Yesterday I published an essay about election denial that included a link to my February post about the Big Lie, Foreign Interference Version. It weighed the relative merits of blaming China or Venezuela for rigging the 2020 election. Since then, reporting has indicated that the President’s focus will be on China’s intention and ability to interfere in that election.
So I took another look at the “Coup Power Point” on “election fraud, foreign interference & options for 6 Jan” cooked up in those fateful days by former military intelligence officer Col. Phil Waldron, which offers up this slogan: “The 2020 Election: Made in China?”
As reported in a December 2021 Washington Post investigative piece that links to the document, the Power Point made its way to then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and was presented to several members of Congress on January 5 to justify imminent “events.”
This document is useful not only as preparation for Trump’s speech tonight (will he repeat its fake claims?), but because the recommendations it gives for “election security” could be implemented in the run-up to the midterms.
As a reminder, by the time this Power Point was circulated, Trump and his enablers were desperate, having failed to overturn the election results and activate the “fake electors” scheme. By January 5, mob violence was on the table as a last resort. As Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the House Select Committee on January 6, Meadows remained impassive when the violence started that day, ignoring her pleas to do something and continuing to scroll on his phone.
Highlights from the Power Point
“Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan,” the title slide reads, followed by suggested “Talking Points”: the national security crisis caused by systematic Chinese control over our election system means that electronic voting machines can no longer be trusted.
Specifically, the Chinese have both financial and technological control of Dominion Voting Systems that use Smartmatic software.
As a result, a top-down POTUS-directed operation was needed, with “federalized National Guard” units, backed up by DHS and the DOJ, seizing all ballots and establishing “a protective perimeter” around voting locations “in all fifty states.” in order to have a recount of all “legal paper ballots.”
The conspiracy theory mentality so important to MAGA culture is on display in the recommended talking points: “The Electronic Voting Machines are Shifting Votes from Trump to Biden,” and “The Foreign Actors Had to Shift Votes All Across the Country to Achieve Their Objectives (Biden Victory).”
And so we arrive at the last slide, with a helpful graphic: The 2020 U.S. Election. Made in China?
This theory about Chinese meddling went away for a while, having been refuted by a 2021 U.S. intelligence report. But desperate times require desperate measures, if you are an unpopular leader afraid of going the way of your friend Viktor Orban, and China is a convenient culprit because it has long been a major source of malign foreign influence in America.
Yet the ludicrous tone of some of the assertions in the Power Point, and the farfetched options to block the peaceful transfer of power, are telling. Waldron may have been an expert in psychological warfare, but he produced a document that testifies to the fanaticism and fear in MAGA circles at the prospect of leaving power.
Marc Elias just said “He tells one lie after another.”
President Trump's truth social posts from 2 nights ago showed three AI generated photos of him together with, i.e. aligned with Xi Jinping. Perhaps this means Trump has China on the brain, indeed