Every Republican president since 1968 has stolen a presidential election
Last night, as I was watching a debate on “Trumpgate,” voter fraud, and rigged elections, I realized I do agree with Conservative Republican complaints about stolen elections. But here’s the rub. Republicans usually do the stealing! In fact, every Republican president since 1968 has stolen a presidential election.
The first heist came during the 1968 presidential election when Richard Nixon sabotaged President Johnson’s Vietnam peace initiative. Nixon always denied that he had stolen the election. But because of newly discovered documents left by H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s Chief of Staff, we now know that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts toward scuttling the peace talks, which he believed would give his opponent an edge in the election. And it did!
We all know about the second heist, which took place in 1972 when Nixon bugged the Watergate Hotel.
The third heist occurred in 1980 when Ronald Reagan believed a last-minute deal to release American hostages held in Iran would help President Carter win the presidency. To stack the deck in his favor, Reagan directed George HW Bush and his staff to negotiate a deal with Iran to release American hostages in exchange for the release of Iran’s frozen assets. Reagan always denied he had gone behind Carter’s back, but now we know he also lied. That’s because Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran’s president at that time, has told us that negotiations for the Reagan deal did, in fact, take place. Gary Sick, formerly a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, has confirmed Banisadr’s claim.
The fourth heist, which is still fresh in our minds, occurred when the Supreme Court halted the recount in Florida that gave George W. Bush the presidency. Again, the Republicans denied that they had played dirty. But after years of investigation, we now know that Bush’s brother Jeb, then Governor of Florida, and Kathryn Harris, Florida’s Secretary of State and a George W. Bush campaign operative, engineered the sequence of events that forced the 2000 election to be decided by the Republican majority in the United States Supreme Court.
And we’re still watching the fifth heist play out, as Donald Trump continues to deny that he and his staff communicated with Russia during our last presidential election. But because of information gathered by the CIA, the FBI, international state intelligence services, and former British spy Christopher Steele, we know he’s lying and why he’s lying. Their intelligence shows us that Trump and the Russians made a deal that would guarantee Russia’s assistance in the 2016 presidential election in exchange for President Trump eliminating the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by President Obama. We’ve also learned that because Donald Trump owns a 15-billion-dollar share of a Russian state oil company, he will benefit when the sanctions are dropped.
So, yes, I am just as bothered about stolen elections as the Republicans. But instead of complaining about voter fraud and rigged elections, Republicans should start investigating the Trump campaign and ways in which they could prevent their nominees from stealing future elections. Will we see any Republicans who have the spine to lead these efforts? I doubt it. All I see is denial.
Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.