Below is my column from Fox.com on the boarding up of downtown areas across the country in anticipation of election rioting if Trump wins or the election is close. I have been long critical of both sides in fueling the anger and conspiracy theories on both sides. On the Republican side, President Donald Trump has been denouncing mail-in voting as a Democratic conspiracy to steal the election. On the Democratic side, leaders have been telling voters that there is no legitimate way for Trump to win. The fact that our leaders are trying to use such anger and fears is reprehensible. However, none of that excuses those people who believe that they have license to riot, loot, and burn. These are criminal acts being excused as “protests.” We now prepare for rioting like it is a natural result of contested elections.
Here is the column:
Driving around Washington, D.C. a couple days ago was a shocking experience. Block after block of businesses are boarded up and anything throwable or movable has been removed from the streets.
In the meantime, faculty, staff, and students at George Washington University (where I teach) have been told to stockpile medicine and food “as you normally would for a hurricane or a snowstorm.”
The reason? We are about to have a democratic election. The expectation is that is, unless it is a landslide for Biden, there will be rioting and arson in Washington and other cities. A warm front moving in with “possible election related disruptions” is being reported like an electoral meteorological event.
When exactly did election rioting become as forecastable as inclement weather?
The forecast for rioting with a chance of passing looting and arson is being repeated across the country as if it is now an inconvenient truth of the political version of global warming.
The most likely disruption would come a close election or Trump lead. That risk is heightened after Democratic leaders like House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C. declared on Sunday that the only way Democrat Joe Biden could lose the election would be “for voter suppression to be successful.”
Thus, if Trump is close or winning on election night, it can only be due to unlawful conduct. When President Trump made such statements about stealing the election, the media went into full alert over his laying the foundation for a coup.
Yet, the media seems entirely comfortable with Clyburn’s pre-election declaration that either Biden wins or the election is invalid.
The fact is that the odds are against President Trump. However, the current polling shows a tightening of the race in critical states.
The country remains sharply divided with even the best Biden polls still showing a solid 45 percent for Trump. Yet, Democratic members like Clyburn are already stating that either Biden wins or the election is stolen.
No wonder officials are declaring a violent front moving into major cities with political doppler readings with developing protest vortexes and political depressions.
Yet, rioting is not an act of God, but the criminal acts of those who only embrace democratic elections to the extent that they result in the “right” outcomes. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham warned “it is widely believed that there will be civil unrest after the November election regardless of who wins.”
For those of us tasked with doing the legal analysis on election night and the ensuing days, the rising threat of violence only clouds the understanding of viewers. There is already pressure on many networks to shape legal analysis to meet the needs of the echo-journalism model.
People have little tolerance for analysis that does not reaffirm their bias. They want clarity and reinforcement like Clyburn assuring them that any close election or Trump victory is by definition a stolen election.
This expectation has been magnified by the unrelenting media coverage supporting Biden and his campaign. If you watch CNN or MSNBC, there is no other possibility than voter fraud if Trump comes close on election night.
I have covered presidential election nights for different networks for roughly 20 years. In each election, there have been irregularities and challenges. The greatest such controversy came with the 2000 election that was ultimately decided in the Bush v. Gore decision by the Supreme Court.
Yet, I do not recall any prior election where there were predictions of rioting, let alone such predictions in virtually every major city.
The legal forecast is not good. Absent a Biden landslide, this is going to be messy. We have never relied on this number of mail-in ballots. Even in a normal year with a fraction of this number of mail-in balloting, we have had inevitable challenges on when and how to count such votes.
This could be a perfect storm of such election issues. Both campaigns have assembled forces of lawyers that make D-Day look like a small intimate gathering. They are going to use those lawyers.
It falls into the old military adage that “when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” In any contested election, all these campaigns will have are lawyers and every problem will look like fraud.
Yet, the advantage of legal challenges is that lawyers do not throw their burning briefs through the broken windows of courthouses. We have a political system to bring democratic change and a legal system to make sure that such change comes from as the result of balloting, not rioting.
So here is my legal forecast. This constitutional system will survive this election even if our windows do not. Those rioting will be triggered by the exercise of democracy, not its denial.
For the rest of us, this too will pass.
“I do not recall any prior election where there were predictions of rioting, let alone such predictions in virtually every major city.”
Predictions or a suggestion?
TRUE AMERICANS MOST VOTE TODAY
right TO THE END OF THE DAY
dont let FAKE NEWS LIES TRICK YOU INTO STAYING HOME!
YOU MUST VOTE
they are going to be coming today with phony exit polls and one lie after another
GET OUT AND VOTE. YOU HAVE BEEN IGNORED & INSULTED FOR 4 YEARS BY THE DEMOCRATS LEADERS LIKE PELOSI NOW LET THEM HEAR YOUR VOTE!
I’m a true American. I already voted, and I voted for Biden because Trump is a dictator-wannabe, an endless liar, and a crook.
and I voted for Biden because Trump is a dictator-wannabe, an endless liar, and a crook.
Except you know that isn’t true, but you have to justify to yourself your bad attitude.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mueller-investigated-wikleaks-roger-stone-dnc-hacks-found-lack-evidence-charges
skeleton emerges from Mueller’s closet
lack of evidence against stone
Can someone please post a Trump supporter carrying out an LG Dryer tomorrow for the guy in Phillies Washer?
It all started with the rightful shooting of that criminal in Ferguson named Michael Brown. The media did not disparage the looting and destruction of stores on West Florissant Ave.
Instead, the media whined about Michael and disparaged the government in Ferguson.
That was the beginning of the end of America.
Bye, bye, Miss American pie.
You nailed it my friend!! Even if a black piece of shit thug runs out with a knife to physically assault a police officer, and they have to wind up killing him because they have no choice, The far left scum bag media will still have a conniption fit. And by that I mean the NNC = NETWORK NEWS CABAL =ABC CBS NBC CNN MSDNC. Oh, wait, they just did. Because this last justified killing was just that what I described!! Black thug runs out with KNIFE 🔪 TO STAB A POLICE 👮♀️ OFFICER 👮
Problems with mail in voting is not some sort of conspiracy. It’s a nationwide expansion that will inevitably create problems. There are also some states where fraud is quite easy.
Here in CA, I just tell them my name, and they check it off a list. No verification whatsoever. I have received voting material for the previous owners of our house for over 10 years. No matter how many times I mark “return to sender, wrong address”, it just keeps coming. It is my understanding that at least one, and possibly two of them have passed away by now. CA strenuously fights any attempts to clean up the voter rolls from the deceased or anyone not permitted to vote. I’ve never even been tempted to engage in voter fraud, but it certainly seems easy to do here. The most common crime committed by illegal aliens is social security fraud, in which they use either a fake SSN or commit identity theft of someone alive or dead. They are automatically registered to vote when they get a drivers license here. They are automatically mailed a ballot.
Multiple postal workers have been arrested for hiding, discarding, or trashing mail, including a lot of ballots. More than one drop box has been set on fire.
Some states, like CA, allow ballot harvesting. That’s where a political party sends people out to collect ballots from nursing homes, the homeless, or other areas. Only their honor system prevents them from filling them out, themselves, or discarding votes from an opposing party. For this reason the Republican party has set up some collection sites at safe locations, like gun stores or its party headquarters. Oh, how the Democrats howled.
There have been more problems, too. For faster check in, the sample ballot has a bar code. It can be scanned in to automatically find your name. Otherwise, you just tell them your name. People in my area (one of the many deep red rural pockets of CA), have told me that they went to drop off their ballot, but when they were scanned, a different name came up. Same thing happened to people voting in person. That may invalidate their ballot.
So many problems.
We voted in person because there have been too many stories of problems with mail in voting.
Most of what say is wrong. First of all when u get a driver’s license you have to prove u are a US citizen. You will not get a ballot if u are not a citizen. Sure, in a nursing home some one may fill out a ballot for u but that is such a small amount it can be ignored. Collecting ballots for harvesting is ridiculous. They would have to change an already filled out ballot. In that cache the ballot would be thrown out because the rules specifically say that if u make a mistake a changed ballot would not be counted. You have to request a new ballot in that case. If a group of ballot are collected and not filled out, one would have a sample of each person’s signature since it is check. The penalty is very severe if someone tries this. One cannot get a fake ss number, you need to show proof of identity citizenship or if an immigrant you must have a government ID showing that u are in the US legally. In that case u can not vote. It is possible that someone in your family has died and u received the
ballot. The penalty is severe if caught. Sure, there is some fraud but statistically it’s a non issue and is probably equally on both sides.
Most of what say is wrong. First of all when u get a driver’s license you have to prove u are a US citizen.
LOL. Find me a state where driver’s licenses are limited to citizens. That aside, she’s from California, ground zero for Illegal Alien enabling.
When did the idea of riots become OK? If Trump wins or is not blown out, there will be riots? And that is OK to some because it is against Trump. Seriously? Professor Turley is correct, this too shall pass. Yet, I think it will pass like a kidney stone, painfully.
There is an old comment that applies to law enforcement as much and these days even more that it’s original meaning which spoke to soldiers. Treat your security forces despicably they will soon learn to despise you. The people, not citizens just persons’ who caused this are getting what the asked for the rest know enough to stay out of the way of the Pelosist Schumerian Antifada da da da criminals.
One thing the Republicans can’t complain about is Democrats going to court trying to suppress Republican votes. Yet somehow, Turley tries to “both sides” this issue. Republicans tried to run a Biden off the road in Texas. Republicans shut down highways this weekend flying Trump flags. Meanwhile, a peaceful Democratic March to the polls and the police tear gas them.
Yet, somehow, Turley suggests Trump’s false claims of voter fraud are as valid as the Democratics’ real ones.
both sides of your butt cheeks talking.
Democrat party leadership has lied for 4 years on end and never stopped. You’ll hear from us at the polls and then you can try your hardest to lawfare the result today into submission. but you gonna find out
Poor Turley: you keep trying, and failing, to equalize and normalize the mental patient stinking up the people’s house. Just when, Turley, did any Democrat ever encourage supporters to riot when they don’t get their way ? Come on, tell us. You can’t because that has never happened. Whose supporters pack guns, whose supporters try to run a rival’s campaign bus off the road, who told the Proud Boys to “stand by”? Who stokes fear of rioting and looting? On the other hand, who is attempting to restore peace and understanding? Not Trump. There is no equivalency here.
so ignorant.
Whose supporters plotted to kidnap and murder a governor because she enacted measures to prevent the spread of a highly contagious virus? Whose White Supremacist supporters mowed down and killed a peaceful protester named Heather Heyer? What phony POTUS said these were “fine people”?
FIne people comment has been debunked for years.
Whose supporters have been:
tearing down statues of Lincoln claiming he was racist?
rioting nightly in cities like Portland?
claiming that all white people are inherently racist and pushing America away from unity to tribalism?
cancelling speakers at universities whose ideas the are afraid of?
demanding safe spaces in universities?
claiming that there is an epidemic of police killings of innocent black men, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
as is said, so ignorant.
Speaking of ignorant, please review the videos of what the fat one said: “there are fine people on both sides”, which means there are “fine people” who are White Supremacists. This was right after they murdered Heather Heyer.
Who says that the people tearing down statutes, cancelling speakers, or the other things you complain of are Biden supporters? You got this from Fox News. Fox News lies to gullible people like you.
Went to vote this morning at 6 am. Long lines at the polling center, and quite a few of us were packing pistols. Where is BLM ANTIFA anarchists when you need them? the puzzies were alseep in their momma’s basements waiting for their mommy to bring them a Latte with caramel topping.
pft.
i just did a search on the internet for “election riots” and was surprised to see so many news outlets are discussing the possibility
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8905511/Preparing-mayhem-NYC-businesses-close-fear-election-unrest.html
Sad face of Election 2020: Cities (and White House) board up and brace for election riots, looting and a drawn-out vote count as Australia and Canada tell their citizens to steer clear
It’s more likely that your hysterical fear of violence at the polls (and caramel lattes?) was simply unfounded. Letting the media and politicians control you with fear- sad.
“The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich”
https://consentfactory.org/2020/10/27/the-last-days-of-the-trumpian-reich/
“So, all right, maybe not quite the end of the War on Populism, but at least a new stage of it. A chaotic, destructive, violent stage of it, which will require a lot of “emergency measures” and will end up radically transforming the planet into one big pathologized-totalitarian marketplace.
We conspiracy theorists are calling it The Great Reset … but don’t take it from us, take it from TIME magazine, which just happens to be owned by a guy named Marc Benioff, a World Economic Forum Board of Trustees member, whose net worth is approximately $7.8 billion, and who is deeply concerned about the environment, and inclusivity, and economic fairness, as is everyone at the WEF these days.
Fortunately, just by sheer coincidence, this apocalyptic global plague has provided Marc and his billionaire buddies (who own the majority of the corporate media, and who meet once a year in a remote location guarded by heavily-armed security to discuss our future with major government leaders) with an opportunity to “reset” capitalism and save the planet from … well, themselves.
That’s not how they see it, naturally. No, the way they see it, they’re not the problem. The problem is … well, the problem is people. Not rich and powerful people like themselves, or the people they need to continue working, consuming, and servicing the interest on their loans, but … you know, all those other people. Uneducated, un-woke, working-class people. Gun-toting, fanatically religious people. Racist, conspiracy-theorizing people. Deplorable people. “Populist” people. People they don’t need anymore.”
Turley writes:
“I have been long critical of both sides in fueling the anger and conspiracy theories on both sides.”
No, he hasn’t. We read you everyday Turley. That’s a lie.
Turley has worked it like a paid political operative. Turley is neck deep with Trump and will stay that way, history will NOT be kind.
I have been long critical of both sides in fueling the anger and conspiracy theories on both sides. On the Republican side, President Donald Trump has been denouncing mail-in voting as a Democratic conspiracy to steal the election.
The problem with your complaint is that the use of postal ballots compromises ballot security and is, in fact, gratuitous except in regard to people who have an abiding problem which inhibits them from voting in person. Such people account for about 5-6% of the population in the eastern United States and about 11% in the western United States. Over 90% of the population should be voting in person and touch-screen voting should never be used. The notion we must have early voting and postal voting due to the pandemic is blatant hogwash. No one is in any more danger than they are making a short trip to the grocery store. Or, rather, no one is bar the poll inspectors. The simple solution to that would be to move the voting day to Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon, to bar people over 50 from serving as poll inspectors, and to allow anyone living in a given county to serve as a poll inspector at any precinct in that county. (Another element of that would be to recruit poll inspectors through an online bidding system, where they are compensated according to their bid).
None of this was done, and partisan Democrats (and lawfare artists) have been fanatical in opposing incremental efforts to improve ballot security. We know why. You refuse to acknowledge why.
Harris “si do comunismo”.
So now we have another way to judge the possible outcome of a national election? Boarded up offices and businesses with riot fences out front could mean only one thing, right? When was the last time a hoard of unhappy Conservatives/Republicans decided to take out their frustration and anger by rioting, breaking, burning, looting, trying to injure or blind the police . . . ?
No, they just dress up like soldiers and storm state houses. Or stand on street corners with military grade weapons and body armor. And wave Nazi flags or Confederate battle flags. Or march thru streets yelling blood and soil.
Show me the stores that the so called right wing jack boots have looted or the fires they have set or the murders in the streets. If you can show me these things I will take your poorly thought out comparison seriously. The stores are being boarded up to stop the left wing anarchist (antifa) and the communist (blm) from expressing their amorality. It won’t be the right groups that are ripping the plywood from the store fronts.
Sooo, like Tucker Carlson said last night, if the violence was coming from White Supremacists, how come business owners are writing “We Support BLM” on the plywood. Shouldn’t they be writing, “We Love White People!”???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“denouncing mail-in voting as a Democratic conspiracy to steal the election”
One of the many advantages of the GCC (Global Crony Capitalist) engineered scamdemic was that it ensured massive amounts of mail-in voting, and therefore massive opportunity for fraud, Jonathan.
You will see that unfold over the coming days.
The old fossil Clyburn screams voter suppression and yet the current mail in numbers have surpassed the total mail in numbers of 2016 by 50%.
Some boarded up store fronts in New York are painted with “We support BLM” and yet the left is screaming about white supremacists rioting?
We listen to the MSM and get outraged, but the truth is that most of us pay very little attention to Pinkos.
They are like little children throwing tantrums – noisy and disruptive, but ultimately meaningless (except as an indicator of character).
In a democratic society, Pinkos (and their lies) are the cost of free speech. We just have to accept them as the price that democracy demands.
(But I wish that they were a little more honest; “But, but, Orangeman bad…”)
Trump is “bad”. He’s mean spirited. He’s dismissive of all norms and laws. He devalues all life when demeaning those who strive to save it. He takes away health care and then claims to be pro life. He invites violence and hate. The Republican way of “Encouraging”voting…..monitor or is that intimidate voters with automatic weapons and ramming cars.
I have on illusions of where the bulk of the individuals on this thread stand but I will persevere.
Justice:
Appreciate your convictions, we just disagree.
One quick point to show why I tend to discount liberal statements.
You say “…intimidate voters with automatic weapons…”
An automatic weapon is so regulated that most Americans can never get one. It appears that only two legally licensed auto weapons have ever been used in crimes (one by a cop). There are plenty of illegal auto weapons, but the penalty for possession is 10 years plus a $250K fine; a significant deterrent.
That false statement diminishes the strength of your argument.
See this editorial by Gerry Baker of the WSJ. Sums up the feelings of many conservatives.
Trump Is Terribly Flawed, but the Alternative Is Simply Terrible
He may do more damage to the nation’s frayed fabric. But the Democrats seem committed to tearing it up.
‘I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything,” the second Viscount Melbourne is supposed to have said. The weary observation of a Victorian prime minister about an intellectually self-assured political rival and the most famous historian of his age is a good starting point to ponder the state of American politics on Election Day 2020.
We live in an age of Macaulays. Everyone, it seems, is cocksure of his beliefs, absolutely certain about the choice the nation faces this week. American democracy stands at a crossroads. One way lies renewal and recovery, salvation from the forces of darkness, a last-ditch affirmation that the U.S. can be redeemed after all. The other is the one-way path to perdition, an accelerating descent into an abyssal underworld of misrule, repression and corruption.
We should expect this kind of absolutism from ideologues, especially on the left. As Americans choose their leaders for the next four years, radical Democrats and their vocal enablers in the media, academia and leading cultural institutions have never been more certain about anything in their lifetimes of steadily diminishing intellectual curiosity.
Yet on the right too there’s a growing tendency to narrow down a complex choice to simple verities.
It would be nice to think that the world presented us with such simple choices: that the alternatives on offer on the ballot paper—or in life—are clearly labeled “good” and “evil.” But those of us who graduated from kindergarten know that picking one from the other involves discernment and judgment, not revelation.
Conservatives especially should bring a little skepticism to the cartoonish morality tale that has debased our modern politics. We should vow to be a little more Melbourne and a little less Macaulay.
For the truth—the irony—is that for all the absolute conviction that so many people bring to the choice in this election, only the intellectually or morally blindfolded could not be consumed by doubts about it.
You don’t have to believe a single word of the media’s hysterical hyperbole about Donald Trump these last four years to think that this president is seriously lacking in the character of the men and women who have made this country the greatest nation on earth.
You don’t have to think he’s Hitler’s heir to be alarmed by his evidently cavalier disregard for small matters like the independence of the judiciary, the proper use of executive power, or the truth.
You don’t have to think he takes personal joy in incarcerating children in cages to worry that his underdeveloped capacity for human empathy has made him especially unfit for the crises of the past year.
You don’t have to believe he’s Bull Connor to worry that his rhetoric and manner have done harm to the nation’s fragile social contract.
Yet for all his faults, for all the legitimate fears stoked by the last four years, it’s not immoral or irrational to think that the incumbent still represents a better alternative to what’s on offer.
This is an improbable but singular success in forging the basis of a new conservatism that has involved an economic record of tax cutting and deregulation that had begun to restore the nation’s self-confidence and dynamism before the virus hit; a recasting of national interest that has made a decisive break with decades of futile international engagement and needless American sacrifice; a rebalancing of the judiciary toward much-needed restraint up to and including the Supreme Court.
It’s about above all recognizing the alternative. Voters after all are not being asked to choose between Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.
The alternative today is a candidate who sits vacantly smiling and slightly bewildered atop a party that, in its radical platform, its emerging leaders and its ideological associations, represents a sustained challenge to the shared ideals that have defined the United States through its history.
The Democrats have spent four years falsely accusing their opponents of mounting a coup, but now threaten an assault on many of the pillars of the constitutional order. They’ve spent the last six months conniving at brazen lawlessness and allying themselves with proponents of an ideology that rejects the nation’s values, while compelling allegiance and silencing those who dissent. Their elevation of ideologies of race, gender and other “identity” issues consciously pits Americans against one another in potentially ruinous ways.
So admit it. It’s not a rich choice. On the one hand, a flawed man who may yet do more damage to the nation’s frayed fabric. On the other, a party that seems committed to tearing it up.
Most readers of these pages will have made a reasoned judgment and decided the risks associated with four more years are worth taking given the alternative. But acknowledging the uncertainties associated is not only intellectually and morally mature. It will help us all to learn to live with a result that so many will find unpalatable.