The Steal

 

The Steal by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague

“I’m not going to lose my f*cking law license because of these idiots.” – former White House council Porter Wright

 

As I write this review, the United States is in the middle of the hearings of the January 6^th Committee as they unveil evidence upon evidence that Donald Trump was a lying crooked boob.  I’m somewhat baffled by how obtuse many of his disciples remain to be.  In fact, I’m convinced that if Donald Trump held up a banana and told his moronic multitudes that he was NOT holding up a banana but was, in fact, holding up an apple, the majority of these individuals would believe him.  In fact, if any of these individuals decided to side with truth and say “No. That’s not an apple, that’s a banana” the majority of the devoted mob would threaten to harm, and/or kill the individual who dared speak the obvious.

Think I’m being extreme?  Well, let’s look at one example in this book. During the 2020 presidential election, it has been well documented that Trump discouraged mail-in ballots.  Despite his claims about potential fraud, the real reason is that mail-in ballots tend to favor the Democrats. Enter Rohn Bishop, a GOP chairman in the state of Wisconsin. Bishop is a Republican. Go back and read that last sentence 100 times.  Well, Bishop concludes that by discouraging mail-in ballots for his area of Wisconsin, it will actually HURT Donald Trump. He’s rightly aware that by dissuading mail-in ballots in his particular neck of the woods, his candidate will be harmed by the overall result.  So what does Bishop do?  He tells the voters the obvious: They should vote via mail if it suits them.   So enter the Trump devotees. Do they praise Bishop for thinking outside the box and helping their candidate?  Oh no.  It doesn’t matter what the reason Bishop has for his thinking. What matters is that Bishop had the nerve to contradict their God (i.e. Trump) and for that, he must be punished.  So threats are made against him and his family ad nauseum. The poor guy ends up in the hospital due to an anxiety disorder. All because he had the nerve to state an opinion.  An opinion, ironically, that would have helped the 45^th president.

This book is full of such anecdotes; starting on election day and going all the way to January 6^th. There are too many to mention, and all cause one to want to angrily heave the book against a wall in frustration while reading. Such as the story of Lynie Stone of Arizona, another Trump worshipper and election worker, who sees a spreadsheet of possible duplicated ballots with the number 6,660.   Well, gosh, she concludes, that number contains the digits “666”. So it MUST be a sign. It must be evil. It’s from the devil! And Donald Trump must prevail at all costs!  The real tragedy is just how common this thinking tends to be with this frenzied bunch.

I recently became familiar with author Mark Bowden’s work after reading the excellent “Guests of the Ayatollah” which documents the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80.  He’s well respected and is by no means some “librul hack.”  If the book seems biased against Trump and his claim, it’s simply because there wasn’t ANY evidence to support Trump’s claims. Other than a bunch of angry screaming louts who seem to believe if one is loud and violent enough, that can be then called some sort of objective truth. The events in the book are told in a rather sardonic, condescending tone, but what else can an objectional author do?  There were at least 63 (that’s a “6” followed by a “3”) frivolous lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, and every single one was thrown out.  In fact, many of the smarter lawyers refused to go near such a claim.  It’s easy to scream at a television camera that there was “fraud”, but no respectable lawyer would bring these unfounded accusations before a judge of any respectable court. Doing such a thing would cause a lawyer to lose their credibility awfully quick.

There have been a plethora of books already written about this sad, horrific event, and this one is more geared towards “the little people” - the Americans who volunteered to help the election process, and yet found themselves in the cross-hairs of the ignorant underlings of the worst president in the history of the United States. Their crime? They simply were trying to tell the truth. It’s a brief book, and the focus goes from state to state – highlighting where the votes were the closest and where Joe Biden prevailed. Obviously, this is because these areas are the obvious breeding ground for the many slimy losers who refuse to accept reality.

I don’t think this book will win many converts. I can say the same thing about the January 6 Committee, but one hopes that it might just budge the needle ever so slightly away from idiocy and over to some sort of normalcy. Contrary to what Trump’s mantra was, America never was really “great” (just ask a Black person), and it has plenty of faults during its young history.  But if more can simply acknowledge that this man is full of it, it would be nice to drift back to when the problems of yesteryear seemed oh so insignificant.