Back in 2020, a bipartisan group calling itself the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) got together to game out scenarios where the Trump campaign interfered with the election in an effort to steal it for the sentient Orange Julius that America in its wisdom had let lead it for four years. They released a report that, while not exactly predicting a scenario in which President Brainworms would encourage thousands of angry used-car dealership owners to storm the Capitol and smear shit on its walls and threaten to hang the vice president, was pretty prescient nonetheless.
For example, TIP predicted that the Trump campaign would launch coordinated state and federal investigations into “alleged ‘voting irregularities’ in an effort to undermine public confidence in results that did not go Trump’s way.” They predicted Trump going to court to stop the counting of mail-in ballots and warning his followers that antifa was going to somehow try to steal the election. One scenario even predicted Team Trump convincing GOP-run states to send alternate slates of electors to Washington on January 6.
It must have pissed off the turtle-brained goobers of the Heritage Foundation — yes, your Project 2025 friends! — that TIP got so much stuff right. So Heritage’s Oversight Project formed their own TIP to run their own simulations, gaming out scenarios that the Biden administration could use to steal the 2024 election from Trump. Except that Heritage’s people are rightwingers, so their scenarios are the kind of delightfully nutty weirdness one might hear at a Turning Point USA convention. Luckily, the Washington Post wrote a few of them down after attending a presentation on Thursday:
Barbara Streisand kidnapped by Hamas.
It’s like Mad Libs for wingnuts still stuck in the Clinton era: [Hollywood celebrity and major Democratic party donor] gets [action] by [terrorist organization] as part of a plot for leftists to [profane action] Donald Trump.
We are entirely unclear as to how terrorists kidnapping a beloved entertainer would help Joe Biden. Is Biden in league with Hamas in this scenario? Does Hamas think it is helping Biden somehow? Would Biden declare martial law and use the kidnapping to stay in office by bringing the business of elections and all of the rest of America to a screeching halt while SEAL Team 6 hunts for the precious treasure that gifted the nation with “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”? Frankly, we wish he was that ruthless.
Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility.
They honestly think antifa and BLM are the modern equivalent of, like, the PLO or Shining Path or something. It will never stop being wild that they think this.
The FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election.
Actually this one is plausible! Donald Trump has committed a lot of crimes. He’s already got two federal indictments pending against him because of all the crimes he committed. (ALLEGEDLY, wink wink.) Maybe the FBI will come up with more crimes, and then America will be just super-embarrassed when he still takes the oath of office on January 20 and orders the Justice Department to drop the new charges. Boy will we have egg on our faces if that happens.
Voting does not even start for two more months and the wingers are already delegitimizing the election for the public so the Right will be primed to take to the streets if Donald Trump loses.
“As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election,” said Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage’s Oversight Project. “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”
Let’s not even bother with the election, let’s just skip ahead to all the court challenges and the protests at ballot counting centers in majority Black areas and Mike Lindell making an ass of himself on national television over and over and over and over and over.
We would like to not take this dipshittery seriously, but the Heritage Foundation is also the genius crew behind Project 2025, much of which was written by people who worked in the first Trump administration and is considered a blueprint for the second.
So it is useful, as if anyone needed the reminder, for them to announce months ahead of time that they simply will not accept any election result besides Donald Trump ascending to the Oval Office.
The Heritage report also said that “the sitting president is the greatest danger to the peaceful transition of power,” with no apparent sense of irony.
Howell said the exercise would lead Heritage to file more litigation over election procedures. He also said it should help the public resist “psychological operations” that he claimed were used in 2020 and are being used again. He didn’t say who supposedly ran the operations.
Again, zero sense of irony, because these idiots lack the capacity for it.
Also we would be remiss if we didn’t mention this part of Thursday’s presentation:
Howell accused the Biden administration of a “coordinated invasion over our southern border for the purposes of impacting this election.” As evidence, he said a camera crew went door to door in an apartment complex outside Charlotte, asking people whether they were noncitizens registered to vote, with 10 percent responding yes. Howell said his team did not verify those registrations. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare.
Congrats, you’ve blown the doors off this conspiracy to help Donald Trump win North Carolina. Any political science or stats professor would fail this exercise for having a galactically flawed design faster than you can say “Heritage sucks.”
God do we hate this election. Have we mentioned how much we hate this election? We hate this election.
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