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The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 US Election and the People Who Stopped It
In the sixty-four days between November 3 and January 6, President Donald Trump and his allies fought to reverse the outcome of the vote. Focusing on six states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— Trump’s supporters claimed widespread voter fraud.
It was not a well-orchestrated matter. There was no guiding genius pulling the strings in key states for the defeated Donald Trump. In the weeks after the election, in counties and precincts all over the country, many local Republican officials and even Trump’s own campaign workers washed their hands of his increasingly unhinged allegations of fraud. But there was no shortage of people willing to take up the fight. Urged on by Trump and his coterie of advocates, lawyers, and media propagandists, true believers turned on their colleagues, friends, and neighbors — even those in their own party — to accuse them of rigging the election.
The real story of the insurrection began months before Trump’s mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That riot was the desperate final act, emblematic of the clumsy, failed movement Trump had been building for years. It began in cities and small towns all over America on election day, November 3, 2020.
Working with a team of researchers and reporters, Bowden and Teague uncover never-before-told accounts from the election officials fighting to do their jobs amid outlandish claims and threats to themselves, their colleagues, and their families. The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the heroic individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on our election system to ensure that every legal vote was counted and the will of the people prevailed.
It was not a well-orchestrated matter. There was no guiding genius pulling the strings in key states for the defeated Donald Trump. In the weeks after the election, in counties and precincts all over the country, many local Republican officials and even Trump’s own campaign workers washed their hands of his increasingly unhinged allegations of fraud. But there was no shortage of people willing to take up the fight. Urged on by Trump and his coterie of advocates, lawyers, and media propagandists, true believers turned on their colleagues, friends, and neighbors — even those in their own party — to accuse them of rigging the election.
The real story of the insurrection began months before Trump’s mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That riot was the desperate final act, emblematic of the clumsy, failed movement Trump had been building for years. It began in cities and small towns all over America on election day, November 3, 2020.
Working with a team of researchers and reporters, Bowden and Teague uncover never-before-told accounts from the election officials fighting to do their jobs amid outlandish claims and threats to themselves, their colleagues, and their families. The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the heroic individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on our election system to ensure that every legal vote was counted and the will of the people prevailed.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 4, 2022
220 people are currently reading
1102 people want to read
About the author
Mark Bowden
65 books1,811 followersMark Bowden is an American journalist and writer. He is a former national correspondent and longtime contributor to The Atlantic. Bowden is best known for his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (1999) about the 1993 U.S. military raid in Mogadishu, which was later adapted into a motion picture of the same name that received two Academy Awards.
Bowden is also known for the books Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw (2001), about the efforts to take down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and Hue 1968, an account of the Battle of Huế.
Bowden is also known for the books Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw (2001), about the efforts to take down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and Hue 1968, an account of the Battle of Huế.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews
May 25, 2022
To anyone thinking of voting Republican this November
Look, don't shoot the messenger and all that, but you're wasting your time. Read this book and you'll see why.
Let's take it step by step. In 2020, Donald Trump won easily. But he had no chance against the Deep State, who didn't even work up a sweat turning his victory into a large majority for Biden. Although everyone knew the election was stolen, although there were any number of clues, evidence just melted in people's hands. Obviously the Dominion voting machines were fixed. Obviously hundreds of thousands of votes arrived in the middle of the night. Obviously illegals and dead people voted, usually multiple times. Obviously voters were brought in from other states by the busload. Obviously the laws were changed to benefit the Dems. Obviously the whole mail-in ballot thing was rigged.
But could any of this be proved? No. The Deep State had played a long game. It looked like the voting machines weren't even connected to the internet. It looked like they had been carefully vetted by bipartisan committees well in advance. It looked like those committees had given them a green light. It looked like there was a solid paper trail showing there was no fraud worth mentioning. It looked like the carefully crafted arguments put together by Trump's legal team were a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories. The Deep State had thought of everything. Even judges who had been appointed by Trump were in on the scam. Heck, even Mike Pence went over to the Dark Side in the end.
So if that's what happened after four years of draining the swamp, what chance do you think you have when the Dems control the Executive and both Houses of Congress? It doesn't matter how many votes the GOP pick up. They're going to lose. Only a sucker would believe anything else. And you're not a sucker. You're not going to get angry and frustrated again and almost lose your mind from the pain of playing a rigged game that won't let you win no matter how hard you try. Been there, done that.
Like I said, I hate to be the one telling you. But you already knew, didn't you? You're smart.
_______________________
[Update, May 25 2022]
See what I mean? The Deep State is everywhere.
Look, don't shoot the messenger and all that, but you're wasting your time. Read this book and you'll see why.
Let's take it step by step. In 2020, Donald Trump won easily. But he had no chance against the Deep State, who didn't even work up a sweat turning his victory into a large majority for Biden. Although everyone knew the election was stolen, although there were any number of clues, evidence just melted in people's hands. Obviously the Dominion voting machines were fixed. Obviously hundreds of thousands of votes arrived in the middle of the night. Obviously illegals and dead people voted, usually multiple times. Obviously voters were brought in from other states by the busload. Obviously the laws were changed to benefit the Dems. Obviously the whole mail-in ballot thing was rigged.
But could any of this be proved? No. The Deep State had played a long game. It looked like the voting machines weren't even connected to the internet. It looked like they had been carefully vetted by bipartisan committees well in advance. It looked like those committees had given them a green light. It looked like there was a solid paper trail showing there was no fraud worth mentioning. It looked like the carefully crafted arguments put together by Trump's legal team were a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories. The Deep State had thought of everything. Even judges who had been appointed by Trump were in on the scam. Heck, even Mike Pence went over to the Dark Side in the end.
So if that's what happened after four years of draining the swamp, what chance do you think you have when the Dems control the Executive and both Houses of Congress? It doesn't matter how many votes the GOP pick up. They're going to lose. Only a sucker would believe anything else. And you're not a sucker. You're not going to get angry and frustrated again and almost lose your mind from the pain of playing a rigged game that won't let you win no matter how hard you try. Been there, done that.
Like I said, I hate to be the one telling you. But you already knew, didn't you? You're smart.
_______________________
[Update, May 25 2022]
See what I mean? The Deep State is everywhere.
February 26, 2025
A blunderbuss is a gun with a short, flared muzzle. A predecessor of the modern shotgun, the blunderbuss was known to be only effective at short range, causing lots of damage. At long range, the gun was worthless, firing buck-shot in a wide area that ultimately did little damage.
In business and politics, the Blunderbuss Strategy is often used to get people enraged about an issue by throwing out a lot of information, misinformation, and outright lies that sound pretty believable. It's only after stepping back, looking at the whole picture, and fact-checking that the argument falls apart. The intent, however, is not to reveal the truth of the argument but to sow confusion and enmity, thus throwing off the effectiveness of the other side of the argument.
In Mark Bowden/Matthew Teague's 2022 book "The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It", journalists Bowden/Teague dissect the attempts by trump and his followers to convince Americans that the election was stolen by a nation-wide conspiracy of Democrats, election officials, the media, and Joe Biden.
Trump's calculated campaign to create a sense of disenfranchisement and hostility toward the electoral process among his supporters was a Blunderbuss strategy, according to Bowden/Teague, employing false theories of "back-room" ballots, thousands of corrupt election workers, and millions of vote fraudsters. Republican legal "experts" like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell purposefully lied about Dominion voting machines and innocent election workers like Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, committing illegal ballot stuffing, all without any evidence whatsoever.
But the Blunderbuss Strategy doesn't need evidence to work. You just need to sound like you have evidence, and you need to be extremely loud about it.
The sad thing about Bowden/Teague's book is that---despite all the facts and evidence that the authors uncovered that proved trump to be corrupt, cruel, unconstitutional, and a danger to democracy---half of the country still believe that trump deserves to be president.
I guess the Blunderbuss Strategy works.
In business and politics, the Blunderbuss Strategy is often used to get people enraged about an issue by throwing out a lot of information, misinformation, and outright lies that sound pretty believable. It's only after stepping back, looking at the whole picture, and fact-checking that the argument falls apart. The intent, however, is not to reveal the truth of the argument but to sow confusion and enmity, thus throwing off the effectiveness of the other side of the argument.
In Mark Bowden/Matthew Teague's 2022 book "The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It", journalists Bowden/Teague dissect the attempts by trump and his followers to convince Americans that the election was stolen by a nation-wide conspiracy of Democrats, election officials, the media, and Joe Biden.
Trump's calculated campaign to create a sense of disenfranchisement and hostility toward the electoral process among his supporters was a Blunderbuss strategy, according to Bowden/Teague, employing false theories of "back-room" ballots, thousands of corrupt election workers, and millions of vote fraudsters. Republican legal "experts" like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell purposefully lied about Dominion voting machines and innocent election workers like Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, committing illegal ballot stuffing, all without any evidence whatsoever.
But the Blunderbuss Strategy doesn't need evidence to work. You just need to sound like you have evidence, and you need to be extremely loud about it.
The sad thing about Bowden/Teague's book is that---despite all the facts and evidence that the authors uncovered that proved trump to be corrupt, cruel, unconstitutional, and a danger to democracy---half of the country still believe that trump deserves to be president.
I guess the Blunderbuss Strategy works.
June 13, 2022
An engrossing and revealing investigation of the Trump Blunderbuss Strategy.
In The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague trace down and debunk unverified conspiracy theories surrounding the Election 2020.
For starters, the book exudes the anti-Trump sentiment, evident from the title alone. Therefore, the book can't be the first choice for Trump supporters.
The story veers in different directions - focuses on so-called swing states like Arizona or Wisconsin - to show the grassroots of the myths shouted out loud by Trump and his supporters to flip the election results. Sharpie-gate, defect Dominion voting machines, replacement of mailed pro-Trump bulletins with pro-Biden, etc. - all the accusations that made the headlines from November 2020 to January 2021. Moreover, the book portrays the people who were directly harassed and vilified for doing their job, as was the case with Ruby Freeman (Georgia) or Sheryl Guy (Michigan). The Republicans who certified the results didn't avoid being physically threatened/condemned as well, despite years of serving for the party (Dean Knudson or Aaron Van Langevelde, to name a few).
The book's outstanding achievement is the wording of what unites all Trump supporters, from the Proud Boys and QAnon to conservative housewives. It's not a solid political platform but a feeling, a feeling of being under siege, as if apathy means the destruction of America as we know it, with all its hard-gained freedoms. Trump equated himself to American democracy. These winnable tactics, applied in the country 'of the people, by the people,' deserve unanimous applause, be you a Trump or Biden supporter.
The only downside of the book is the dramatism at the beginning, which was abandoned as the story proceeded:
In the darkness of election morning, the first drop of water fell from the lip of a urinal in an Atlanta bathroom, splashing onto a black concrete floor.
But now this - water pouring from above - had brought the machinery of freedom to a stop.
I recommend the book as the all-encompassing research that leaves no doubts that the smoke of court appeals and slogans Trump used after the election hides no fire.
In The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague trace down and debunk unverified conspiracy theories surrounding the Election 2020.
For starters, the book exudes the anti-Trump sentiment, evident from the title alone. Therefore, the book can't be the first choice for Trump supporters.
The story veers in different directions - focuses on so-called swing states like Arizona or Wisconsin - to show the grassroots of the myths shouted out loud by Trump and his supporters to flip the election results. Sharpie-gate, defect Dominion voting machines, replacement of mailed pro-Trump bulletins with pro-Biden, etc. - all the accusations that made the headlines from November 2020 to January 2021. Moreover, the book portrays the people who were directly harassed and vilified for doing their job, as was the case with Ruby Freeman (Georgia) or Sheryl Guy (Michigan). The Republicans who certified the results didn't avoid being physically threatened/condemned as well, despite years of serving for the party (Dean Knudson or Aaron Van Langevelde, to name a few).
The book's outstanding achievement is the wording of what unites all Trump supporters, from the Proud Boys and QAnon to conservative housewives. It's not a solid political platform but a feeling, a feeling of being under siege, as if apathy means the destruction of America as we know it, with all its hard-gained freedoms. Trump equated himself to American democracy. These winnable tactics, applied in the country 'of the people, by the people,' deserve unanimous applause, be you a Trump or Biden supporter.
The only downside of the book is the dramatism at the beginning, which was abandoned as the story proceeded:
In the darkness of election morning, the first drop of water fell from the lip of a urinal in an Atlanta bathroom, splashing onto a black concrete floor.
But now this - water pouring from above - had brought the machinery of freedom to a stop.
I recommend the book as the all-encompassing research that leaves no doubts that the smoke of court appeals and slogans Trump used after the election hides no fire.
March 13, 2022
Mark Bowden has the ability to take a complex story and boil it down to it's essence and distill it in a simple narrative. I appreciate his application of these skills to an incredibly important event.
January 13, 2022
Bowden has again written an engaging investigative book in the steam of "Blackhawk Down" and "Killing Pablo."
Though the big picture is not surprising to anyone willing to think objectively about the years leading up to, and year since, 1.6.21 (a day of ignominy for the US), reading the details of the unhinged-from-reality, megalomaniacal behavior of the past POTUS is unsettling to the core. This man was and is dangerous to our democratic traditions. It should give any citizen with conservative leanings concern about the direction of the GOP, much of which has cowered into lemming-like obsequiousness to a self-obsessed tyrant.
Even so, in a not so unexpected way, the reporting bolstered my confidence in our democracy and constitution. Despite the unrelenting efforts of the past POTUS to Steal the Election, our democracy held firm. From the VP to the Supreme Court to Congress, the wall held. Just as- possibly more - importantly, it held at the local level. And at the local level, I mean the GOP local level.
Men and women who have been life-long GOPers and even supporters of the past POTUS' policies recognized blatant chicanery when it made an appearance. They held firm. Sadly, the MSM will not give these story lines the light of day. They prefer to castigate any breathing person who could ever remain in the GOP. The GOP, contrary to MSM caricatures, is not a monolithic voting bloc.
Though the big picture is not surprising to anyone willing to think objectively about the years leading up to, and year since, 1.6.21 (a day of ignominy for the US), reading the details of the unhinged-from-reality, megalomaniacal behavior of the past POTUS is unsettling to the core. This man was and is dangerous to our democratic traditions. It should give any citizen with conservative leanings concern about the direction of the GOP, much of which has cowered into lemming-like obsequiousness to a self-obsessed tyrant.
Even so, in a not so unexpected way, the reporting bolstered my confidence in our democracy and constitution. Despite the unrelenting efforts of the past POTUS to Steal the Election, our democracy held firm. From the VP to the Supreme Court to Congress, the wall held. Just as- possibly more - importantly, it held at the local level. And at the local level, I mean the GOP local level.
Men and women who have been life-long GOPers and even supporters of the past POTUS' policies recognized blatant chicanery when it made an appearance. They held firm. Sadly, the MSM will not give these story lines the light of day. They prefer to castigate any breathing person who could ever remain in the GOP. The GOP, contrary to MSM caricatures, is not a monolithic voting bloc.
June 12, 2022
Riveting. The authors maintain a narrow focus on the various allegations of 2020 election fraud and convincingly set about debunking each one. In this way the book is akin to the similarly excellent The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin (which dismantles various anti-vaxx allegations).
I've read several books about the Trump administration (read: Trump) and have been largely disappointed. News coverage was so extensive there were very few surprises or new insights. And they all seemed to boil down to his lying, scheming, bullying and whining. It seems odd to say but for me there were so many scandals it makes for dull reading. The Steal manages to avoid the traditional pitfalls by focusing on one discreet and historically significant issue and not using Trump as a tool to distract or overwhelm. He's obviously an essential element to the story but he only appears as much as necessary.
Much of the attention is focused on local election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the Trump loyalists who level their baseless allegations and assiduously resist all evidence to the contrary. Many of the local election officials have long histories of dedication to the Republican party but it doesn't prevent them from being vilified when they put duty before party. It's chilling in a way.
Early on the book mentions something that never seems to garner proper attention: Trump's assertions in 2016 that if HRC won the election it would be because of fraud but that if he won the election results would be legitimate. It effectively sets the stage for what's to come in 2020.
The kindle version had excellent links to the many interesting footnotes. Rather than the usual tiny asterisks or small numbers this book had underlined passages that were easy to access. That's particularly useful because the footnotes were worth reading along the way.
I've read several books about the Trump administration (read: Trump) and have been largely disappointed. News coverage was so extensive there were very few surprises or new insights. And they all seemed to boil down to his lying, scheming, bullying and whining. It seems odd to say but for me there were so many scandals it makes for dull reading. The Steal manages to avoid the traditional pitfalls by focusing on one discreet and historically significant issue and not using Trump as a tool to distract or overwhelm. He's obviously an essential element to the story but he only appears as much as necessary.
Much of the attention is focused on local election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and the Trump loyalists who level their baseless allegations and assiduously resist all evidence to the contrary. Many of the local election officials have long histories of dedication to the Republican party but it doesn't prevent them from being vilified when they put duty before party. It's chilling in a way.
Early on the book mentions something that never seems to garner proper attention: Trump's assertions in 2016 that if HRC won the election it would be because of fraud but that if he won the election results would be legitimate. It effectively sets the stage for what's to come in 2020.
The kindle version had excellent links to the many interesting footnotes. Rather than the usual tiny asterisks or small numbers this book had underlined passages that were easy to access. That's particularly useful because the footnotes were worth reading along the way.
February 4, 2023
Here's probably the only Trump Era journalism book worth reading, as it's on the only subject of any real political endurance: that is, when the ratcheting instability of the nation went into overdrive. Like the best journalism (or at-least the most engaging), the authors of The Steal discern and express the humanity of their cast of characters. Of course the evident heroes of the story are the many Trump-voting Republican workers and officials who could still see up from down and say so despite all of the incentives and threats urging otherwise; choosing party over personality, patriotism over party, and truth over narrative in carrying out, investigating, and certifying a fairly won election. If those who've upheld the country's institutional integrity continue to be purged from the GOP in favor of “anti-establishment” (read: destructive) performance artists willing to overturn anything at a mob's behest... whither America?
But the true-believers of the Steal are no moronic caricatures here. They're understood through their own words and actions as justice-hungry activists with that familiar state of mind: of one who already rests his heart and soul in the righteous conclusion, taking everything that comes as conclusive “evidence” of said conclusion. A few points of “evidence” don't pass the smell test? No matter, the liar's heart was in the right place, so they're true enough—in fact they're entirely true, and you're the liar for saying otherwise. (There's the sort of sentiment that exploded not so long ago in the riots around Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation.) The authors note that ignorance is easy enough for conspiracy theorists to exploit in this case when the ins and outs, tips and tricks, regularities and irregularities of our national election system aren't exactly intuitive.
They name-drop Discord among other internet platforms where a “community of knowledge” builds: outrageous theories, speculations, out-of-context photos, testimonies of false or very confused witnesses, fabricated confessions, and other such rich sources of information combine together while believers conform together in aggrieved solidarity. “Only a sucker believes the official story.” This thinking is generally to be expected of earnestly disappointed voters and some hackish politicians (see: the ol' Russian hacking narrative of 2016), but not of a sitting President with the responsibilities of a sitting President. The meandering legal battle taken on by the once great Giuliani is defined by the authors as a “blunderbuss strategy.” Vast swaths of absurd speculation are not a substitute for evidence in actual court (thus their failure) but, in energizing the narrative, “they had cumulative force. The idea was to buttress a preformed conviction, which is why Trump so often repeated, everybody knows.”
Of course, the culmination is in January 6th. This the authors convincingly characterize not as an insurrection, but as the tragic yet ridiculous aftermath of the real insurrection “in the courtrooms and the streets of the six swing states” where the sitting President and his loyalists desperately sought a legal pretext to demolish what the American system of government rests on: the peaceful transition of power. Among the lasting consequences of that attempt was the Democratic Senate Majority, delivered to the Biden administration on a silver platter by the perpetuation of the Steal narrative. And for what? “I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know, look, ultimately, I win, okay?” For vanity. With every falsehood, every riot, and every constitutional crisis minimized and justified by their associated party, the ratchet ratchets on.
But the true-believers of the Steal are no moronic caricatures here. They're understood through their own words and actions as justice-hungry activists with that familiar state of mind: of one who already rests his heart and soul in the righteous conclusion, taking everything that comes as conclusive “evidence” of said conclusion. A few points of “evidence” don't pass the smell test? No matter, the liar's heart was in the right place, so they're true enough—in fact they're entirely true, and you're the liar for saying otherwise. (There's the sort of sentiment that exploded not so long ago in the riots around Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation.) The authors note that ignorance is easy enough for conspiracy theorists to exploit in this case when the ins and outs, tips and tricks, regularities and irregularities of our national election system aren't exactly intuitive.
They name-drop Discord among other internet platforms where a “community of knowledge” builds: outrageous theories, speculations, out-of-context photos, testimonies of false or very confused witnesses, fabricated confessions, and other such rich sources of information combine together while believers conform together in aggrieved solidarity. “Only a sucker believes the official story.” This thinking is generally to be expected of earnestly disappointed voters and some hackish politicians (see: the ol' Russian hacking narrative of 2016), but not of a sitting President with the responsibilities of a sitting President. The meandering legal battle taken on by the once great Giuliani is defined by the authors as a “blunderbuss strategy.” Vast swaths of absurd speculation are not a substitute for evidence in actual court (thus their failure) but, in energizing the narrative, “they had cumulative force. The idea was to buttress a preformed conviction, which is why Trump so often repeated, everybody knows.”
Of course, the culmination is in January 6th. This the authors convincingly characterize not as an insurrection, but as the tragic yet ridiculous aftermath of the real insurrection “in the courtrooms and the streets of the six swing states” where the sitting President and his loyalists desperately sought a legal pretext to demolish what the American system of government rests on: the peaceful transition of power. Among the lasting consequences of that attempt was the Democratic Senate Majority, delivered to the Biden administration on a silver platter by the perpetuation of the Steal narrative. And for what? “I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know, look, ultimately, I win, okay?” For vanity. With every falsehood, every riot, and every constitutional crisis minimized and justified by their associated party, the ratchet ratchets on.
February 24, 2022
Excellent. Its focus is on us little guys who try to do the right thing.
April 4, 2022
A deep study of the lack of foundation from the "Stop the Steal" believers and their "energetic suspicion". This includes a deep dive in the Antrim County elections where there was no there there. Also covered is waffling Pennsylvania mail carrier and Project Veritas subject Richard Hopkins unable to back up fraud claims. Another crooked lane gone down is how Rudy Giuliani's involvement with Trump's post-election lawsuits resulted in his law license getting suspended.
June 22, 2022
Difficult to say I enjoyed this book. Deeply disturbing telling of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by sociopath Donald Trump & his enablers and supporters. I’ve read a lot about our ex-sociopath in chief and the timing of reading this while watching the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol was interesting to say the least. How any sane person could read this (and other books about Trump) and still support Trump is completely beyond me. Yet many remain silent or ever worse supportive. He has shanghaied the Republican Party and alienated many long time honest and sincere members of what was the party of Reagan.
Thankfully there were a few Republicans who resisted and fought off the pressure to do what Trump & his minions wanted. The system worked, but continues to be at risk as long as Trump remains viable. God help us if this man actually runs for office again in 2024.
I recommend reading this book and This Will Not Pass to get a clear picture of where we’ve been, where we are & where we’re headed if we don’t do something different moving forward. Time to read a thriller or mystery, because after reading this book, I need a Trump break & a shower.
Thankfully there were a few Republicans who resisted and fought off the pressure to do what Trump & his minions wanted. The system worked, but continues to be at risk as long as Trump remains viable. God help us if this man actually runs for office again in 2024.
I recommend reading this book and This Will Not Pass to get a clear picture of where we’ve been, where we are & where we’re headed if we don’t do something different moving forward. Time to read a thriller or mystery, because after reading this book, I need a Trump break & a shower.
January 8, 2022
A must read for any looking to gain insight into the 2020 presidential election and the events after leading up to the Jan 6 riot. It provides another glimpse into a polarized America and some of the unsung heroes keeping it together.
March 7, 2024
Non-fiction. 3 stars.
Some of this info about the end of Nov. 2020 POTUS
election Trump vs Biden & it's aftermath, I'd already
read in other books. The strength of the authors was
interviewing Secretaries of State (w/ responsibility for
election integrity in their state). Als0 showing the POV
of volunteer Republican election "watchers" (some
overreacted to what they observed/ made assumptions
or demanded a deeper role than the state allowed for)
& county election leaders and office holders in 'battle-
ground states:' Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona,
Georgia, PA. & Texas. The local election workers &
leaders & state office holders, did their jobs, even when
Trump supporters tried to intimidate or threaten them.
Kudos to those workers. If this election had 'widespread
voter fraud' why did DJT and co. focus on only battle-
ground states? Why did they ignore the other offices on
the ballot? They thought vote totals for Congress etc.
accurate?
Joe Biden's general counsel, Bob Bauer, reminded
him that "all the president (#45)'s bluster and legal
challenges were not about the law or about the truth,
they were about misinformation." (44% mark).
Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, stated
that 28,200 Georgia voters skipped selecting a person
for President on the ballot but voted for all other offices
on the ballot. (51% mark). Ironic because President DJT
after the election, pressured Brad to find 11,780 votes
for Trump "because we won the state (untrue)" (46%
mark). The Fulton Co. DA is investigating Pres. DJT's
efforts to influence the election in Ga. (51%).
I've experienced election 2020-fatigue & plan on taking
a breather on reading about this topic.
Revised.
Some of this info about the end of Nov. 2020 POTUS
election Trump vs Biden & it's aftermath, I'd already
read in other books. The strength of the authors was
interviewing Secretaries of State (w/ responsibility for
election integrity in their state). Als0 showing the POV
of volunteer Republican election "watchers" (some
overreacted to what they observed/ made assumptions
or demanded a deeper role than the state allowed for)
& county election leaders and office holders in 'battle-
ground states:' Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona,
Georgia, PA. & Texas. The local election workers &
leaders & state office holders, did their jobs, even when
Trump supporters tried to intimidate or threaten them.
Kudos to those workers. If this election had 'widespread
voter fraud' why did DJT and co. focus on only battle-
ground states? Why did they ignore the other offices on
the ballot? They thought vote totals for Congress etc.
accurate?
Joe Biden's general counsel, Bob Bauer, reminded
him that "all the president (#45)'s bluster and legal
challenges were not about the law or about the truth,
they were about misinformation." (44% mark).
Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, stated
that 28,200 Georgia voters skipped selecting a person
for President on the ballot but voted for all other offices
on the ballot. (51% mark). Ironic because President DJT
after the election, pressured Brad to find 11,780 votes
for Trump "because we won the state (untrue)" (46%
mark). The Fulton Co. DA is investigating Pres. DJT's
efforts to influence the election in Ga. (51%).
I've experienced election 2020-fatigue & plan on taking
a breather on reading about this topic.
Revised.
November 11, 2021
Totally biased to one narrative. How did we go from one side screaming about widespread voter fraud one year, to another side insisting upon it another year? - oh, but it's ok now because we obtained the outcome we wanted. I think if both sides were honest and truly took a look at these voting machines, we would find some huge problems. But nay, it won't happen, because too many are too afraid that the outcome may change, so therefore let's not really take a look at what is going on... A total manipulation of the American people for which it seems there will be no justice.
December 18, 2022
This book is interesting because it gives close-up portrayals of the ordinary, unknown fools and heroes involved in the 2020 election drama. For every idiot claiming fraud, pursuing audits and lawsuits, and promulgating the Big Lie, there is a rational (usually local traditionally Republican election official) who endured the sudden media glare and threats to themselves and their families, and stood upright against the madness. The book flies by because it reads a bit like a novel. Well done.
February 21, 2022
Trump Era insanity, the gift that keeps on giving. Bowden paints a detailed picture of what went on in the so-called battleground states during the election, lays out the various charges of voter fraud, rigging, and whatever else a certain number of deranged minds came up with, and methodically takes them apart. Very readable and to the point.
January 20, 2022
Bowden takes a look at events in six states related to the November, 2020 presidential election. Events that were magnified and scrutinized until they became woven into the Trump inspired fantasy that the election was rampant with fraud.
Some of these events I had heard of - and some were new to me. I was saddened by the vitriol used to describe the actions of poll workers across the country who were just doing their job. I smiled at the memory of Rudy Giuliani holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping in Philadelphia, shook my head over the pressure put on Brad Raffensperger as Georgia's Secretary of State and inwardly cheered when Clint Hickman of Arizona said he is now disappointed in the former President.
It amazes me that over one year later, people continue to believe the election was "stolen". Bowden did a fair job of presenting the story. I pray that 20 years from now the 2020 presidential election will be a whimsical memory of a time when our president was a demagogue and a bully. Sadly, I am afraid that the face of democracy in the United States has changed - and not for the better.
Some of these events I had heard of - and some were new to me. I was saddened by the vitriol used to describe the actions of poll workers across the country who were just doing their job. I smiled at the memory of Rudy Giuliani holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping in Philadelphia, shook my head over the pressure put on Brad Raffensperger as Georgia's Secretary of State and inwardly cheered when Clint Hickman of Arizona said he is now disappointed in the former President.
It amazes me that over one year later, people continue to believe the election was "stolen". Bowden did a fair job of presenting the story. I pray that 20 years from now the 2020 presidential election will be a whimsical memory of a time when our president was a demagogue and a bully. Sadly, I am afraid that the face of democracy in the United States has changed - and not for the better.
October 5, 2022
This is the worst kind of book. It makes a case that an uncritical reader would believe, but that is so obviously imbecilic to anyone who’s comparing to basic facts that an author like Bowden could have only written it to deceive. It, sometimes with subtle turns of phrase that make the statement technically true, leads readers to believe that laws that one could find were introduced in 2018 and signed into law early enough in 2019 that no one had yet suspected that anything was going on in Wuhan, to COVID. It blames counties that voted on their budgets for 2020 in November 2019 for not having budgets that address such developments.
The book criticizes some people who fully deserve it. That might be most it criticizes. But, it’s a willfully dishonest work in enough regards that even where one suspects it’s right, they couldn’t stake anything on its claims.
The book criticizes some people who fully deserve it. That might be most it criticizes. But, it’s a willfully dishonest work in enough regards that even where one suspects it’s right, they couldn’t stake anything on its claims.
January 14, 2022
A decent enough read, but it didn't feel up to Bowden's past standards.
Some highlights:
1. If you go into an election convinced its fraudulent, you're probably going to see fraud everywhere.
2. There are people walking the earth that never once seem to ask: Maybe I'm wrong?
3. Ironically, the net effect was for Republicans to do a lot of damage to... fellow Republicans.
An easy read, but no great insight.
February 3, 2022
This is an interesting read. It focuses on the period of The Steal. The manner in which it is written is challenging. You have sections then in each section perspectives by state then drill down further to individual people involved. It can be difficult to keep it all straight. Saying that you see events from individuals point of view as it impacted them directly. If you want to hear those individual voices this is a good read. If you want a bigger picture then take a pass on this one.
April 8, 2024
Trump pressed his case on three levels: popular, hammering away in interviews and press conferences and on his social media platforms; legal , the lawsuit blizzard; and political, leaning on elected and appointed officials in key states who might be persuaded to override the numbers and block certification of the vote.
Good ole folks
The Steal revolves around particular claims of voter fraud in swing states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia. The focal point in each state is generally a Republican individual who claims fraud, and the almost invariably Republican administrators who chose to uphold and certify the results.
As a straight explanation of those claims, this book is excellent at “debunking”. It is easy to follow and reasonably “balanced” as it gives space to the claims then explains why they are inaccurate.
The book also gives a brief overview of the three pronged strategy of convincing the public, winning the courts, and/or maneuvering Republican administrators or legislators to set the results in the swing states aside. There are useful appendices with quotes from House/Senate legislators who voted against accepting the results of certain states, and the results from the court cases.
Blinkers
This is a good introductory text to “The Steal”. However it suffers from a lack of direct sourcing other than at the lowest level. There’s little firsthand quotes (other than from published articles) of those heading Trump’s strategy. This is not shocking, those individuals almost certainly weighed up their own book deals. It’s a limitation I can live with, but you are going to need to read some more detailed summary texts once everyone who can make a buck selling their story has done so. This limitation extends to the January 6 riots and the lead up to it – we get no real insight into the plan and the developments on the day as events moved away from the characters that The Steal focussed on. There is plenty of reporting on that, so it is not essential – but it means you only get a small picture in The Steal of what happened.
There is something about the style that niggles me, with a tendency to laud the Republicans who chose to certify and stand by the results. I get the results were against their self-interest from a political standpoint, but I feel that a lot of Republicans get put on the pedestal for complying with the law. Plenty of Democratic supporters were involved in administering the results all over the country, yet they get no credit simply because they didn’t have conspiracist voters seeking to change the results. I get the focus is “The Steal” but it still leaves me feeling inadequate, and there is a lack of reflection on to what extent these outstanding Republicans played a part up to the vote counting. There were frankly cringe comments lauding small businessmen and dairy farmers. These were people who did their job in their administrative roles, but we don’t need to scratch the earth bowing to them.
It will not settle any debates, but The Steal does provide you with some grounding to understanding what happened in 2020 at the voting level, explaining how certain conspiracies arose and the individuals who drove them, and were used by the GOP generally.
Good ole folks
The Steal revolves around particular claims of voter fraud in swing states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia. The focal point in each state is generally a Republican individual who claims fraud, and the almost invariably Republican administrators who chose to uphold and certify the results.
As a straight explanation of those claims, this book is excellent at “debunking”. It is easy to follow and reasonably “balanced” as it gives space to the claims then explains why they are inaccurate.
The book also gives a brief overview of the three pronged strategy of convincing the public, winning the courts, and/or maneuvering Republican administrators or legislators to set the results in the swing states aside. There are useful appendices with quotes from House/Senate legislators who voted against accepting the results of certain states, and the results from the court cases.
Blinkers
This is a good introductory text to “The Steal”. However it suffers from a lack of direct sourcing other than at the lowest level. There’s little firsthand quotes (other than from published articles) of those heading Trump’s strategy. This is not shocking, those individuals almost certainly weighed up their own book deals. It’s a limitation I can live with, but you are going to need to read some more detailed summary texts once everyone who can make a buck selling their story has done so. This limitation extends to the January 6 riots and the lead up to it – we get no real insight into the plan and the developments on the day as events moved away from the characters that The Steal focussed on. There is plenty of reporting on that, so it is not essential – but it means you only get a small picture in The Steal of what happened.
There is something about the style that niggles me, with a tendency to laud the Republicans who chose to certify and stand by the results. I get the results were against their self-interest from a political standpoint, but I feel that a lot of Republicans get put on the pedestal for complying with the law. Plenty of Democratic supporters were involved in administering the results all over the country, yet they get no credit simply because they didn’t have conspiracist voters seeking to change the results. I get the focus is “The Steal” but it still leaves me feeling inadequate, and there is a lack of reflection on to what extent these outstanding Republicans played a part up to the vote counting. There were frankly cringe comments lauding small businessmen and dairy farmers. These were people who did their job in their administrative roles, but we don’t need to scratch the earth bowing to them.
It will not settle any debates, but The Steal does provide you with some grounding to understanding what happened in 2020 at the voting level, explaining how certain conspiracies arose and the individuals who drove them, and were used by the GOP generally.
September 23, 2022
I’m a big fan of Bowden but this book was just ok.
It was a bit choppy choppy with all the different characters and could really have to with chapters/segments breaking down the whole events of each character instead of throwing them around throughout the book.
It was interesting to see just to what extent Trump tried to cheat the system and how many of his Neanderthalic followers believed every single lie that he told them simple because he kept repeating the lie over and over.
I would have liked this book to have gone into more depth about what was going on at the top, especially Pence’s part in all of this, which was really just reduced to a single paragraph near the end of the book.
And speaking of the end.
The last 70 pages of a 300 page book is just notes and a list of people who challenged the election results. I doubt a single person read those pages, as they don’t add anything and literally are there to just make the book look bigger.
And how on Earth do you have 70 pages of filler and then have the gall to not include an Index and claim it was because of time constraints? It doesn’t take that long to write an Index, as you should be doing it as you’re writing the book, and what exactly is the editorial team doing if not working on the book? Very bizarre.
But back to the book itself. It’s definitely Bowden’s worse book by far. It just doesn’t really dig deep enough into the issue and whilst you finish the book and do learn some bits and bobs about the steal lie, but just not enough compared to how in depth Bowden’s books usually are.
It was a bit choppy choppy with all the different characters and could really have to with chapters/segments breaking down the whole events of each character instead of throwing them around throughout the book.
It was interesting to see just to what extent Trump tried to cheat the system and how many of his Neanderthalic followers believed every single lie that he told them simple because he kept repeating the lie over and over.
I would have liked this book to have gone into more depth about what was going on at the top, especially Pence’s part in all of this, which was really just reduced to a single paragraph near the end of the book.
And speaking of the end.
The last 70 pages of a 300 page book is just notes and a list of people who challenged the election results. I doubt a single person read those pages, as they don’t add anything and literally are there to just make the book look bigger.
And how on Earth do you have 70 pages of filler and then have the gall to not include an Index and claim it was because of time constraints? It doesn’t take that long to write an Index, as you should be doing it as you’re writing the book, and what exactly is the editorial team doing if not working on the book? Very bizarre.
But back to the book itself. It’s definitely Bowden’s worse book by far. It just doesn’t really dig deep enough into the issue and whilst you finish the book and do learn some bits and bobs about the steal lie, but just not enough compared to how in depth Bowden’s books usually are.
August 24, 2022
Excellent, comprehensive account of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. If you’re not worried about 2024, you’re not paying attention.
January 14, 2023
The only book that deals with Donald Trump that I could tolerate reading, thanks to the gifted writing of Mark Bowden.
April 15, 2024
AN EXCELLENT AND INFORMATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ‘STOP THE STEAL’ CLAIMS
[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 303-page hardcover edition.]
Authors Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague wrote in the first chapter of this 2022 book, “The truth is that ardent Trumpists … were outsiders, even with the local Republican Party. [The local] GOP organization viewed them the way mainstream churches viewed evangelicals. They shared the same religion but not the same zeal. Trump rallies filled [supporters] with exhilarating passion. At them, [they] felt engulfed in fellowship, immersed in a rising, egalitarian, class- and color-blind tide of those who believed America was pretty near perfect exactly as it was and had been. Trump had beaten the staid old republican guard, who had failed to grasp the urgency of the moment.” (Pg. 9)
They explain, “in recent years, more sophisticated technologies have allowed election officials to sift mountains of data to search for patterns of illegal votes across entire populations. These safeguards so thoroughly snuffed out illicit voting that in the weeks after the 2016 election, when the Washington Post combed legal records searching for confirmed cases of fraudulent presidential votes, the paper found exactly three; a woman in Iowa voted twice for Donald Trump, a man in Texas voted twice for Trump, and a woman in Illinois tried to vote for Trump on behalf of her dead husband… None of these votes were counted. Others almost certainly went undetected, and authorities may have discovered straggling cases later, but the report made Trump’s claims---ballot boxes stuffed with millions of illegal votes---a farce.” (Pg. 21)
They suggest, “President Trump had discouraged his supporters from voting by mail and may have cost himself reelection because of it. He had warned, falsely, that mail ballots were particularly vulnerable to fraud. But voting by mail was easier and involved no risk of COVID exposure. In the end, far fewer Republicans mailed in their votes than Democrats… Because of this, a ‘blue shift,’ a leap in Biden’s favor following Election Day, had been widely foreseen. To Trumpists, this would look exactly like what their candidate had predicted, a win snatched away by the vote-counting process---the STEAL.” (Pg. 28-29) Later, they add, “When the president had suddenly inveighed against [voting by mail], it came as a surprise to the state’s Republican leaders. Not long before, they had mailed pamphlets to every GOP voter in the state encouraging it, with a picture of Donald Trump on the front giving two thumbs up.” (Pg. 37)
They state, “Democracy depends on a modicum of trust. After each election, the winning party is empowered to govern until the next vote, which it is empowered to manage… There were built-in safeguards to prevent the party in power from subverting the next contest… Judges settled disputes. To reject this time-honored process was, at heart, a rejection of democracy itself… democracy must settle for majority rule, which requires… this modicum of trust.” (Pg. 51)
They recount, “In Michigan, private citizens called poll challengers observe the vote count and can object to the validity of a mail-in ballot and its handling. At the TCF Center, each party was allowed 134 challengers. A full complement of Republicans had already entered the building… The call proliferated across social media, and soon a crowd gathered outside the TCF Center. They arrived convinced that... ‘The steal is on!’ … inside election officials realized they had a problem. Tension among vote counters and poll challengers had mounted throughout the day as the tally for Biden rose. That tension was exacerbated by subtexts old and new in Detroit. Strife had long simmered between the majority-black city and Michigan’s white Republicans… And the center grew overcrowded… officials had allowed TOO MANY poll challengers, about two hundred from each party… they needed to reduce that number to 134. So they locked the center’s doors, and as excess poll challengers left during the afternoon, new ones weren’t allowed in for either party. The crowd outside interpreted this as confirmation Republicans were being excluded, and the atmosphere grew volatile. Protesters … shouted slogans like ‘Stop the count,’ and made videos of the counters inside… Rumors spread of subversion and sabotage, of fake ballots smuggled in by a hand-pulled wagon and later by industrial van.” (Pg. 60-61)
They add, “Hoopes had shown him a picture … [of] the county’s voting machine warehouse supervisor, arriving with a clear bag filled with USB drives… What was he doing if not delivering more false Biden votes?... Each voting machine … contained a USB drive… election procedure called for these drives to be removed… and delivered to the counting center packaged with the actual paper ballots… It seemed that [some] machine operators had failed to remove the scanning machines on election night. So some bags of paper ballots had arrived without them. [The official] retrieved them. It happens every election… There was more, for those with eyes to see. A group of no-doubt progressive student volunteers were observed … actually FILLING IN ballots by hand. A craftily edited video of this was uploaded to social media, presented as proof that Democrats were filling in false ballots… Of course, for this there was also a benign explanation. Ballots rejected by the scanning machines were… being hand-copied so that they could be entered and counted…” (Pg. 76-77)
They note, “Anybody who followed Arizona politics closely… could see plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons why Trump had lost. Many in … [the] Hispanic population resented his base characterization of Latino immigrants. His ugly tweets and impolitic behavior had also alienated many of the state’s mainstream Republicans… Many Arizonians had been disgusted by Trump’s ad hominem attacks on the state’s beloved late senator and war hero John McCain…. The Mormon Church, a growing factor in state politics, had urged its followers not to support him.” (Pg. 86-87)
They point out, “Significant fraud, even in a single district, would … show dramatically… signaling the need for a recount or an investigation. For instance, if a precinct in Philadelphia… had ten thousand more Biden votes than registered voters, those numbers would stand out and could be checked. If a precinct … 80 percent Republican, had suddenly cast 80 percent Democratic votes, this too, would stand out.” (Pg. 103)
They report, “Neither [Trump nor Fox anchor Maria] Bartiromo paused to drill down on a specific claim. Nor did Guiliani or other high-profile Trumpists. Proof was of secondary importance. It was quantity that mattered. So many. It was why they seized on every pretense, no matter how minor, speculative, contradictory, or preposterous… it mattered little whether you could prove this one or that one. They had cumulative force… Despite its failures in court, where evidence actually mattered, The Steal movement gathered steam through the holidays.” (Pg. 148)
They state, “[Trump] wanted the Justice Department to lend its authority to these conjectures. He called [acting Attorney General Jeffrey] Rosen nearly every day… [He] told the president that the Justice Department could not and would not ‘snap its fingers and change the outcome.’ Trump said he understood, but he wanted the agency to … ‘just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. congressmen.’ … In politics, just the announcement of an investigation could be damaging. In both cases, the goal was not the truth but to raise doubts… about the integrity of the 2020 election.” (Pg. 194)
They note, “There were many legitimate reasons for names and addresses to show up twice in the voter rolls… If ballots had been mailed to John Smith Sr., John Smith Jr., and John Smith III, all at the same address, [a Trump supporter] counted all three as one person… Some women received ballots mailed to both their maiden name and their married name. [The Trump supporter] concluded that such women voted twice, although there is no evidence that any of them did… [There were many] safeguards in place to prevent double voting. [Trump supporter’s] central [claim] was the assumption that because a voter may have had the OPPORTUNITY to vote twice, she had.” (Pg. 196-197)
The report, “The flailing president then adopted a fringe legal view penned by John Eastman, one of his lawyers, that Vice President Mike Pence… could reject the Electoral College results… and simply proclaim Trump the victor. This is surely the most seditious document to emerge from the White House in American history… Pence, despite years of loyal servitude… told the president he did not have the power to do it. This left Trump only one avenue. He could still lead people into the streets… Pence could still halt Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. If the vice president wouldn’t to it, maybe Trump’s army, ‘the people,’ could. Trump summoned his eighty-nine million Twitter followers to the capital… tweeting, ‘JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!’” (Pg. 198-199)
On January 2, Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: “He accused one individual in particular of stealing [votes]. ‘We had at least eighteen thousand… voters having to do with Ruby Freeman… She’s a vote scammer, a professional … hustler, Ruby Freeman.’… A video circulated of her working at the election center, where hauling ballots was part of the task, and claimed to show her and her daughter … stealing Trump votes. Some people apparently believed it simply because the two women were black…” (Pg. 200-201)
They recount, “as Trump faced impeachment for instigating all this, his supporters rallied to defend the indefensible. Many argued that those who broke into and sacked the US Capitol has not been real Trump supporters but agents of the omnipresent Antifa disguised. Or, the rioters had not been rioters but ordinary tourists who had grown rambunctious. But no serious person felt the need to rebut such nonsense. The story was told plainly enough in the video recordings, photos, and boasts posted by the rioters themselves… Many have been charged with crimes, and some already convicted and sentenced to prison.” (Pg. 208)
They conclude, “And yet, the belief persists. To question it is heresy… Distrust. If there was anything like genius in Donald Trump’s methods, this was it. Democracy depends on that modicum of trust it takes to bring competing parties together after an election to govern. Without it, there can be no majority rule. With the vote itself discredited, the will of the people is sacrificed to a mob of self-styled ‘patriots' who have decided that they and only they speak for everyone---the opposite of democracy… [Trump] mobilized that distrust to try to stay in power. This failed, stopped by the integrity of hundreds of obscure Americans from every walk of life… Many of them were Republicans, some were Trump supporters… they refused to betray their sworn duty to their office and their country. They were the true patriots. They saw The Steal for what it was: a fraud on the United States of America.” (Pg. 210-211)
Of the ‘audit’ of Arizona, they note, “the partisan ‘audit’ failed to produce the desired result… While the recount showed once more that Trump had lost Maricopa County … by a slightly larger margin than officially reported, it nevertheless concluded that the election results were … possibly flawed… the results were ‘very close to the margin of error.’ … For the elected officials who had certified the results, it was a clear vindication. If a group created and funded by Trumpists, with the stated intent of finding Biden’s victory fraudulent, had failed so plainly, who could continue to believe it was so? Trump, for one…” (Pg. 217)
This marvelous book will be ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously studying the 2020 election.
[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 303-page hardcover edition.]
Authors Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague wrote in the first chapter of this 2022 book, “The truth is that ardent Trumpists … were outsiders, even with the local Republican Party. [The local] GOP organization viewed them the way mainstream churches viewed evangelicals. They shared the same religion but not the same zeal. Trump rallies filled [supporters] with exhilarating passion. At them, [they] felt engulfed in fellowship, immersed in a rising, egalitarian, class- and color-blind tide of those who believed America was pretty near perfect exactly as it was and had been. Trump had beaten the staid old republican guard, who had failed to grasp the urgency of the moment.” (Pg. 9)
They explain, “in recent years, more sophisticated technologies have allowed election officials to sift mountains of data to search for patterns of illegal votes across entire populations. These safeguards so thoroughly snuffed out illicit voting that in the weeks after the 2016 election, when the Washington Post combed legal records searching for confirmed cases of fraudulent presidential votes, the paper found exactly three; a woman in Iowa voted twice for Donald Trump, a man in Texas voted twice for Trump, and a woman in Illinois tried to vote for Trump on behalf of her dead husband… None of these votes were counted. Others almost certainly went undetected, and authorities may have discovered straggling cases later, but the report made Trump’s claims---ballot boxes stuffed with millions of illegal votes---a farce.” (Pg. 21)
They suggest, “President Trump had discouraged his supporters from voting by mail and may have cost himself reelection because of it. He had warned, falsely, that mail ballots were particularly vulnerable to fraud. But voting by mail was easier and involved no risk of COVID exposure. In the end, far fewer Republicans mailed in their votes than Democrats… Because of this, a ‘blue shift,’ a leap in Biden’s favor following Election Day, had been widely foreseen. To Trumpists, this would look exactly like what their candidate had predicted, a win snatched away by the vote-counting process---the STEAL.” (Pg. 28-29) Later, they add, “When the president had suddenly inveighed against [voting by mail], it came as a surprise to the state’s Republican leaders. Not long before, they had mailed pamphlets to every GOP voter in the state encouraging it, with a picture of Donald Trump on the front giving two thumbs up.” (Pg. 37)
They state, “Democracy depends on a modicum of trust. After each election, the winning party is empowered to govern until the next vote, which it is empowered to manage… There were built-in safeguards to prevent the party in power from subverting the next contest… Judges settled disputes. To reject this time-honored process was, at heart, a rejection of democracy itself… democracy must settle for majority rule, which requires… this modicum of trust.” (Pg. 51)
They recount, “In Michigan, private citizens called poll challengers observe the vote count and can object to the validity of a mail-in ballot and its handling. At the TCF Center, each party was allowed 134 challengers. A full complement of Republicans had already entered the building… The call proliferated across social media, and soon a crowd gathered outside the TCF Center. They arrived convinced that... ‘The steal is on!’ … inside election officials realized they had a problem. Tension among vote counters and poll challengers had mounted throughout the day as the tally for Biden rose. That tension was exacerbated by subtexts old and new in Detroit. Strife had long simmered between the majority-black city and Michigan’s white Republicans… And the center grew overcrowded… officials had allowed TOO MANY poll challengers, about two hundred from each party… they needed to reduce that number to 134. So they locked the center’s doors, and as excess poll challengers left during the afternoon, new ones weren’t allowed in for either party. The crowd outside interpreted this as confirmation Republicans were being excluded, and the atmosphere grew volatile. Protesters … shouted slogans like ‘Stop the count,’ and made videos of the counters inside… Rumors spread of subversion and sabotage, of fake ballots smuggled in by a hand-pulled wagon and later by industrial van.” (Pg. 60-61)
They add, “Hoopes had shown him a picture … [of] the county’s voting machine warehouse supervisor, arriving with a clear bag filled with USB drives… What was he doing if not delivering more false Biden votes?... Each voting machine … contained a USB drive… election procedure called for these drives to be removed… and delivered to the counting center packaged with the actual paper ballots… It seemed that [some] machine operators had failed to remove the scanning machines on election night. So some bags of paper ballots had arrived without them. [The official] retrieved them. It happens every election… There was more, for those with eyes to see. A group of no-doubt progressive student volunteers were observed … actually FILLING IN ballots by hand. A craftily edited video of this was uploaded to social media, presented as proof that Democrats were filling in false ballots… Of course, for this there was also a benign explanation. Ballots rejected by the scanning machines were… being hand-copied so that they could be entered and counted…” (Pg. 76-77)
They note, “Anybody who followed Arizona politics closely… could see plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons why Trump had lost. Many in … [the] Hispanic population resented his base characterization of Latino immigrants. His ugly tweets and impolitic behavior had also alienated many of the state’s mainstream Republicans… Many Arizonians had been disgusted by Trump’s ad hominem attacks on the state’s beloved late senator and war hero John McCain…. The Mormon Church, a growing factor in state politics, had urged its followers not to support him.” (Pg. 86-87)
They point out, “Significant fraud, even in a single district, would … show dramatically… signaling the need for a recount or an investigation. For instance, if a precinct in Philadelphia… had ten thousand more Biden votes than registered voters, those numbers would stand out and could be checked. If a precinct … 80 percent Republican, had suddenly cast 80 percent Democratic votes, this too, would stand out.” (Pg. 103)
They report, “Neither [Trump nor Fox anchor Maria] Bartiromo paused to drill down on a specific claim. Nor did Guiliani or other high-profile Trumpists. Proof was of secondary importance. It was quantity that mattered. So many. It was why they seized on every pretense, no matter how minor, speculative, contradictory, or preposterous… it mattered little whether you could prove this one or that one. They had cumulative force… Despite its failures in court, where evidence actually mattered, The Steal movement gathered steam through the holidays.” (Pg. 148)
They state, “[Trump] wanted the Justice Department to lend its authority to these conjectures. He called [acting Attorney General Jeffrey] Rosen nearly every day… [He] told the president that the Justice Department could not and would not ‘snap its fingers and change the outcome.’ Trump said he understood, but he wanted the agency to … ‘just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. congressmen.’ … In politics, just the announcement of an investigation could be damaging. In both cases, the goal was not the truth but to raise doubts… about the integrity of the 2020 election.” (Pg. 194)
They note, “There were many legitimate reasons for names and addresses to show up twice in the voter rolls… If ballots had been mailed to John Smith Sr., John Smith Jr., and John Smith III, all at the same address, [a Trump supporter] counted all three as one person… Some women received ballots mailed to both their maiden name and their married name. [The Trump supporter] concluded that such women voted twice, although there is no evidence that any of them did… [There were many] safeguards in place to prevent double voting. [Trump supporter’s] central [claim] was the assumption that because a voter may have had the OPPORTUNITY to vote twice, she had.” (Pg. 196-197)
The report, “The flailing president then adopted a fringe legal view penned by John Eastman, one of his lawyers, that Vice President Mike Pence… could reject the Electoral College results… and simply proclaim Trump the victor. This is surely the most seditious document to emerge from the White House in American history… Pence, despite years of loyal servitude… told the president he did not have the power to do it. This left Trump only one avenue. He could still lead people into the streets… Pence could still halt Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. If the vice president wouldn’t to it, maybe Trump’s army, ‘the people,’ could. Trump summoned his eighty-nine million Twitter followers to the capital… tweeting, ‘JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!’” (Pg. 198-199)
On January 2, Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: “He accused one individual in particular of stealing [votes]. ‘We had at least eighteen thousand… voters having to do with Ruby Freeman… She’s a vote scammer, a professional … hustler, Ruby Freeman.’… A video circulated of her working at the election center, where hauling ballots was part of the task, and claimed to show her and her daughter … stealing Trump votes. Some people apparently believed it simply because the two women were black…” (Pg. 200-201)
They recount, “as Trump faced impeachment for instigating all this, his supporters rallied to defend the indefensible. Many argued that those who broke into and sacked the US Capitol has not been real Trump supporters but agents of the omnipresent Antifa disguised. Or, the rioters had not been rioters but ordinary tourists who had grown rambunctious. But no serious person felt the need to rebut such nonsense. The story was told plainly enough in the video recordings, photos, and boasts posted by the rioters themselves… Many have been charged with crimes, and some already convicted and sentenced to prison.” (Pg. 208)
They conclude, “And yet, the belief persists. To question it is heresy… Distrust. If there was anything like genius in Donald Trump’s methods, this was it. Democracy depends on that modicum of trust it takes to bring competing parties together after an election to govern. Without it, there can be no majority rule. With the vote itself discredited, the will of the people is sacrificed to a mob of self-styled ‘patriots' who have decided that they and only they speak for everyone---the opposite of democracy… [Trump] mobilized that distrust to try to stay in power. This failed, stopped by the integrity of hundreds of obscure Americans from every walk of life… Many of them were Republicans, some were Trump supporters… they refused to betray their sworn duty to their office and their country. They were the true patriots. They saw The Steal for what it was: a fraud on the United States of America.” (Pg. 210-211)
Of the ‘audit’ of Arizona, they note, “the partisan ‘audit’ failed to produce the desired result… While the recount showed once more that Trump had lost Maricopa County … by a slightly larger margin than officially reported, it nevertheless concluded that the election results were … possibly flawed… the results were ‘very close to the margin of error.’ … For the elected officials who had certified the results, it was a clear vindication. If a group created and funded by Trumpists, with the stated intent of finding Biden’s victory fraudulent, had failed so plainly, who could continue to believe it was so? Trump, for one…” (Pg. 217)
This marvelous book will be ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously studying the 2020 election.
October 26, 2022
This book took me a long time to read. Not because it’s too long or not engaging but because I seemed to fall asleep every night as soon as my head hits the pillow.
This book is an easy-to-read recap of the craziness that happened post-election day. Recommend.
This book is an easy-to-read recap of the craziness that happened post-election day. Recommend.
February 14, 2024
**3.5**
March 28, 2022
"The whole point of government is you're not supposed to know it's there. The road is supposed to get paved, the election's supposed to come off, you're not supposed to have to think about it. And all these people on the left and the right that organize their lives around, and live and die by, who is president, who isn't president, those are the unhealthy people that cause problems in the long term of a democratic republic."
An incredibly well put together account of the conspiracies surround thing 2020 election, and the people who fought like hell to make sure that democracy truly ran it's course.
While I followed the election closely, once I realized that Biden had one, I followed the aftermath slight less closely. I was shocked at the capital insurrection, but I didn't keep an eye on the lawsuits, or any of the interviews, or the audits. I had faith that democracy would run it's course and that my candidate had succeeded. And this book showcased the people who fought diligently to make sure that my faith in democracy remained strong, even resulting in permanent turmoil for their own lives.
These authors did a wonderful job of setting the scene. They gave both sides a platform to express what they felt happened. And I really loved that the majority of the clips that they took, and the main people that they focused on, were people in the Republican party. Proud Republican's who voted for Trump, and who still felt the need to stand up for true results of the election.
For anyone politically minded, I think this book should be at the top of your list.
An incredibly well put together account of the conspiracies surround thing 2020 election, and the people who fought like hell to make sure that democracy truly ran it's course.
While I followed the election closely, once I realized that Biden had one, I followed the aftermath slight less closely. I was shocked at the capital insurrection, but I didn't keep an eye on the lawsuits, or any of the interviews, or the audits. I had faith that democracy would run it's course and that my candidate had succeeded. And this book showcased the people who fought diligently to make sure that my faith in democracy remained strong, even resulting in permanent turmoil for their own lives.
These authors did a wonderful job of setting the scene. They gave both sides a platform to express what they felt happened. And I really loved that the majority of the clips that they took, and the main people that they focused on, were people in the Republican party. Proud Republican's who voted for Trump, and who still felt the need to stand up for true results of the election.
For anyone politically minded, I think this book should be at the top of your list.
June 30, 2022
A remarkable summary.
So much mythology and idiocy--and gulliility--surrounds the election of 2020, most of it greated by "the former guy" (TFG). The authors summarize what actually happened, focusing on some portions of the US with which I'm familar.
I read the book some months ago yet saw it yesterday in the same book store at which I purchased it. I recommend it both for those interested in history, and in the subject of the last few years of US psychosis.
Oh, and if you want to work on a legal suit against, say, relatives who could "use help," it'll be especially useful.
So much mythology and idiocy--and gulliility--surrounds the election of 2020, most of it greated by "the former guy" (TFG). The authors summarize what actually happened, focusing on some portions of the US with which I'm familar.
I read the book some months ago yet saw it yesterday in the same book store at which I purchased it. I recommend it both for those interested in history, and in the subject of the last few years of US psychosis.
Oh, and if you want to work on a legal suit against, say, relatives who could "use help," it'll be especially useful.
February 20, 2022
I found this book quite disappointing. The organization was terrible......in each chapter, the authors go through all the battleground states, thus requiring the reader to go back and learn the "players" in each state. Fair amount of repetition, sprinkling of factual errors and some sloppy and awkward language. Not worth it, in my opinion.
October 28, 2022
Very disappointing. Not up to Bowden's standards. I've been a fan of Bowden's work since I read Blackhawk Down more than twenty years ago. I really appreciate his in depth investigative journalism and his ability to balance and show several aspects of the historical events from different perspectives of those involved. This did not happen in this book.
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