Faux audit

Does it get any more bizarre than this?

After it was announced Friday afternoon by the Arizona State Senate that its six-month long election "forensic audit" determined that Joe Biden did indeed win the presidential election in Maricopa County – in fact, finding Biden an additional 99 votes than in the certified vote count – former President Donald Trump claimed last night that the audit proved that he, Trump, actually won in the county.

"We won at the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn't believe," Trump said in a rally in Georgia.

He's right. I don't believe him. I never have. 

More audits are planned for other states, even though they'll probably confirm the same thing that Arizona did. Some suggest it's Trump's 50-state plan, designed mostly to keep his funding faucet alive.

So here we go again. Trump completely twists the truth like Atlantic City salt-water taffy, right before our very eyes, even when evidence clearly shows otherwise. It's how he placates the perceived grievances of his base. It's how he raises funds. This five-year onslaught on the truth has sent us running for the protection of our partisan camps, further dividing the country like it hasn't been since the Civil War.

Neither side can agree on what the truth is. Truth, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. But truth requires evidence. It requires analysis. It requires common sense. It does not require party fealty. Trump, by contrast, requires loyalty to his cult, not to the Constitution.

Trump almost always never offers evidence to his claims. All he provides is more grievance politics for his white nationalist base.

The problem, of course, is that our democracy as we know it is now dangling by a thread. The ability to vote, perhaps our most sacred Constitutional institution, is being challenged and altered like never before, even in spite of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Instead of making it more difficult to vote, as many GOP-controlled states are doing, it should be made easier. Isn't that what democracy is all about? Do you believe in democracy? Or is it about autocratic power? That's the choice we've come to. That's the choice we have to make.

This quest for autocracy is what brought us Trump's Big Lie about who won the last presidential election. It's what brought us the horror of January 6. It's what has transformed the Republican Party into the Party of No, simply existing to veto any Democratic proposals, many of them incredibly popular, without offering any ideas of its own. Want proof? Where is the Republican health care plan?

Infrastructure needs immediate attention, as evidenced by yesterday's Amtrak derailment in Montana. The debt ceiling needs congressional attention, as does immigration. Everything, it seems, needs attention.

The last thing we need are more faux audits to prove what we already know.

And that's the truth.