 Because Donald Trump has faced zero legal accountability at this time over his lies and incitement of an insurrection following the 2020 election, while he's continuing to lie about that election. And his attack on democracy would be harmful in and of itself if it were just limited to the 2020 election. But he's expanding his claims of fraud. And he doesn't even have to do that to see the proliferation of fraud claims being spread. I mean, we talked about this story by NPR where GOP primaries have already devolved into many stop-the-steal debacles. And that's without Trump's involvement. But with his involvement, 2022 is already proving to be a disaster. So what he's doing is he's already plotting to challenge the results of the 2022 election. You know the one that hasn't taken place yet. Yeah, he's already trying to undermine that. Now, a reasonable person might ask, well, hang on a second, won't that undermine his claims of election fraud if the election hasn't even taken place yet? But he's already plotting to undermine it? Won't his voters see that he's lying? Well, sure, in a reasonable world, but that's not what we're operating with here. This is a political faction that doesn't base their political views on data or statistics or even observable reality. They just take what Donald Trump says and they run with it as if it's gospel. And so we're going to talk about the ways that he is planning to undermine the 2022 election and things that he's doing in particular states that he's already targeting. So the Rolling Stone reports in recent months, Trump has convened a series of in-person meetings and conference calls to discuss laying the groundwork to challenge the 2022 midterm election results for people familiar with the conversations till Rolling Stone. In these conversations, pro-Trump groups, attorneys, Republican Party activists, and MAGA diehards often discuss the type of scorched-earth legal tactics they could deploy. And they've gamed out scenarios for how to aggressively challenge elections, particularly ones in which a winner is not declared on election night. If there's any hint of doubt about the winners, the teams plan to wage aggressive court campaigns and launch a media blitz. Trump has been briefed on plans in multiple states and in critical races, including in Georgia, but Pennsylvania has grabbed his interest most keenly, including in the Senate contest between Democrat John Federman and the Trump-endorsed GOP-condender Mehmet Oz. If the Republican does not win by a wide enough margin to trigger a speedy concession from Federman, or if the vote tally is close on or after election night in November, Trump and other Republicans are already preparing to wage illegal and activist crusade against the election integrity of Democratic strongholds such as the Philly area. So this is officially a GOP strategy. Challenging election results is what they're going to do whenever they lose elections, and they're going to specifically contest the election in areas of Democratic party strongholds, like Philadelphia. It's just predictable. I mean, it's something that we all suspected would happen, but everybody hoped maybe he would just be narcissistic and only care about his own election. But no, this is also kind of about him. I mean, he endorsed Mehmet Oz, so he doesn't want it to seem as if his influence is waning. So he has this interest in challenging the results in states where his own endorsed candidates also fail, and that's what it's seemingly looking like he's going to do. So I cannot emphasize how destructive this is to democracy. If he just said the 2020 election was stolen and left it at that, that would be harmful as I stated at the beginning of this video. But he's not just doing that. Every single election going forward will be challenged by Donald Trump. Now, it's going to be challenged by Republicans, as we've seen with GOP primaries, but Trump is able to amplify these claims of fraud because nobody has the influence and the clout that he has in the Republican Party. So even though it's damaging when individuals like Doug Mace-Triano or Kerry Lake say that the election was stolen and there was fraud, it doesn't hit as hard as it does when Trump says it. And this isn't something that occurs in a vacuum. This has severe consequences for elections in the United States. It's killing our democracy. Now, as a result of these claims of this environment of paranoia that Republicans have already fostered, we're seeing voter intimidation in ways that should alarm every single American. For example, ABC 15's Nicole Griggs shared this video from Mesa, Arizona, where two armed thugs in tactical gear with weapons were watching a voter dropbox. Now, at a different location, armed thugs were photographing voter's licenses, but they blocked out their own so nobody could photograph their licenses. So when a woman actually tried to lift the cloth to take a picture of their license, they grabbed her and they chased her. Now, security camera footage captured a different voter in Arizona being harassed by these thugs who were accusing him of committing fraud. And what was his crime? He just dropped off his ballot at one of the legal ballot dropboxes. Take a look. This is essentially security camera video from a parking lot, Anderson. I want you to take a look at it. First, it doesn't appear to be anything unusual. It's a voter who is pulling up to drop off his early ballot at a dropbox. His wife is in the vehicle, but then he pauses and he looks off and it appears he's talking to somebody off the screen. We will learn if you look at the complaint that it was 8 to 10 people. Then that voter in the security camera video gets in the vehicle and backs out of the parking lot. The reason why, if you read through the complaint, is he wrote that the people he was engaging with were, quote, filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the dropbox and accusing us of being a mule, more on that in a second, and that they took photographs of our license plate and of us and followed us out of the parking lot. That mule reference, Anderson, is referencing a conspiracy film that is often quoted by far-right conspiracy websites and by some right-wing Republicans who are running for office in the state of Arizona. Anderson. So what about the other allegations? Yeah, a total of three that you reference have been referred to the Department of Justice. And if you look at them, they all have the same thing in common. They're referencing these people, varying numbers at two different dropboxes in Maricopa County. People sitting in lawn chairs and then some say they are camoclad that they are intimidating, that they have a clear intent to intimidate. Now listen, if they're just standing more than 75 feet away from the dropboxes, that's fine. That's their legal right. If they want to be weirdos and watch the dropboxes, they can do that. That's their right as American citizens. But what we're seeing here is not them just watching the dropboxes. We're seeing harassment. We're seeing actual voter intimidation. And this right here is what kills democracy because think about the effect that this has when people see these news reports. Would you honestly feel comfortable with these armed thugs watching you drop off your ballot potentially confronting you when you've done nothing wrong? Well, of course not. Who would feel comfortable under those circumstances? So the goal here is to dissuade people from voting. And that is going to be the intended effect. So when you have widespread claims of fraud anytime a Republican loses their election or whenever Trump says when you see voter intimidation happen out in the open like this, this is not a climate that is conducive to a healthy democracy. So I need people to understand and this is going to sound hyperbolic, but it's not. We are witnessing our democracy dying before our very eyes. These claims of fraud can't keep persisting in the event Trump claimed that there was fraud and Republicans who also cried fraud lost overwhelmingly, especially after seeing January 6. I'd say that there's hope for our democracy, but at this point in time, the buy-in just is no longer there. Voters are believing the claims of fraud despite the lack of evidence. They're believing that their votes no longer matter, which is encouraging them to take up violence as is the case with January 6th or to intimidate voters who they suspect of doing fraud. It's just deeply, deeply troubling and this can't last for very long in a healthy democracy like we're seeing democracy die before our very eyes and part of the problem is that Democrats did not do enough to secure voting rights. So all of this, this climate of paranoia, the voter intimidation, the stop the steel debacles at the GOP primary level, this is all going to amount to even more voter suppression than we've already seen and things are just going to continue to spiral and get worse all because of this one narcissistic piece of shit who couldn't admit that he lost the election because he bungled the COVID pandemic. That's what killed democracy. Ultimately, just one man, one cult leader who refused to admit for his own ego that he lost this election. Now, if our country was in a healthier state and people weren't so desperate, they wouldn't have been susceptible to that level of radicalization to begin with. But again, at the end of the day, he's the one who has taken the biggest hit at our democracy. That's not to say that the courts haven't contributed. That's not to say that Republicans haven't contributed. That's not to say that Democrats in their own ways, at least at the primary level, haven't contributed as well. But Donald Trump has done more so than anyone in all of our lifetimes to undermine democracy than anyone else. And it's genuinely alarming. And the worst part about this is it's only going to get worse in November. It's going to be a disaster when we see mass claims of fraud across the country. But 2024 when he's running for president again, just you wait, it's going to get even worse if you thought that 2020 was bad. 2024 is going to be a lot worse. 2020 was a walk in the park. So it's going to continue. Trump will run for president again. And whether or not he wins or loses, there's going to be claims of fraud and it's going to get worse. So understand people, this is very serious. Democracy is dying before our very eyes. And if we all don't take action and I don't even know what kind of action, perhaps we convince our relatives who are conspiratorial, stop the steel-minded people. But I mean, if we don't try to save our democracy by further consolidating democracy and expanding democracy, we're not going to have a democracy for much longer. Thank you very much. Thank you.