ballot, scan your ballot in the machine for a couple of hours. We've seen these in a couple different places across America, but these are already now being sort of kicked up among the MAGA chattering class as evidence that the fix once again is in that Democrats are once again trying to steal the election. We can just throw a number. We have like a, a little, a little vision board of some of these tweets. You see Kerry Lake there, you know, one time Arizona, gubernatorial candidate, Kerry Lake. You see a lot of, of, you know, chattering class, influencer-type people. Joey, how do you pronounce his name? Marenaro. Joey. It's got wrestler. Manorino. It's too small for the read on my strings. Yeah, he's back. Yeah, well, you want to talk to us. Yeah, this is your, this is your area. This is very much, let's, I mean, this is the, this is very much like a Trumpier thing whenever there's any kind of contested election. If there's at all, like, as you said, oh, a polling machine isn't working. Maybe there's a pat, I mean, in Kerry Lake's case, I think they were talking about some ballot machines being down. And they say, oh, my gosh, you know, the steel is a foot. The Democrats, we got to be too big to rig. So Kerry Lake, for example, said, you know, if you're in Maricopa County, go to the most liberal polling place you can find because those are the ones that are going to be working, suggesting a, you know, Democrats would be sabotaging the Republican precincts. I looked this up. Apparently, you can vote wherever in, in Maricopa County. This is not a case where you're going to show up and they're going to say, Kerry Lake, give you some bad advice. You know, we've got Scott Pressler, who's a sort of Republican voting activist, machine down. I mean, again, a lot of these reports are like one machine being down. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, the, the big one really right now was in West Chester County in New York, which plays into the Mike Lawler race, the Republican there, which is very kind of hotly contested battleground seat. It seems as though in basically the entire county, the tabulators were broken because of a software issue. They were still collecting the votes, but, you know, anything when you start talking about like sacks of votes, that is something that Republicans are going to get like really fired up. Yeah, because I mean, you think about like in Arizona, in I think 2020, there was so much of a focus on like where are the boxes, you know, where are the ballots. And so, you know, we're seeing we got Joey Manorino, Caroline Levitt says, you know, report any, you know, voter suppressor to the RNC. In, in Minnesota and head up in county, we got Wayne Allen Root commenting on the Minneapolis, where they did not allow the DOJ monitors into the pre-sector, into the polling places themselves. Wayne is a big, he's a Trump buddy, he's a big declared martial law guy. So he's getting fired up about that. And so, you know, I think we see this stuff starting, I think historically, it really only matters if the race is close, kind of like with the DOJ monitors. So, you know, then they, you know, we'll see how it breaks down. But I mean, they obviously really love collecting these stories and blowing them out of proportion. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I kind of see all this stuff as of a piece. I mean, part of it is like what I was saying before about how much of it is top down strategy, how much of it is bottom up. When it comes to these influencers in particular, there's an enormous like personal incentive structure to spread these claims on X in particular, because this is a lot of the, this is the way a lot of these guys make their money, right? Is by is by making these posts that go viral on X and that they get, you know, revenue from these sorts of things. And of course, there is a huge appetite among MAGA media consumers for fraud for fraud related content. We've seen this over and over again is that there are a lot of people guys like Mike Lindell who have built whole media businesses basically around the idea that that these elections are being stolen and that, and that, you know, there's there's infinite stories to be to be uncovered of infinite examples of random election malfeasance in these different places. And you also see how these these small small stories get like you say blown up in these in these big ways. The Maricopa County story that Kerry Lake is tweeting about there that never even ended up affecting voters. There was a there was a announcement that went out that there was a power outage at I believe one it might have been several locations. That was before the the polls were set to open in the first place. It was saying don't come vote here go vote at some other precinct. Low and behold, they get it all sorted out and it opens just fine. And so like the and yet nevertheless, this is being, you know, spun up as more evidence of more democratic malfeasance on the part of MAGA. And it's it's all going again. This is not just posting on the internet. This is all going to create the same sort of conditions, the same sort of, you know, widespread belief in these narratives that they then turn around and use as evidence for why they ought to be allowed to fight these fight these results in more official ways when we saw that consistently throughout 2020 in particular that that there was all this lying on election day and following about the vote counting. And then the fact that people believed those lies, believed all these individual stories and started to believe that something was phony about it that itself was treated as a justification for Republicans to continue to fight the results. So I don't know. Yeah, I mean to your point before we move on to up from the CD, this is sort of like when the small fryer out there getting the little, I got one broken machine or whatever. And you know, after the election stories will emerge about like there'll be three or four hot points, probably Alaska and some others that they really wanna contest in the court and in conspiracy theory land. And that's when we start getting the good stuff. That's when we start getting the shards of bamboo on the ballot, suggesting the ballots were made in China. So these kind of 2020 things. But at this point, as you said, I mean, this is about creating a general sense of unease of the idea that there's voter fraud of foot and that really shouldn't we just let the justice department and the courts or the House of Representatives and all these different options? Shouldn't we just let them settle it rather than the voters? >> Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, it really is something. I mean, I guess the one other thing I'd make about the election watchers that we are, the poll watchers that they have out there now, the election monitors is that is also part of this, right? Because part of the idea here is, it would be nice for Republicans not to have to do this. Some random voter in Michigan just texted me about this machine. It is a lot of eyes and ears out there to create more of this kind of grist for this particular propaganda machine, right? Where the more video content, you would much rather be able to get election workers carrying around bags of ballots looking shifty on video than just to have to hear about it later. Oh, man, I saw some election workers carrying around bags of ballots. And that didn't seem very good to me. It's the places where you get the surveillance camera footage like in Fulton County, Georgia in 2020. Those are the stories that you can really lard up with a lot of these conspiracies and they really have legs. So I would imagine that's a big part of this too. Let's throw it a quick ad and then we've got a couple more things to hit on this. >> So I feel like life insurance is one of those things that you just don't really think about until you get older and then you realize there are a lot of people who depend on you. It's also one of those things that is really easy to put off. You tell yourself you'll figure it out eventually and then eventually never comes. But the reality is that having a plan in place really does matter. You want to know that the people you love will have some financial security if something unexpected happens to you. That's why I want to tell you about ethos. They make getting life insurance fast and easy. And the entire process is 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds. You can apply in minutes and you can even get same day coverage. You can get up to $3 million in coverage and some policies are as low as $30 a month. There's no medical exam. Just answer a few simple health questions online. And here's the thing. You don't have to spend weeks going back and forth or make this some huge project. You can just take care of it from your couch on your time and you can do it in minutes. So take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bortakes. That's e-t-h-o-s.com/bortakes. Application times may vary and rates may vary as well. >> So there's one other story that we need to talk about here, which is what is already going forward in Alaska. We have talked a lot in the last few days about the reporting coming out of Alaska about Mary Peltola, Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign, having perhaps been involved in recruiting. A second candidate named Dan Sullivan to get on the ballot alongside the actual Republican Senator from Alaska, Dan Sullivan. The Trump and his allies have been apoplectic about this story. They have said, Trump has said that Mary Peltola should not be allowed to be on the ballot at all. Many Republicans, including many sitting Republican senators, have suggested that if Peltola wins, she shouldn't be allowed to be seated. Her election should not be certified and she should not be allowed to be seated in the Senate based on this. So that is a lot of the backdrop of what we are seeing here. There have been a couple stories out of the Alaska race specifically. And by the way, we're not going to get any results from Alaska until way late in the game because of how far West they are. I believe the first ballot drop that we're going to be getting is supposed to be around 12.45 AM out here on the East Coast. So there's going to be very little in terms of actual results tonight. But there's a couple things that we have seen. First of all, the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is already doing a joint spending pack with Senator Dan Sullivan, the NRSC recount fund. So there you go. There are already putting some money behind challenging the results. Again, nothing wrong with the recount. You got to pay for it if you're going to do it. So that in and of itself is not necessarily a cause for concern. But it does show that they are already gearing up to gearing up for the post election fights on all of this stuff. Do you see anything more alarming in that particular fund than what I just said will? Or is that basically right that this in and of itself doesn't necessarily-- >> No, I think in this fun story, as you said. I mean, I think this just shows that if we didn't already see it from the DOJ basically saying, don't seat Peltola. Don't certify this election if Peltola wins or we're going to contest it. In this case, it's just another sign that Republicans are really hunkering down on this race and I think are expecting it to be closed. I mean, so it's obviously not a sinister intent beyond just trying to elect Dan Sullivan. But it does show that I think Republicans are really getting ready even now to fight this out. >> Yeah, yeah, and I agree with that. I think that the more sinister of the two things is this one. It's what we are seeing now already out of the DOJ today. There's a New York Times story just today, just as department sends target letters to Democrats in escalation of Alaska inquiry. They are looking for scalps over this other Dan, the other Dan Sullivan on the ballot. They're trying to find ways to prosecute this criminally. Well, can you just kind of talk us through what's going on, what we're learning today about these new developments in this story? >> Yeah, so this story came out, I mean, I think less than an hour ago. This is from Glenn Thresh at the Times. Basically, they are sending target letters to various Democrats, including at least one staffer at the Democratic campaign arm, the DSCC, and Mark Elias, who's obviously a very famous Democratic lawyer, saying that, hey, you are a target of this investigation. This is, I mean, the Times deck here, it calls it highly unusual. I mean, it certainly is the idea of doing this. You're doing this on Election Day, right around Election Day. I'm not sure exactly when these went out. I mean, this is, I think not only is it crazy that it's nowhere the FBI and the DOJ throwing so many resources at this, but also that they're willing to do it pretty publicly right before the election. >> Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's ordinarily the case that the Justice Department would not touch anything like this with a 10-foot pole, usually 60 days, before Election Day. They're not going to open a criminal matter in anything related to the election. Anything touching on the election has not been a policy that this White House has had an enormous amount of interest in following. Not just this, by the way, I mean, we've talked a lot about the story, much smaller scale story out of Texas, where a Republican group appears to have sent mailers around to juice turnout for Ken Paxton, the mailers impersonating a trans rights group in Texas, the lot inflammatory rhetoric about emancipating children from their families, encouraging them to treat trans groups like themselves as their new found family stuff like this. And we have seen JD Vance going around on the campaign trail spreading this story, spreading this story again, which these mailers appear to be counterfeit. They appear to be impersonations from a Republican group, but we have JD Vance treating them as legitimate and saying that he has instructed the DOJ to open a criminal investigation into these mailers. We've reached out to the DOJ a couple times, by the way, about whether they've actually done that and have not received a response. >> Yeah, I haven't heard of FBI agents blanketing Texas to find out who's impersonating this group to kind of rev up this trans panic. >> Yeah, yeah, but I mean, to get back to the Alaska thing, I mean, the point that you're making is like under ordinary circumstances, even if it were true that Peltola or any of these people had broken any laws, which is not at all clear that this is true. I think it's fair to say it was like a dirty trick, and that Republicans are not completely unjustified in being mad that she tried it, but the idea that it is a violation of election laws is somewhat crazy. But the fact that not only are they going to open this matter, but that they wouldn't open this matter on election day and be driving forward coverage in this way, I mean, it really is through the looking glass stuff here. >> Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. And obviously, they're trying to use the Justice Brown, and I think to add more attention to the scandal to suggest that the race has already been stolen. >> Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, I don't know. >> Well, yeah, I mean, I thought I had just as we were coming in here, is one story in my world that's emerging is the numbers of followers of White National's podcaster Nick Fuentes, the groupers who are voting for Democrats. Now, this is a claim that had been made for a while. They particularly hate Vivek Ramaswami. But really, overall, vote for Democrats is sort of a protest vote against the Trump agenda, the war in Iran, support for Israel, whatever. And we're starting to see some groupers post their ballots for Democrats. And this is making the kind of Ben Shapiro wing of the party that's obviously a post to that. Very apoplectic. And so, you know, it's hard to know how much Israel with these characters. But as I expect, we'll see more of that. And so it'll be interesting to want to watch, particularly in Florida, where James Fishback, the grouper general ran in the Republican primary there. >> Did I see some posts from Fishback yesterday that he was toying with the idea of endorsing the Democrat in the governor's race? But whatever happened with that, did that come forward? >> No, he hasn't officially endorsed him. He was talking about David Jolly. And he was saying, oh, I'm feeling Jolly, ho, ho, ho, ho. So this is the kind of a little mischief these guys are looking for. like to get up to right ahead of the election. But, you know, I'm certainly, look, we're, we're following the results, folks, we're, we're locked in the live stream kicks off tonight at seven. There it is. Beautiful. We got the whole crew, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll be going and going and going through the night. As, as we, as we watch, no, we genuinely are going to be going insane tonight. It's going to be seven to midnight or seven to midnight plus out here on the East Coast. We've got a lot of reporters on the ground, a lot of different places, you know, not, it's not just the DOJ, it's not just the DOJ that's blanketing the country, the bulwark, the bulwark has not a thousand, there are a thousand of us. We have like five reporters, I think, in different background states will be, who'll be on the stream. The, the one last thing I wanted to say kind of about all of this is like, I go back and forth about, about talking about this stuff, about reporting on this stuff. I do think it's pos, it's obviously possible to overtork it to say, you know, like, oh, there go all the election watchers, you know, they're going to do crimes and, and steal the election and do, do violence to democracy and like, at a certain level, like, I, I, I do wonder like, are we overtorking that? Like, is it possible to, to, to do that too much? And then like, by the same token, then I come right back around and I'm like, no, they just ran this playbook in 2020, like, it's not that long ago that, like, we all watched with our jaws on the ground while Donald Trump nakedly tried to steal a presidential election and called in every favor for every single one of his, you know, MOOCs and allies and really, really put the screws on everybody and just tried to stay in power. And then they spent the next few years systematically rooting everybody who resisted that out of the party and replacing them with more pliable types. So like, it's such a weird place to be in, it's such a weird place to be in, ideally we'll get to tonight and most of the results won't be close and so there just, there's won't be a lot of, a lot of juice for them to squeeze out of it, out of the, the results. But I am genuinely unsettled, seeing all this stuff already start on spool on the day of the election. >> You know, I think the January 6th stuff, the efforts to seal the 2020 election are great point. Coming at it from another angle, like, what is the DOJ been up to? They indicted Comey. They just had this FBI case against the FBI agents involved in a hundred Biden thing thrown out for being total BS. I mean, we know the Justice Department has done all of this crazy stuff. We know that Trump said, hey, you gotta go after Peltola. I mean, there is this stuff that is clearly, you know, we see DOJ election monitors saying, how bad can it be? Well, based on history of how the DOJ is running this administration and as you said, based on Trump's history of trying to steal elections, potentially very bad. >> Yeah. Yeah, and that's all we got for it right now is potentially very bad. Obviously, we will continue to watch this story throughout the day. Hopefully, there won't be much that comes of it and they'll just be, you know, one other group of people standing around on polling sites like the people who try to hand you a sample ballot as you walk in and tell you how to vote on the different initiatives. That would be the best case scenario and of course, there's a sliding scale of scenarios worse than that. But we will be all over it. We're gonna be around at seven o'clock, I guess seven o'clock at the latest, you know, we weren't planning on doing this live stream, but here we are, so maybe we'll be cropping back on throughout the day even before seven, but we do hope you will join us tonight. Thank you Will for coming on to talk through some of this stuff with us. Please subscribe to the feed if you have not done so before. It really helps us out. It'll help you remember to get on it at seven o'clock or a little later whenever you want to as well tonight. Thanks. And we'll see you all very soon.