Democracy Doesn't Flippantly Die in Nonchalance

Introduction (the new version)

If you read FF2F's previous post then you'd know that like many others, I was one of those whose call of the United States' 2024 presidential election turned out to be incorrect. However, while I don't subscribe to any of the array of conspiracy theories that festered across the internet immediately following Kamala Harris' loss, I will nonetheless say that perhaps I wasn't wrong about the ultimate victor so much as I was wrong about the timing.

Confused? Well, you're unfortunately going to have to live with it. Because following the day or two that I spent stunned like many others, upon thinking about what I'd written in that previous post I realised that there was one assumption I'd made (which I lazily dismissed at the time) that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was the subsequent questioning of that assumption that led me down an involved process of gaming things out which, when coupled with various events that have occurred over the past few years, led me to conclude – as absurd as it sounds – what was essentially the unthinkable: the possibility that Donald Trump isn't going to be inaugurated as the 47^th president of the United States, but rather Kamala Harris will be (be it on January 20^th or some other date, which I'll hence forth refer to simply as January 20^th). And not only that, but that it would not be coupled with sort of Civil War 2.0.

To be clear, supposing Harris were to actually be inaugurated as the 47^th president, the scenario I've reasoned out from various events could at best be proven to not be false, but in all likelihood couldn't actually be proven to be true.

Although I proceeded to write the introductory portions of the post, explaining the logic of how I came to the conclusion of who the next president of the United States will be, I unfortunately – and very disappointingly – realised that if what I'd concluded was anywhere near to the truth then it was probably in my best interest, and the best interest of other individuals and parties, that I keep it all to myself. Which, to be clear, isn't to say that I'm in possession of some kind of smoking gun that proves anything nor that I'm privy to any confidential information. Because to repeat, I have no definitive proof of anything, just some observations and what I deem to be rather well-reasoned conclusions based on a willingness to be skeptical when warranted.

Due to my realisation that it was best that I keep the brunt of my theories to myself, I not only redacted most of the caption to the feature image, but I also switched the title of this piece from "███ ██████████ █████ █████████████ ████ ███ ████████ ██ █████ ██ █████ █████ ███ █ ██ ████ ████████ █████████ █ ███ ██████" (as it somewhat gave away too much of the premise) to what it is now. (Both of these redactions kind of ruined the context of the feature image, which I nonetheless left in place.)

Likewise, while I also redacted much of what I'd already written (which in part would have corrected for the aforementioned poorly made assumption I'd made in FF2F's previous piece), I also decided to refrain from writing the body of the post that would have laid out the chain of events – in a section entitled "The what and the how" – that have occurred over the past four years or so of which would have laid out the argument – as well as mapped out and connected various facets – that'd give credence to the long road of how Harris would come to be inaugurated come January 20^th. But alas, rather than appearing here on FF2F, all the aforementioned instead remains unwritten and buried away inside my head.

So while the "meat" of this piece is nowhere to be read, unfortunately resulting in a very much watered down and overly lengthy piece, what's left is a section explaining the repercussions that the United States – and the rest of the world – would face in light of a return of Donald Trump (with his chaperone Elon Musk) to the White House, a section debunking some of the main election denialism theories, a section on the various ways that Russia is interfering in elections worldwide, as well as a section describing some wishcasting which may or may not end up paralleling my reasoned-out scenario. In other words, rather than spell out my own thoughts, what exists instead is unfortunately an overview – and somewhat of a critique – of various election-related theories bouncing around the internet.

That all being so, instead of providing what may very well have been some interesting observations and theories for I and readers to chew over (especially if things start to unfold in a surprising manner), I'll instead supply what was mentioned above as well as something that can be described as the most distant thing that exists from actual evidence: the conveyance of a post-election dream that somebody claims they had.

Although specific results are by no means a part of what I wrote (and what I didn't write), I'll at least say that I wouldn't be surprised that if Harris were to actually be inaugurated come January 20^th that the Democrats would in fact also end up with control over the House and the Senate. Which, I acknowledge, is an absurd long-shot atop an absurd long-shot.

But with that all said, I do however want to be clear about one thing before continuing on. While I'm certainly in favour of the democracy being championed by Democrats (as flawed as it may be) in comparison to the authoritarianism that MAGA Republicans and those pulling their strings are in support of, I'm under no illusion that Democrats have much of a clue in regards to the underlying energetic factors that have largely contributed to leading the United States – and by extension much of the rest of the world – to the precipice of descent into authoritarian rule.

More on that after what was to be this post's introductory section, preserved here with redactions (and whose first two paragraphs were largely duplicated for this piece's new introduction above).

Introduction: The why

If you read FF2F's previous post then you'd know that like many others, I was one of those whose call of the Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump presidential election turned out to be incorrect. However, while I don't subscribe to any of the array of conspiracy theories that festered across the internet immediately following Harris' loss, I will nonetheless say that perhaps I wasn't wrong about the ultimate victor so much as I was wrong about the timing.

Confused? Well, before I elaborate, let me preface this piece with a bit of a warning. What follows below is by no means conspiracy theory-like, and nor does it venture into the realm of election denialism. Instead, what follows is more along the lines of a thought experiment, one that ponders over the possibility of whether or not ██████' ████ ███ ███ ███ █████ ██ ██ █████████ ███████ ██ █████ ███ ████ ██ ██ ████████ █████████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ █████████████ ██████ ███ █████ ██ ████.

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When thinking over the argument made in FF2F's previous post, the one glaring hole – of which I was cognisant of but lazily chose to ignore – was the factor of █████ ███. █ █████████ ████ █ ██ ██████ ███ ████████ █████ ███ ██ ██ █████████████, ███ ████ █ ████'█ ███████ ███ ███ ██ ██████'█ ██████ ██ ██████ ████ ██ ███. ████ ██ – ███ █████████ ███████ ███, ████ ███ ███ ████████ ██ █████'█ █████████ █████████ ██ ██████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ – ██'█ ████ █████ ████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ███ ████████ ████ ███ ███████ ██████'█ ██ ████████ ██ ████ ███████████ ███ █████ ██████ ██ ███ █████████. █████ █████ ███ ██████ ████ ███████ ███ ██████████ ██ ███ █████ ██ ████ █████████ ████ ██ █████ ████ ████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ████████ ████, █ █████████ ████████ ███ ███████████ ████ ████████ ██ █████ ███ ███ ████████ ██ "███████" █ ████████ ████, █ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██████'█ ██████ ████ ████ ████████ ███████.

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What follows below is, as stated earlier, a thought experiment. A thought experiment that ████████ ███ ███████ █████████ █████ ████ ██ █████████ ██ █████ ██ ███ ███ ████████ █████ ███ ██████████████ ██████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ ███████. If this theory turns out to be incorrect, no harm done and I may very well end up looking like a bit of an idiot who's got an overactive imagination and too much spare time on his hands. I can deal with that. But if against all odds it does turn out to be correct, and Harris does get inaugurated as the 47^th president of the Unites States come January 20^th, well, then there'll be no denying that I am in fact no less that a bona fide jeanyus.

The Belarussification of the United States

While many on the political right have been rather sanguine about a return of Trump to the White House, many of those on the left have showed what is either their abject denial of what is implied by his re-election, or outright delusion to the seriousness of the matter. It should go without saying that there's no shortage of attempts found across legacy media – and across many independent outlets – applying positive spins on the election's outcome by suggesting that Democrats simply have to regroup and somewhat bide their time because, when Trump's policies presumably cause much hardship and so backfire on him politically, Democrats will supposedly then be in a prime position for resounding victories in the 2026 primaries and can even "hope for a Democratic victory in 2028".

Or so the story goes. The delusional story, that is. Because make no mistake about it – under Donald Trump (and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Vladimir Putin and the rest of the related cast of authoritarian characters) there will likely be no more fair and legit elections in the United States. Best case scenario, supposing JD Vance runs but loses the 2028 election (which for whatever reason isn't fixed), what do you think he'd do when it came time to him presiding over the electoral certification of his loss? In other words, Donald Trump 2.0 would quite possibly spell the beginning of the end of American democracy and, by extension, of democracy across the globe.

Commencing long before Musk's new disinformation platform began amplifying and spreading Russian propaganda while repeatedly destabilising societies (which will be elaborated on below), a network of billionaires, lobbying groups and think tanks (ultimately in alignment with Russia) have been acting on the agenda of dismantling and destroying democracy across the globe.

It's in this vein that Project 2025, the authoritarian blueprint fashioned by the influential conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation for the Trump administration, is no less than a detailed guide on how Trump (who prior to the election repeatedly tried to distance himself from it) can dismantle the checks and balances of American democracy. I.e. providing Trump with unilateral executive power, allowing him to deploy armed forces on US territory against dissenters, empowering Christian nationalism, and much more. And make no mistake about it, contrary to Trump's repeated attempts to distance himself from it, Project 2025 was most certainly part of the Trump plan all along.

However, while Project 2025 is the agenda that MAGA Republicans have planned domestically, the greater threat for not just the US but the rest of the world is the far lesser known Project Russia, a series of books published in Russia between 2005 and 2010 of which Russia's political elite are no strangers to. The underlying principle of the series of books, as explained in a 2018 peer-reviewed paper in the South Central Review journal that was brought to light by investigative journalist Dave Troy, is that "democracy does not work" and that "all democracies are decadent".

Coming from the vantage point of a kind of spiritual warfare through which the objective is to undermine the West, Soviet Russia is seen as "superior" and only collapsed due to interference of the West, Putin's oligarchy understood to be Soviet Russia's natural successor. The plan includes dismantling the United States and US hegemony (the "unipolar" world order) as well as collapsing the US dollar and economy, all of which can be tied to the rise of cryptocurrencies and the advancement of a libertarian, individualist worldview.

Project Russia: The Kremlin’s Playbook for Undermining Democracies

The Kremlin’s “Project Russia” poses a potent framework for mobilizing illiberal forces against the United States and its allies — and it’s all but unknown to Western analysts.

America 2.0Dave Troy

Project Russia and the Kremlin’s War on the West - Dave Troy Presents

You’ve heard of Project 2025, but there’s another framework that may be even more important for understanding the current assault on Western democracies. “Project Russia” is a series of books published between 2005 and 2010, and it outlines a strategic vision for total war on the West, against democracies, and against the US dollar and other fiat currencies. Nearly unknown to Western analysts, the concepts described in Project Russia increasingly reflect the events we see playing out on a daily basis: a war over competing worldviews with capture of media, the use of podcasts and other alternative media to challenge the mainstream press, and the emergence of a new class of unelected ‘elite’ demagogues who seem to be taking control of global affairs. This episode analyzes the four original Project Russia books with the help of Google’s NotebookLM, and offers ‘deep dives’ into specific areas of the texts. More on Project Russia from Dave Troy: https://washingtonspectator.org/project-russia-reveals-putins-playbook/ Keywords: Project Russia, conservatism, nationalism, religion, Orthodoxy, geopolitics, ideology, Antichrist, apocalypse, conspiracy, collapse, future, prediction, The Idea, world order, West, elites, manipulation, control, change, modernity, post-modernity, capitalism, consumerism, society, state, power, authority, history, monarchy.

Podcast.co

Trump's history with Russia (and by extension with being a stooge of the KGB) goes way back, what with he having been described by an ex-KGB spy as having been cultivated as an asset by Russia for more than 40 years (which by extension has earned him the moniker of being little more than the "franchise manager" of the US). Likewise, the messianic complex that the KGB/FSB has fostered in Trump has likely been fostered in Musk as well (of which has likely been heightened by the smorgasbord of drugs that he's constantly on).

So not only is Trump far from being the main protagonist in all this, but it's not a very well kept secret that Musk is effectively there on Putin's behalf in order to advise Trump about what to say and do about Ukraine and other international matters. In fact, shortly after Trump's election win Putin's former security chief (and now presidential aide) Nikolai Patrushev told the daily Kommersant in an interview that

The election campaign is over. To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.

Later in the Kommersant interview Patrushev then made a veiled threat that Trump must now deliver the agreed-upon quid pro quo.

We know of two cases of attempts on his life during the election campaign. In general, throughout the history of the United States, attempts have been made on the lives of presidents and candidates regularly—more than 20 times. Four U.S. presidents have died at the hands of assassins while in office. Therefore, it is extremely important for U.S. intelligence agencies to prevent a repetition of such cases.

As the shadow president of the United States, shortly after the election's completion Musk began weighing in on Trump's cabinet picks, that and more resulting in an endless stream of pundits, politicians of all stripes, and just about everybody else referring to Musk and Trump as "president Musk" and "vice president Trump", as former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger did with a straight face during a recent CNN interview, as senator Bernie Sanders similarly did, etc. (A bit of foreshadowing of this may be when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in late-2023 that Musk could be "the unofficial president" of the US, to which Musk agreed.) This of course has gotten under Trump's skin, what with he trying to downplay the situation at a Turning Point USA conference (clip 1, clip 2).

Regardless of how Trump tried to spin the situation, in just the first few days after Trump's election win Musk just so happened to slip himself into Trump's phone calls with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic and with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, while he also met with Argentinian president Javier Milei at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in mid-November and allegedly visited the residence of Iran's United Nations ambassador just days later.

Regardless of whether or not Musk has manipulated Trump he's most certainly manipulated the public with one pledge after another, starting off with the assertion made two weeks after purchasing Twitter that the platform would be kept politically neutral.

Twitter quite obviously deserves no public trust, because not only was the platform's algorithm adjusted to specifically boost Musk's account in early-2023 (after a tweet by Musk during the Super Bowl gained less traction than a similar tweet by president Joe Biden), but on July 13^th of this year, the same day that Musk endorsed Trump for the presidency, Twitter's algorithm was tweaked to boost his account further, as well as those of other Republican-leaning users.

According to a study published on November 1^st by Queensland University of Technology, professors Timothy Graham and Mark Andrejevic analysed 56,184 posts sent by a number of accounts between January 1^st 2024 and October 25^th 2024 and examined view counts, retweet counts, and favourite counts for each. All metrics increased for Republican-leaning accounts but not for Democrat-leaning ones, suggesting that not only did Musk endorse Trump but on the same day he also also tweaked Twitter's algorithm to systematically promote his own and other prominent pro-Republican accounts. To speak only of Musk's account, he received 138 percent more views and 238 percent more retweets than before the tweak to Twitter's algorithm. (More accessible write-ups on the study, also by Graham and Andrejevic, can be found in The Conversation here and here.)

Why did Musk do all this? For the simple reason that, in an information war, the prime motive is attention management. Just like with Facebook and TikTok and other platforms, the idea is to maximise engagement and user attention. Simply put, the fundamental underpinning of social media is highly exploitable, and whoever it is that controls attention (or who can at least influence those with the control) controls the narrative. In Musk's case with Twitter, it wasn't merely a Republican narrative that was being pushed, but a Russian narrative.

In a subsequent tweet which ended up having just as little validity to it, eight months prior to the election Musk then effectively stated that he wouldn't be shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars to any of the candidates.

So while Musk didn't invent Tesla but rather bought it, and didn't invent Twitter/X but rather bought it as well, while not inventing Trump either he did nonetheless buy him – or at least bought his way into the White House. Because contrary to what he stated in the latter tweet, recent FEC filings revealed that Musk poured more than $250m into reinstalling Trump into the White House – never minding the $44bn he paid to purchase Twitter (which is nothing compared to the tax cuts and other concessions he's due to receive while working under Trump), which was partially funded by the sons of two Russian oligarchs, one of the latter being a co-founder of Russia's largest private bank.

Musk's inconsistencies don't stop there though. Following The Wall Street Journal's revelation in late-October that Musk had partaken in several secret conversations with Putin since late-2022, in mid-November a couple of Democrat senators called for an investigation into Musk's alleged contacts with Putin and his top aides. More specifically, the aim of the federal review to be conducted by the Pentagon and Justice Department is to determine whether or not national security has been put at risk by Musk's alleged contact with a US adversary while holding major government contracts.

Because the fact of the matter is that, according to The New York Times, Musk and SpaceX employees have a bit of a track record when it comes to not adhering to reporting requirements, what with Musk, since as of at least 2021, having failed to report his travel plans and contact with foreign government officials (as others with high-level security are expected to do, under a process known as "continuous vetting"). While the Air Force recently denied Musk high-level security access due to potential security risks (which prohibit him from attending specific SpaceX meetings), Pentagon officials have been concerned that Musk has been attending some of these meetings without clearance. Some SpaceX employees are said to be afraid of reporting these infractions by Musk due to other employees having been fired when raising concerns about Musk to the National Labor Relations Board.

At least three federal reviews have already been triggered (by The Defense Department's Office of Inspector General, the Air Force, and the Pentagon's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security) about Musk due to the aforementioned failure to adhere to proper reporting practices, to the point that Musk's concerning allegiances have led Space X lawyers to state that Musk should refrain from seeking increased government security clearances as that'd not only risk him being turned down but risk being stripped of his current clearances.

One of these concerning contacts that Musk has had relations with is Putin's first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, director of Russia's Social Design Agency (a front for intelligence) and the individual that orchestrated many of Russia's disinformation campaigns. The US Justice Department has stated in an affidavit that Kiriyenko and his team had created some 32 websites that appeared to be legitimate American news sites but were actually created to spread Russian propaganda and disinformation as if they were legitimate news reports, their intent being to reduce support for Ukraine while also manipulate American voters prior to the presidential election. Much of this disinformation was spread not only on Musk's Twitter/X, but by Musk himself.

Regardless of the mounting evidence, Musk didn't take kindly to the calls for an investigation and so has promised retribution.

Which of course is rather rich, considering that Musk is literally a "foreign interference hoax" himself who not only directly tweets Russian propaganda but who often retweets Americans spouting Russian propaganda as well (such as the Russian-paid American influencers Tim Pool and Benny Johnson), his cries of "free speech" proven to be little more than a complete farce.

In a similar situation, the Trump team's plan is to weaponize Musk against senators who won't confirm cabinet picks by threatening them with primary challenges funded by Musk, a plan that Musk later endorsed.

Musk of course isn't the only one promising to "nuke" his opponents, NPR having found more than a hundred instances in which Trump has said that his rivals, critics and even private citizens should be investigated, prosecuted, put in jail or otherwise punished. According to Politico this list includes president Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris, former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York attorney general Letitia James, Manhattan justice Arthur Engoron, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, special counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, former FBI director James Comey, Hunter Biden and the rest of the Biden family, former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, congressman Adam Schiff, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, former Manhattan assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, US Capitol Police lt. Michael Byrd, congressman Jamaal Bowman, members of the Jan. 6 select committee, and more. Meanwhile, many of Trump's far-right supporters aren't simply out for revenge, but think many of these individuals should simply be executed.

But it isn't just opponents that are due for getting "nuked" and/or outright executed by the likes of Musk, Trump and their acolytes, but democracy around the world as well.

As far as Putin sees it, democracy doesn't work and must be destroyed, Trump's victory effectively representing a victory for "American Putinism". Because while many may envision the election win as a mandate of a Trump agenda (be it Project 2025 or what have you), the far grander agenda is no less than the return of Russian imperial power, the current liberal democratic order to be abolished and replaced with a global network of authoritarian regimes tied to no less than Putin.

With the US election secured, an emboldened Musk – replete with billions in the coffers as well as a platform whose algorithm and army of bots can be put to service for campaigns against incumbent liberal democratic parties in subsequent elections – has now set his sights on ridding the rest of the world of democracy. Although claims of funding the United Kingdom's Nigel Farage and his Reform party to the tune of $100m in order to get him elected have been denied by Musk (although the fact that he incorporated the company X.AI London Ltd. on December 12^th hints at otherwise), the US in nonetheless Musk's first victory in what is surely the first of many in a long list of targets.

And as put by someone that might as well be called one of Musk's acolytes,

To top it all off, come late-December Musk tweeted out what was effectively an endorsement for Germany's AfD party, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), followed up with the publication of an opinion piece he penned in support of the AfD that appeared in the German publication Welt am Sonntag.

In short, the AfD is a far-right extremist German party that is not only pro-Putin, but is no less than a neo-Nazi party that supports mass deportation of non-ethnic Germans. On separate occasions senior AfD figures have called the Holocaust a "myth", have stated that Judaism is the "inner enemy" in Germany, that when it comes to migrants "we can always shoot them later...or gas them", and that the Nazi SS were "not all criminals". Rather unsurprisingly, amongst a group of far-right German nationalists that met up with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on the night of the US election, an AfD candidate was amongst the admirers.

There's no doubting that Musk is aware of AfD's history and that he'd be sympathetic to it, what with his father having stated that Elon's mother's parents were outright Nazis who "supported Hitler" and that they "were very fanatical in favor of apartheid". Furthermore, seeing how Musk's father is an extremely unsavoury character as well shouldn't leave one surprised with the manner in which Musk has turned out.

None of the aforementioned instances of ruling political parties that Musk would like to see removed from office implies that electoral interference will be undertaken on Musk's part (which one might say he undertook in the United States), but with the more than a quarter of a billion dollars spent to return Trump to the White House and the rumoured $100m he'd spend to bring Farage to 10 Downing Street, the cost of ensuring that elections in countries like Canada went his way would be chump change for the richest person in the world of whom is quickly becoming the United States' premier oligarch.

Were Musk to continue with the endeavour of his (and of the one pulling his strings) of overthrowing democracies worldwide, one can expect a slew of other unsavoury outcomes. Starting off with Musk, we've already seen him busying himself with promoting a theory (originally found on the far-right messaging board 4Chan) that a free-thinking "Republic" is something suitable "only for those who are free to think", a place in which decision-making is relegated solely to "high status males" but in which women or "low T men" would not be welcome.

Immediately following Trump's win, Black adults and students across at least 13 American states began receiving texts informing them that they'd been "selected" to be a "house slave", to pick cotton and to report to "the nearest plantation", and more. Although the texts all but certainly had no direct ties to Trump's administration, the fact that racists and white supremacists and the like felt emboldened by the rhetoric Trump spouted throughout his campaign and then by his subsequent win, as well as by the promotion of such material by Musk on Twitter, doesn't make the FBI's awareness of the texts much of a consolation.

In a similar vein, Nick Fuentes (the far-right white nationalist podcaster who regularly spews antisemitic and misogynistic remarks) followed up Trump's win with a tweet proclaiming "Your body, my choice. Forever" while also broadcasting a vile misogynistic segment (the kind that's so vile that it doesn't get embedded into FF2F). Online harassment against women unsurprisingly surged in the following days, which was made worse by young boys telling young girls in school "your body, my choice". Again, the fact that Fuentes was arrested after he pepper-sprayed a woman that rang his doorbell isn't much of a consolation either.

In summation, by all appearances the United States appears to be going down the shitter, with many Americans (and non-Americans around the world) getting the impression that the keys to the government – and thus its slip from democracy into authoritarianism – are being handed over with hardly even a whimper, the outgoing government nonchalantly capitulating to an incoming authoritarian and his cronies (and handlers).

Not everybody is ready and/or willing to believe that though, least surprising of all being those that occupy a similar head-space to the deluded 2020 election deniers.

Not all election denialism is election denialism

First things first, which is to clear up some of the misconceptions surrounding the notion of election interference. If you're one of those people that tells themselves that they keep an ear to the ground when in reality they're simply spending too much time on the internet, then you might be aware that immediately following the election Twitter descended into the throes of rampant election denialism. No, I'm not talking about the serial election denialism of Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake (who not only still hasn't conceded her 2022 loss, but was already claiming election fraud before the eve of this year's election – which she lost), but rather the election denialism of a large portion of Democrat voters.

While Republicans lost their shit (quite literally, on Nancy Pelosi's desk) following their 2020 election loss, four years later the tables have turned as this time around many Democrats were contributing to their carpal tunnel syndrome as they furiously smashed out every half-developed theory that passed through their sleep-deprived brains, all the while repeating to one another "the math isn't mathing".

While some of the theories that these Democrat election denialists bounced around between one another on Twitter (and likely every other other platform) could make sense upon a quick glance (but often fall apart after just a modicum of scrutiny), some of them were little more than vague pronunciations along the likes of "something is very off" and "things aren't right", while other pronunciations are so outlandish that one can't help but question the sanity of some of those spreading them.

The most harmless of these conspiracies might be the case in which many Democrat supporters, not bothering to do the slightest bit of fact checking (or realising that there's no such thing as a "Central Election Commission" in the US), widely shared a tweet describing confirmed accounts of over-voting at some polling stations in Georgia. What they failed to realise was that the Georgia that the woman tweeting was from wasn't the American state, but rather the European country.

Satellites

While that was the most laughable instance, certainly the most outlandish of the election denialist conspiracy theories is the notion that Elon Musk hacked into and changed the election results with his Starlink satellite internet service. The details and manner in which this operation was supposedly undertaken vary between accounts, one oft-repeated retelling stating that Musk sent Starlink receivers only to swing states. In another tweet, liked 33k+ times and with 44m+ views, the technologically illiterate gobbledygook expressed in the accompanying video suggested that votes were tampered with as they passed through Starlink, which is an IPv4, an IPv6, is a Tri-Band Fi-6 system, is a Linux operating system which "can't separate what it's counting", and – well, I'll stop there, cause the whole thing makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The lack of sanity to the rant didn't, however, stop tens of thousands of people from spreading it across the internet and inculcating tens of thousands more with its nonsense.

To make matters worse, commentator Joe Rogan, in a recent podcast, stated that Musk apparently had an app – that he'd created – that allowed him to know the results of the election a full four hours before the election was called. In light of this "revelation", many people then put "two and two together", concluding that Musk had been able to get the results four hours early because tabulated votes all went through Starlink. As if that weren't enough, a meteor seen just after the election was not only said to not be a meteor but was supposedly Starlink satellite #4682. On cue, the downing of the supposed Starlink satellite was said to be Musk destroying the evidence of election interference. Moreover, said satellite was said to be only one of 700 Starlink satellites taken out of orbit. To "prove" their theory of the election being hacked via Starlink, these conspiracy theorists then pointed to a tweet of Musk's from June in which he (factually) stated that "Anything can be hacked". Mystery solved!

Yes, some voting systems have been discovered to be connected to the internet, and some tabulators have been known to have modems in them. Similarly, Trump's legal team has been connected to a Georgia voting system breach in which the day after the attempted insurrection on the US capitol a group of computer experts were given access to Georgia election equipment in order to access voting system software and data. According to The Associated Press, a group of experts including computer scientists, election security experts and voter advocacy organisations were described as believing that "possession of voting system software could enable people with ill intent to practice how to meddle in the 2024 election, allowing them to identify vulnerabilities and test potential attacks". That being so, roughly 98% of ballots cast in this year's election have a paper record which can be referenced for recounting purposes in cases of suspected errors or cyberattacks.

Otherwise, none of the Starlink conspiracies have any validity to them. Never mind that any internet medium carries payloads fully protected by the signed certificates of SSL encryption, but – and aside from the few instances mentioned above – internet connectivity at polling sites is used for electronic poll books (sign in computers), not voting machines or ballot scanners (tabulation). All in all, unsourced conspiracy theories often accomplish little more than the discrediting of political opponents and result in people being derided with names such as "BlueAnon".

Don't worry about the votes

Following the "revelations" about Starlink election interference mentioned above, the conspiracy theories were then connected with more mainstream material. As stated in one tweet,

It's being said that Elon Musk's StarLink satellite Internet software was hooked up to the voting tabulation machines in California and swing states. Why? Seems like they told Trump behind doors that he didn't have to worry about the votes.

The bit about not having to worry about votes is in all likelihood a reference to an MSNBC clip featuring Rachel Maddow that aired on July 30^th of this year, a clip that's been shared countless of times across Twitter and other social media platforms. Although sometimes the entire six minutes and thirty-one seconds long clip is shared, more often just two minutes and eighteen seconds are shared, beginning at 1:24 and ending at 3:42 in the full clip below.

While portions of the Maddow clip led some to declare that "IT'S OFFICIAL. TRUMP FUCKING CHEATED. #TrumpCheated", and others to suggest that "Thinking this election was free and fair borders on being psychotic", what the clip predominantly did was inspire people to slip into outright election denialism.

Conspiracy theory? 20,000,000 votes

Rachel Maddow knew something was up 👇🏻

What was the secret between Trump and Johnson?

Missing votes

While the latter sentence is a reference to Trump's mention on stage of a "secret" between him and speaker Mike Johnson (which some on Twitter unsurprisingly concluded was a reference to Musk's election interference via Starlink), mention of "20,000,000 votes" is a reference to the most rampant election denialism theory found on the internet: supposed missing ballots.

With the election being called rather "early" due to Trump's overwhelming victory in the electoral college, some Democrat supporters quickly pounced on the appearance that millions of fewer votes had been cast than in 2020, the shortage of votes generally stated to be 20m.

Democrat-voting Americans anecdotally riddled Twitter with screen shots depicting their votes as having not been counted, many then instructing others about how to check their vote status and to follow up by replying with screen shots of the result.

But while Twitter is to this day still brimming with talk about missing ballots, there's actually a very simple explanation for the discrepancy: the 20m vote "shortage" was a snapshot of the votes counted at the time that Trump had been declared victor early in the night, a figure that didn't take into account all the votes that had yet to be counted (for example, 8m votes from California were still to come in). While voter turnout was ~158.4m in 2020, as of late-December the 2024 turnout is said to be ~156.3m. Regardless of all that, while claims of missing ballots steadily decreased as the days passed by from 20m to 15m, 12m, and so on (without ever actually recognising why that number was decreasing), there's people to this day that still claim that 20m ballots are missing.

Vote splitting

Moving on, probably the second most cited case of supposed election fraud surrounds that of vote splitting, specifically in swing states.

Although increasingly rare in a hyper-partisan climate, what happens when tickets get split is that voters vote for the presidential candidate of one party while simultaneously voting for a senator (or governor) from the other party. It's an uncommon result, and across the 2016 and 2020 senate races it occurred in only one instance, Maine in 2020. In 2024 it occurred not only four times but in four swing states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona), to go along with the governorship of North Carolina being won by Josh Stein.

To little surprise, claims of election fraud erupted across Twitter (and presumably other social media platforms), with claims that "There's some kind of MASSIVE FRAUD going on here", that "Something isn't adding up", questions such as "That makes sense to you? Because it's fishy as hell to me", and much more.

But although unusual, there are explanations that can account for the split tickets. First off, it would appear that a sizeable amount of people may have "under voted". That is, they may have filled in the presidential portion of the ballot but left the rest of it blank (also known as bullet ballots). Secondly, although many people proclaimed on Twitter that there was no way that a Democrat would vote down ballot for Democratic candidates while simultaneously voting for Trump as president, it does seem that this did in fact happen on many occasions.

The best example – and explanation – for this vote splitting comes courtesy of New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district saw 77% of voters vote for Biden in 2020 (and 22% for Trump), but which then dropped to 65% for Harris in 2020 (while increasing to 33% for Trump, an 11% jump). Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram to ask people why they voted for her and for Trump, to which she got many responses.

In this case it appears that it was the populist rhetoric of Ocasio-Cortez and Trump that appealed to voters, suggesting that they had an outsider, anti-establishment appeal (be it real or not, which in Trump's case certainly isn't seeing how his campaign was based on division and fake populism, and which is shaping up to be a cabinet of billionaires) and that they appeared to challenge the status quo. On the other hand, and for all the good she may have offered, Harris did not come off as someone that challenged the status quo. (It's worth noting that Russian propaganda operations have been amplifying anti-establishment rhetoric for more than a decade now, something that wouldn't necessarily have been possible via traditional media but which social media, such as Musk's Twitter/X, were prime mediums for.)

Along with Harris having no outsider, anti-establishment appeal, to a large degree 2024 has emerged as the year of so-called "change elections", elections in which citizens in democratic countries across the planet had been pressed too hard by inflation and too stressed out by what's been called a cost of living crisis, and so as a result voted out the incumbents in favour of new blood.

Aside from the theories revolving around Musk's Starlink satellites, 20m supposedly missing votes, and the split tickets / bullet ballots (the latter theory of which can at least have some plausibility to it), there is of course a plethora of other theories that have tried to explain Harris' loss without getting into conspiracy theory territory: She didn't appeal enough to voters sympathetic to Israel, she didn't appeal enough to voters sympathetic to Palestine, she didn't appeal enough to the populist left, she didn't appeal enough to the centre-right, she was too soft on crime, she was too tough on crime, she cavorted too much with celebrities, she should have gotten Taylor Swift to sing, she was too nice to Trump voters, she was too mean to Trump voters, etc., etc., etc. One might think that those contradictory pairings of reasons were cherry picked and placed in that particular order for dramatic purposes, but contradictions as such have in fact been shown to be an artificial coalescing manufactured by duplicitous parties.

Homegrown election disinformation

As the Washington Post recently revealed (for those that weren't aware of the following courtesy of on-the-fly "live updates" on Twitter in the lead up to the election), a lot of the contradictory reasons for Harris' loss mentioned in the previous paragraph were due to "ads [that] were part of a single, $45 million effort created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk". Muslims in Michigan were micro-targeted with pro-Israel ads praising Harris' marriage to a Jewish man, while Jews in Pennsylvania were micro-targeted with ads that claimed Harris wanted to stop arms shipments to Israel. Likewise, conservatives were micro-targeted with ads proclaiming "Kamala's bold progressive agenda", while young progressives were micro-targeted with ads stating that Harris had abandoned the progressive dream. And on and on it went.

Many of the ads that ran – particularly in swing states – deceptively portrayed policies that Harris didn't actually support during her campaign (such as mandatory gun buybacks), while others that carried misinformation were designed to appear as if they were actual Harris campaign ads. Although Democrats tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to get many of these deceptive ads taken down by Google and Facebook and the like, the vast majority of them stayed up (bar one, that stated in a superimposition that "This is a real Kamala Harris ad"), and not just because spreading misinformation isn't outright illegal. All in all, the deceptive endeavour can arguably be understood as Cambridge Analytica on steroids, something that many, such as author Timothy Snyder, believe should be illegal.

Otherwise, and although it's nothing new, for several years prior to the election there existed a continuous stream of Russian propaganda being foisted upon Western countries – be it via bot-infested social media sites, via the likes of the Tucker Carlsons and Elon Musks of the world (to go along with all their acolytes), as well as via the recently-brought-to-light conservative influencers that were secretly funded by Russian state media employees to consistently generate English-language videos that were in line with the Kremlin's desire to amplify domestic divisions in the US in order to weaken opposition to Russian interests.

According to an FBI investigation, nearly $10m was funnelled to the Tennessee-based company Tenet Media by the Kremlin's media arm, or rather via "Moscow, which intelligence officials have said has a preference for Republican Donald Trump". To little surprise, Elon Musk, a major US defence contractor no less, constantly pushed the Russia-funded disinformation peddled by these conservative influencers. It's been said that one of these conservative influencers, likely YouTube personality Tim Pool, stated that "it would take 100k per weekly episode to make it worth his while", Pool vociferously proclaiming (while seemingly reading off a script) on his YouTube channel (which has more than 1.37m subscribers) that "Ukraine is the enemy of this country, Ukraine is our enemy, being funded by the Democrats!"

Along with the nearly $10m funnelled to Tenet Media, it's anybody's guess as to how many more tens of millions of dollars – if not hundreds of millions of dollars – were spent by Russia on swinging the American election in their desired direction by saturating the internet with misinformation, disinformation, and outright propaganda.

All of that can then be topped off with a large serving of misogyny and racism of which the US is rather infamous for, as well as a media that's dominated by the right – think Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, X, the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), "manosphere" podcasters and the like such as Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Jackson Hinkle, Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Jack Posobiec, to go along with the slew of podcasts that Trump went on during his campaign (many of which were recommended to him by his youngest son, Barron).

With all that said, to suggest that Kamala Harris will be inaugurated come January 20^th as the 47^th president of the United States would suggest that some kind of vote tampering may have occurred, tampering wholly different from the mostly-asinine theories relayed above. Because while there was nothing technically illegal about the deceptive Cambridge Analytica-esque "advertising" revealed by the Washington Post, and while one can't exactly cry for a redo due to information warfare conducted by a country with a very effective propaganda machine able to hack the minds of millions of people with ease (or so one might have thought prior to Romania's recent cancellation of its first round of voting), the fact remains that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

That requirement of course hasn't stopped thousands upon thousands of people on Twitter demanding recounts, be they demands egged on by a Wall Street Journal piece stating that the Harris Victory Fund was raising money for a possible recount, or because of other more obtuse situations such as... you know... a bunch of votes that are said to have fallen off the back of a truck.

All in all, it's generally agreed upon by those in the know (who in the process aren't prone to believing in baseless conspiracy theories) that there was no foul play involved in this election, and that there's no compelling evidence suggesting that the election was unscrupulously tipped in Donald Trump's favour. That doesn't technically mean that nothing nefarious happened, just that there's (currently) no evidence corroborating an occurrence as such. Regardless, there do still exist legitimate reasons to believe that something nefarious may in fact have occurred.

From Russia with (the former) gov

While the asinine theories mentioned above can be easily dismissed, and while there's no whistleblowers that have yet to emerge revealing hard evidence of election interference, there are nonetheless what seem to be a cadre of credible individuals who, in what seems to be a bit of a Hail Mary, have tried to reverse-engineer a plausible hypothesis or two out of current facts in the hope of conjuring up (valid) evidence of election interference.

Computer and cyber security experts raise the alarm

The most credible of these theories was initially announced via a letter by a group of computer security experts addressed to vice president Kamala Harris, published November 13^th on the website Free Speech for People.

Computer Scientists: Breaches of Voting System Software Warrant Recounts to Ensure Election Verification - Free Speech For People

A group of computer security experts have written to Vice President Kamala Harris to alert her to the fact that voting systems were breached by Trump allies in 2021 and 2022 and to urge her to seek recounts in key states to ensure election verification. Following the 2020 election, operatives working with Trump attorneys accessedRead More

Free Speech For PeopleEd Erikson

The letter references the aforementioned breaches in election systems that occurred in Georgia, the group of computer security experts stressing the fact that they aren't suggesting election systems were in fact breached prior to the election but that hand recounts should be routine for all elections, particularly when the stakes are so high. Citing the case in Georgia, it's pointed out that copies of election machine software were made by the operatives, software that was subsequently shared with Trump allies and even posted online. Moreover, it's also pointed out that it was learned from subsequent court filings and public record requests that the breaches in Georgia were just a subset of a larger scheme to obtain voting system software from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Arizona, the software to then be shared amongst the network of operatives affiliated with Trump.

As should go without saying, possession of said voting system software would enable unscrupulous individuals to install it on "replica" voting systems of their own creation, the software then able to be examined for vectors upon which exploits could be undertaken. Likewise, malware could theoretically be developed which, upon being installed on a voting machine in one way or another, could allow for the manipulation of vote counts.

In light of those outlined possibilities, the letter's signees have suggested that hand recounts be undertaken in no less than Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and optionally other states as well.

In a subsequent November 25^th letter addressed to president Biden and vice president Harris, cybersecurity expert Jackie Singh (former Global Director of Incident Response at Intel Security and McAfee, and Senior Incident Response and threat Analyst for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign) wrote about "the urgent need for a forensic audit to restore trust in our democracy", referencing the "alarming irregularities" of bomb threats traced to foreign sources, breaches of voting system software, voter roll purges, and a surge in rejected mail-in ballots.

For those unfamiliar, forensic audits don't merely entail a recount but rather involve a more comprehensive investigation, what with every aspect of the election process needing to be reviewed so as to uncover the possibility of any errors and/or tampering.

The three areas that a forensic audit might focus on would be (1) verification of rejected ballots, specifically mail-in ballots of which could see their validity restored; (2) digital security analysis, which would entail cybersecurity experts examining voting infrastructure for any signs of digital tampering; and (3) examination of paper ballots, which would be more than a mere recount as it'd compare digital records with paper records (if the latter exist), in the process revealing possible discrepancies of which would suggest the possibility of machine errors or even tampering.

It's not as if there isn't precedent for such undertakings, what with France, Germany and Japan having well-established protocols for investigating instances of suspected election malfeasance or interference. Likewise, Mexico and Brazil also have well-established protocols for automatic audit trails ensuring accountability and transparency.

But as valid as all that may be, the million dollar question is whether or not Biden and/or Harris would actually call for (or have already called for) a forensic audit of the election. Yes, many MAGA Republicans may very well perceive an undertaking as such as an attempt by Democrats to steal the election. That being said, the fact remains that recounts did occur in the 2020 election – backed by the Republican party and the Trump campaign – of which were conducted in various counties in Texas, Arizona and Wisconsin, as well as at a statewide level in Georgia. Moreover, and unlike the valid concerns surrounding this election, many of the 2020 recounts were baseless from the get go, to the point that former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to forfeit his New York City apartment to two Georgia election workers he was found guilty of defaming after he spread false information about them conducting illegal activity while legitimately counting ballots in Atlanta on election night in 2020.

But although the fact remains that while Trump is somebody that cheats at virtually everything he involves himself with (academics, wives, businesses, vendors, employees, taxes and golf) and may very well have been inclined to cheat in the election in order to stay out of prison, perhaps a more plausible candidate to look at for having conducted nefarious activity in the 2024 US election is none other than Russia. We already know that through the aforementioned Tenet Media, Russia funded the production of several American influencers to propagate Russian propaganda, said influencers claiming to have not known their paycheques were coming from Russia. Considering Russia's strong incentive for Trump to win the election in order to enable its assured victory in Ukraine (and by extension Putin's desire to not be ousted/murdered by Russia's oligarchs), might it be possible that Russia funded a group of Americans to manipulate the election, said Americans unaware that their paycheques were coming from Russia in the same way that the aforementioned had their paycheques, through Tenet Media, originating from Russia?

Moldova

After all, it's not as if there isn't any precedent with regards to Russian interference. Prior to Moldova's first round of voting on October 20^th for its 2024 federal election (and EU referendum), Russia is said to have participated in bribing voters by funnelling more than $15m into the bank accounts of more than 130,000 Moldovan citizens, spending an estimated €100m on interference into Moldova's democratic processes.

While the pro-western incumbent Maia Sandu won the run off on November 3^rd, beating the Kremlin-friendly Alexandr Stoianoglo, Moldova had to overcome journalists receiving death threats, bomb threats to polling stations overseas, cyberattacks, and illegal organised voter transportation from Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

(Moldova's secret service subsequently published a 16-page report [in Romanian, as Moldova used to be a part of Romania before the Soviet Union partitioned it] about Russian interference in Moldova's presidential election and EU referendum. A short English write-up can be found here.)

Romania

Three weeks after Moldova's run off election Romania held the first round of its presidential election (November 24^th), which in a complete surprise saw far-right Christian nationalist and Moscow-friendly NATO critic Călin Georgescu win 22.9% of the first round, all the more shocking considering that just days earlier he'd been polling at around 5%. This is someone that's denied the existence of SARS-CoV-2, has described two second world war-era Romanian fascists as "national heroes", and has claimed that Romanian foreign affairs would benefit from "Russian wisdom".

Much like Trump's campaign, Georgescu (who declared zero campaign spending) was mostly ignored by the mainstream media, driven instead by viral TikTok videos and podcast appearances. But due to the videos reportedly being boosted by bot-like activity, Romania's media watchdog requested the European Commission to formally investigate TikTok's role in the election (which has been initiated), declassified information from secret services since showing that Georgescu's sudden success wasn't organic but rather was the result of a coordinated action by a "state actor" who exploited the TikTok algorithm to amplify his campaign. This included roughly 25,000 pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts that became active just a couple of weeks before the first-round vote, as well as paid content supporting Georgescu which failed to identify itself as campaign material (which is against the platform's own rules and of Romanian electoral law). A single TikTok account is said to have made €361,000 in payments in the span of one month to users who promoted Georgescu.

Fears of possible external interference were thus raised, resulting in the deputy head of the country's telecoms regulator stating on November 27^th that he was calling for the suspension of the China-owned platform TikTok, pending an investigation into possible election manipulation based on evidence of "manipulation of the electoral process". Specifically, national security officials had found cyberattacks intended to influence the fairness of the first round of the country's presidential election. No mention was made of what the cyberattacks may have entailed, but it was however suggested that Russia might have been involved. Meanwhile, on November 28^th Romania's supreme court ordered a recount of all first-round votes to rule out a suspicion of fraud (which it later validated), and following that was set to rule on whether or not the country would annul the election and declare the need for a new one. Which is exactly what it did.

Following president Klaus Iohannis' December 4^th release of declassified intelligence files (English versions here) – from the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunication Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs – which identified "aggressive hybrid Russian attacks" that promoted Georgescu across TikTok and Telegram, come December 6^th, just two days before the run-off election election was to occur, Romania's Constitutional Court made the rather unprecedented decision of annulling the election and thus requiring that the whole process be re-run.

It's of course very possible that the re-run won't result in a free and fair election, and it's also very possible that the annulment of the first-round could entrench divisions even further and result in a higher vote for Georgescu or any other pro-Russia candidate when the election is held again next year. Nonetheless, with Russia increasing its hybrid warfare across the globe as well as increasing its efforts to undermine the democracies of its neighbouring states and beyond (it's since been revealed that the Russian ad agency AdNow deployed misinformation campaigns in Romania in the run-up to the election), Romania should perhaps be lauded for its vigorous defence of its democracy, its concerted effort being one that other countries could possibly look to as an example.

Georgia

If all the aforementioned weren't enough, on the same day that Romania's supreme court ordered its first-round recount, in nearby Georgia tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pro-EU protesters took to the streets in response to the ruling Georgian Dream party's declaration that it would suspend talks on EU accession until 2028. In short, Georgian Dream (founded by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia) declared victory in October's parliamentary election in which it ostensibly garnered 54% of the vote. The results – in which Georgian Dream is said to have stolen as many as 300,000 votes – were described by a global research and data firm as being "statistically impossible", while the pro-European president, Salome Zourabichvili, described them as being "illegitimate" and as having been a "Russian special operation" due to allegations of voter intimidation, vote buying, and ballot stuffing.

The European Parliament in Brussels voted in favour of a resolution that called the election invalid, demanding that they be re-held with international supervision. Georgian Dream's response, as mentioned earlier, was to suspend talks on EU accession.

With accession to the EU (and into NATO) enshrined in Georgia's constitution as a long-standing national goal, letters condemning the decision were signed by hundreds of employees at Georgia's foreign, defence, justice and education ministries as well as by many at its central bank. Many major businesses also voiced their disdain for the suspension, while senior diplomats in the Netherlands, Italy, the Czech Republic and the United States resigned in protest (what some call "defecting").

Although Georgia had been given candidate status by the EU in December of 2023 (which coincides with 80% of Georgians being in support of EU membership), recent laws passed by Georgian Dream, including curbs on "foreign agents", have been described as authoritarian and Russian-inspired, which in effect have put Georgia's EU accession into jeopardy. With ongoing protests occurring in the capital of Tbilisi (as well as all across the rest of the country) and president Zourabichvili vowing that due to what she describes as an illegitimate government she won't step down (which she was due to do on December 29^th) until new parliamentary elections are held, the persistence and determination of those involved suggest that Georgia may very well go through its very own Euromaidan (and hopefully not a repeat of Belarus in 2020).

For those who don't remember Ukraine's 2014 Revolution of Dignity:

With all these retaliations and uprisings in Ukraine, Romania and Georgia against what is directly or indirectly Russian forces (a list to which Syria can be added to, what with rebels having simultaneously forced Russia-backed Bashar al-Assad to flee to Russia), one can't help but wonder what might happen – if anything – in the United States in light of Russia's attacks upon (a) the hearts and minds of those Americans who voted in its recent election, and possibly upon (b) the election system itself.

Belarus

As a bit of a side note, while it's well known that nothing significant is going on at the moment in Belarus (which is essentially a Russian puppet state), things appear to be heating up a bit due to its latest round of (performative) elections to be held on January 26^th of next year. In late-December, Belarusian propaganda outlets are said to be claiming that a coup d'etat is being prepared against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. The coup is said to be originating abroad – Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia – from which expats will return from in order to instigate riots, civil unrest, etc.

With the recent – and very sudden – fall of Assad in Syria there's no doubting that Lukashenko is wary of something similar happening in Belarus, and the cries of an incoming coup could very well be a disinformation campaign used as a ruse to justify crack downs on protests before and after the "election" (or could very well be cover for Putin to annex what is already a vassal state). But with the US State Department having released a travel advisory for Belarus in mid-December in which it advised all Americans to leave the country immediately, the possibility exists that Belarus could very well become the latest country under Putin's oppressive thumb to free itself from Russian occupation.

Being smart on security

Europe aside, having seen and heard Harris' and Biden's concession speeches following Trump's election victory, one can't be blamed for getting the impression that neither Harris nor Biden have even the slightest interest in questioning the possibility that something awry may have occurred with the election (the fact that Trump would have filed lawsuits to push past the certification dates if Harris had of challenged the vote – landing him directly in front of the corrupt SCOTUS – could very well have made any such attempt pointless anyway). That of course hasn't stopped many a Democrat supporter from assiduously hanging off of each and every word the current president and vice-president have said since, in what is all but surely the forlorn attempt of trying to extract some kind of secret message from those words, signifying some kind of upcoming action (more on that in the next section).

Although no evidence has emerged suggesting there existed direct election interference on the part of Russia, and although the likelihood of some kind of action being undertaken by Harris and/or Biden gets less and less likely by the day, a few words published in 2018 by a former US senator, who found themselves on the Senate Intelligence Committee as well as the Homeland Security Committee, might provide some food for thought.

The first of three quotes concerns Russian meddling in the 2016 election:

We are currently under attack. Our elections are top of mind, especially given the nefarious—and effective—attacks by the Russian government. The January 2017 assessment found that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” Though many have become numb to it through the news cycle, the significance of this finding is hard to overstate. The intelligence community assessed, with a high degree of confidence, that Russia's intelligence services conducted cyber operations to hack into a U.S. presidential campaign and to release data they gathered with the intent of influencing the outcome of the election.

Russian agents and propagandists exploited U.S. social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to spread false and inflammatory information about Secretary Clinton and to stoke divisions in the United States.¹

The second quote concerns Russian penetration of election equipment:

Of particular interest to me was the threat of Russian penetration of our election equipment itself. In May 2018, we released our preliminary findings on the issue of election security. We let the public know that in 2016, the Russian government had conducted a coordinated cyber campaign against the election infrastructures of at least eighteen individual states, and possibly as many as twenty-one. Other states also saw malicious activity, which the intelligence community has been unable to attribute to Russia. What we do know is that Russian operatives scanned election databases looking for vulnerabilities. They attempted to break in. And in some cases, they were actually successful in penetrating voter registration databases. Thankfully, as of May 2018, our committee had not seen any evidence that actual vote tallies or voter registration rolls were changed. But given our limited information on state audits and forensic examinations of states' own election infrastructures, we cannot rule out that activities were successfully carried out that we just don't know about yet.²

And finally the third and last quote concerns preparing the United States for future attacks:

I think we should be preparing to defend against the worst-case scenario: that foreign actors will target these outmoded machines and manipulate vote tallies. Given Russia's unprecedented effort to undermine confidence in our election system while attempting to interfere with the outcome of a presidential election, there's no question that the Kremlin is emboldened—along with other state and nonstate actors—to try again.³

To repeat, the US needs to "defend against the worst-case scenario [of] manipulate[d] vote tallies" because "there's no question that the Kremlin is emboldened [...] to try again". That's some pretty serious stuff. Serious enough that perhaps somebody ought to be relaying it all to Kamala Harris in order to make her aware of the possibility of what may have happened in this election, considering that the second quote finishes off by stating that "given our limited information on state audits and forensic examinations of states' own election infrastructures, we cannot rule out that activities were successfully carried out that we just don't know about yet" (which sounds a bit like one of former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns", as the election interference would not only be unknown to have occurred but its methodologies would be unknown as well). In other words, and to reiterate, it may be inferred that the US government doesn't know whether any activities were successfully carried out during this 2024 election given the limited – if not non-existent – forensic examinations undertaken.

Well, it turns out that nobody has to inform Harris about any of that, because those three quotes were in fact all derived from the book The Truths We Hold, a book written by none other than Kamala Harris herself.

Yes, in the ninth chapter of her book The Truths We Hold, "Smart on Security" (which you can listen to here, narrated by Harris herself), Harris describes exactly why the United States ought to be concerned about Russian meddling in American elections, and why it might not even be aware of any wrongdoing without a thorough forensic audit. In fact, the US government plausibly not being aware of any malicious activities without having actually performed a forensic audit provides all the justification needed for going ahead with a forensic audit for no other reason than Russia's unbeknownst tampering in the US election would simply be an example of Russia behaving like... well... Russia.

We don't even have to take Kamala Harris' word for it, what with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former Wagner group mercenary boss, one-time close Vladimir Putin ally (before he instigated an aborted coup and shortly thereafter had the plane he and colleagues were on similarly "aborted" mid-flight), and founder of the Internet Research Agency (a notorious troll farm that the US government has sanctioned for interfering in American elections, and which otherwise was engaged in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian interests), admitted to the Russian social network Vkontakte that Russia has interfered in US elections and that it would continue doing so.

Gentlemen, we have interfered, are interfering and will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.

That being so, US intelligence officials warned in July of this year that Russia was intending to use social media to manipulate US public opinion in favour of Trump, the Department of Justice in September then accusing Russia of following through with that by undertaking sophisticated influence campaigns. As things currently stand, whether or not anything else occurred is anybody's guess.

Wishcasting (and more) for a different mold

It should go without saying that the premise of this piece is more than a little bit outlandish, to the point that on occasion it's almost fallen into the category of "wishcasting". For those that haven't heard of the term before, wishcasting is understood as "the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favourable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion" (and is therefore markedly different from conspiracy theory thinking). Which, even though this piece has relayed much factual information regarding many improprieties that have been undertaken, the fact that it's titled "Democracy Doesn't Flippantly Die in Nonchalance", and that its excerpt includes the premise that "the only question now is which Russian asset will be the first to fall", comes very close to delving into the world of wishcasting.

Were I to have not redacted the material at the beginning of this piece and, instead of writing this and the previous three sections, had of written the planned-for section entitled "The what and the how" of which would have explained the backstory of how the whole thing was seen to have been set up, it would have been less of a wishcasting piece and more of gaming things out, as stated early on.

This piece, therefore, is unfortunately nothing like it was originally intended to be, as rather than being a drawn out piece that incessantly beats around the bush and points to events that anybody can readily find out about themselves, it was meant to be a piece explaining things as only I see them. For the most part. Because while I've come across nothing that comes close to paralleling the rather plausible scenario and reasoning for why Harris might be inaugurated come January 20^th as well as the backstory to how such a thing might have unfolded over the past few years, I have however come across a hypothetical scenario that, although our outcomes differ as do many of the specifics, closely parallels part of the denouement I'd reasoned out (in particular the notion that Trump will no longer face trial for any of his wrongdoings, and that in one way or another he'll tell his base to stand down).

Plausible, if not far fetched.

Otherwise, since I've come close to inadvertently cornering myself into the realm of wishcasting, and although I don't necessarily want to get anybody's hopes up, I figure I might as well go all in in this section and relay some of the more common and reasonable instances of wishcasting out there, followed up by a few non-wishcasting scenarios that may result in a raised eyebrow or two. That being so, what better place to begin than with what seems to be a bit of a dud (in order to show how faulty wishcasting can easily be), coupled with a non-dud (that shows how fun wishcasting can be for the whole family).

Gavin Newsom & Barack Obama

Regarded by some as the candidate that should have headed the Democrat ticket following Biden stepping down, on December 5^th California governor Gavin Newsom held a press conference at the border about transnational commerce and border security. As riveting as that may have been, what some found to be of even more interest were some final words of Newsom's in which the impression was taken that he was insinuating some kind of upcoming revelation.

Others on Twitter shared a still image of the clip with the caption "Gavin Newsom: 'Be patient, what happened will be revealed.'", other tweets with the still image simply stating "MESSAGE RECEIVED" (to which some replies were seemingly 100% confident that something was in the works).

Otherwise, if you played the above clip you'll have noticed that both the video and audio feed dropped out right when Newsom was talking about the timing, which wasn't the result of the tweeter nefariously playing with the clip but was actually a problem emanating from the original ABC 10 clip. Nonetheless, if one takes a look at Forbes' feed of the conference the clip doesn't drop out, allowing one to hear the entirety of Newsom's answer.

Transcribed for those who don't want to bother watching the clip (the portion that dropped out being italicized):

Be patient. What happened will be revealed and it won't be revealed in the hours and days and weeks and even months after an election.

In other words, Newsom is stating that a more clear understanding of the events that led to the election's outcome won't be known for as long as months down the line. Which, if one adds just two months to December 5^th, suggests no earlier than February 6^th, roughly a couple of weeks after Trump would be sworn in and thus irrelevant when it comes to Harris possibly being inaugurated instead of Trump.

So although the wishcasting can be rather sloppy as well as outlandish at times, on some occasions in can seem rather... well... compelling. The best example of this comes via a speech (shared across Twitter) that occurred on the same day that Newsom gave his aforementioned press conference, in this case by none other than Barack Obama himself at the Obama Foundation 2024 Democracy Forum (marking the first speech he's given since the election).

In short, Obama is saying that there can be normal political disagreement (in which parties deal with matters through compromise and understanding), but he's also saying that there can also be occasions when democratic systems are fundamentally threatened (in which case one must act with firm and unyielding resistance).

Unsurprisingly, some are interpreting this portion of Obama's speech as "signalling", a process through which "they are trying to subtly prepare everyone for what may be coming". Which, to be honest, sounds rather QAnon-like (i.e. "the coming storm"). But with the political situation being what it is at the moment, and with certain events that have unfolded over the past few months in other parts of the world providing a kind of precedence, the notion that the US government could (legally, and with good reason) undertake some kind of action due to information known and/or unknown to the public, technically, and while there's still time, can't be ruled out.

Hand recounts

Although some of the wishcasting can at times at least be based on somewhat reasonable scenarios, the amount of times one sees the timing for one set of wishcasting expire and then – without any reflection – get followed up by yet another set of wishcasting is enough to make one ponder whether or not some of these individuals have monetised their Twitter/X accounts (and the like) and are in turn cynically making money by selling false hope after false hope to their tens of thousands of followers. Case in point:

And just one of many, many more:

Briefly, one of the first instances of wishcasting was placed on hand recounts of votes. This wishcast, however, has expired, as not only were no automatic recounts triggered due to close outcomes (say, margins of less than 0.5% or 1,000 votes), but deadlines for requesting recounts have long ago passed.

Faithless electors

Another instance of wishcasting that came and went was the possibility that "faithless electors" (aka "fake electors") would emerge and swing the election in Harris' favour on December 17^th when electors would meet in their respective states and vote for president and vice president. This was a bit of a contentious issue back in 2020 when Republican activists met in seven states that Biden won – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – in order to sign false certificates of ascertainment, proclaiming victory for Trump. Although the language about how the process works was tightened up after 2021's attempted insurrection via the Electoral Count Reform Act, and while 33 states (and Washington DC) prohibit electors from casting ballots for someone other than the winner of the election, that didn't stop some from at least suggesting (and, uh, petitioning) that Democrats attempt to do what Republicans failed to pull off in 2020. Despite attempts to galvanise an alternative outcome, events across the country went off without a hitch, and another round of wishcasting bit the dust.

Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment

The followup to the hand recount and faithless elector wishcasting is wishcasting surrounding the fact that Trump is an adjudicated insurrectionist, courtesy of rulings by the Colorado Supreme Court (whose ruling initially removed Trump from Colorado's November 5^th ballot), by the Secretary of State of Maine, and by a judge in Illinois courtesy of a case brought by Free Speech for People. Trump's second impeachment trial also established Trump to be an insurrectionist, as although it didn't receive the two-thirds of votes needed to remove him from office, it did receive the majority of votes needed to designate him an insurrectionist. Why all this matters is because Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment disqualifies anybody that "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding office.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

For starters, the last sentence isn't stating that two-thirds of each House must vote for somebody to be deemed an insurrectionist, but rather is an amnesty clause by which an insurrectionist can have the disability removed and thus be able to once again hold office. Otherwise, how one goes about enforcing the legislation of Section 3 is apparently up for debate, as is whether or not it's even viable.

As per the new Electoral Count Reform Act, to put forward the motion to enforce the legislation would require 87 votes in the House and 20 votes in the Senate (one-fifth of each chamber) to lodge it, although someone would need to step forward to start that process. Following that, a majority vote in each chamber is required in order to sustain the objection. Several problems here.

The most obvious problem is the requirement for a majority vote in each chamber, what with (MAGA) Republicans currently in control of the House (by a slim margin, but a margin nonetheless).

Secondly, supposing Trump's (and Musk's) antics since his election win were enough to disgust some GOP members of the House to defect and vote against Trump (which they did when Trump was found to be an insurrectionist nearly four years ago), there's also the problem of somebody actually wanting to challenge Trump's qualification to start the process. Any Democrat wanting to challenge Trump's constitutional disqualification would know that any venture as such would in all likelihood be fruitless (due to Democrats not controlling the House) if not counterproductive as any motion as such would be seen as flouting the will of the people and, as the argument wouldn't be accepted by the Supreme Court, would make them look anti-democratic (regardless of the fact that they'd be following democratic processes).

Thirdly, and although I'll leave it to Peter Gattuso, a "fact check reporter" for The Dispatch, to fully explain this, in what is by all appearances a (partially) poor interpretation of the constitution, the Supreme Court, which is the final arbiter interpreting the constitution, stated in a 9-0 March 4^th 2024 ruling that states could not independently enforce the disqualification, implying that Trump must be allowed to appear on Colorado's ballot, which he did. All good so far, as allowing such a thing would allow any state to go rogue and cause chaos in the system. However, what the Supreme Court also ruled, voluntarily, and this time in just a 5-4 majority, is that only Congress can disqualify a candidate, a process that must be done through legislation as per Section 5 of the 14^th Amendment. Which, as many say, makes no sense, because due to Section 3 stating that a two-thirds majority is required to remove the disability, this makes Section 3 self-executing. Nonetheless, what the Supreme Court did was rule that Section 3 is not self-executing, supposedly due to Section 5, which means that Trump is therefore not automatically disqualified.

However, contrary to what was written in The Dispatch, a more recent opinion piece published in The Hill – by Evan Davis and David Schulte, the former a lawyer, the latter an investment banker, both also editor in chief for seperate law journals – concludes that the recent ruling that only Congress can disqualify a candidate "lacks merit for three reasons". While I'll spare you an explanation of what those three technical reasons are (Newsweek gives its own thorough explanation if you wish), I will say that YouTuber Jessica Denson (formerly of the YouTube channel MeidasTouch) was over the moon as a result of the article, and in the same video in which she recites and explains the article she simultaneously announced her involvement in the just-launched 14^th Now march on Washington, D.C.

However, not everybody was as convinced by the Hill article, most notably host Ben Meiselas of MeidasTouch and his guest Glen Kirschner, a former top federal prosecutor who had also appeared as a guest on Denson's channel a few days earlier on the topic of Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment. According to Meiselas' interview with Kirschner, and regardless of the Hill article, the 5-4 majority ruling made by the Supreme Court that only Congress can disqualify a candidate was a poor and incorrect interpretation of the Constitution that shouldn't have been made. Nonetheless, the ruling was made, and if an attempt was made to disqualify Trump while ignoring the ruling, a case would be brought all the way up to the Supreme Court where it would be struck down. Or in short, the Supreme Court unfortunately made a bad ruling, but as it's the law of the land it would most certainly uphold that bad ruling if and when the time came. (Another Meiselas MeidasTouch video was published the day after the Kirschner interview, this time interviewing former federal prosecutor and law professor Harry Litman, to go along with Brian Tyler Cohen interviewing Kirschner a day after that.)

Now, I'm not about to try and provide my own interpretation of how events might unfold if various avenues were taken (although I will at least say that I lean towards Meiselas' and Kirschner's/Litman's reasoning), but what I will say is that if for some completely unexpected reason something screwy happened – say, a speaker isn't chosen on January 3^rd, the presidential election results aren't certified three days later, and in some unexplainable turn of events a new speaker and a handful of Republicans join forces with Democrats to disqualify Trump – that there would be more than a few extremely upset MAGA types out there.

Not only would these MAGA types be extremely upset because of Trump's disqualification, but because of who would become president due to what would be seen as a hijacking of the system. For as Davis and Schulte also effectively state in The Hill, it wouldn't be JD Vance that would automatically then become president.

If the objection is sustained by majority vote in each house, the vote is not counted and the number of votes required to be elected is reduced by the number of disqualified votes. If all votes for Trump were not counted, Kamala Harris would be elected president.

Suffice to say, were Trump to not only not become president on January 20^th but was then replaced with Harris, based on nothing more than a technicality, to reiterate the understatement of the century that was mentioned above, there would be more than a few extremely upset MAGA types out there. But regardless of that all but guaranteed certainty and the likely result of failure anyway, both of which would likely deter any Democrat from initiating the required process, that some can tweet that "Trump will be DISQUALIFIED" (italicised emphasis added) is probably some of the greatest wishcasting one can come across.

Executive Order 13848

An altogether different case of wishcasting whose supposed outcome would at least not be likely to plunge the country into Civil War 2.0 is the gathering and presentation of information pertaining to an occurrence of foreign interference in a United States election. Signed into law on September 12^th, 2018 by then-president Trump and then renewed annually by Biden (most recently on September 9^th, 2024), Executive Order 13848 declares election interference to be a national emergency. As per the Order, sanctions are to be applied to foreign entities and individuals that partake in unauthorised access to election infrastructure, distribute propaganda and disinformation, and/or conduct cyberattacks against the electoral system. As stated in Biden's most recent renewal of the Order,

Although there has been no evidence of a foreign power altering the outcomes or vote tabulation in any United States election, foreign powers have historically sought to exploit America's free and open political system. In recent years, the proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference. The ability of persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States to interfere in or undermine public confidence in United States elections, including through the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure or the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation, continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.

That all being so, many wishcasting denizens of social media latched onto vague details about some kind of report on foreign interference needing to be delivered within 45 days (suggesting December 20^th), the date by which any appropriate sanctions would be recommended. Because not only could sanctions be imposed and assets could be frozen, but the validity of election results could be challenged (albeit without any actual powers to overturn or delay election results directly). Unsurprisingly, the wishcasting was let loose in the lead up to December 20^th.

Come December 19^th, social media lit up with news that Harris had cancelled a trip to California and was headed to the White House instead (replete with footage of Harris' motorcade making the mad dash), all of which "proved" something was unfolding. But as no grand announcement was made on the 20^th, whether Harris had returned to Washington in case she was needed for a tie-breaking vote in the senate or for something related to the killing of an ISIS leader in Syria, it's apparent that these wishcasting-types don't do their homework or pay much attention to detail.

Because if one pulls up Executive Order 13848 itself, it can be seen in section 1(a) that the assessment pertaining to foreign interference in a United States election must be delivered "Not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States election". For the 2024 election, that'd be no later than December 20^th. But that pertains only to the first stage of the assemblage and deliverance of the assessment. Because as section 1(b) then states,

Within 45 days of receiving the assessment and information described in section 1(a) of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate agencies and, as appropriate, State and local officials, shall deliver to the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of Defense a report evaluating, with respect to the United States election that is the subject of the assessment described in section 1(a):

That is, following completion of section 1(a) a report based on that assessment must then be made by the appropriate parties, who then deliver it to the president and other relevant individuals. In other words, nothing was ever preordained to happen by December 20^th for the simple fact that the wishcasters were only taking into account the maximum timing for a singular 45 day period.

What's crucial to look at then is the time-frame involved for both section 1(a) and section 1(b). Section 1(a) must be delivered in no more than 45 days, and section 1(b) must be delivered within 45 days. That's 90 days maximum, and seeing how there's 76 days between the November 5^th election and the January 20^th inauguration, dillydallying with completing section 1(a) and section 1(b) could result in the report being delivered to none other than president Trump, two weeks after he succeeded Biden. This would suggest then that not only would the report have to be delivered 14 days early so that it arrived before Biden left office, and not only an additional 14 days early so that it was delivered before the election is certified on January 6^th, but possibly an additional 7 or so days early so that there was time to evaluate the report and take any actions before the election was certified. That would imply roughly 56 days between November 5^th and the end of December, or roughly 28 days for each of section 1(a) and section 1(b). Whether those timelines could somehow be adhered to, forcibly or not, is not something the Order states.

All in all, is it possible that a report – made possible by an Executive Order that Trump signed into law – shall be delivered to Biden of which could result in the undoing of Trump? It's possible, I suppose. Either way, I'll leave you with an image that many a wishcaster likes to share as "evidence" that something is afoot.

Alfie Oakes

Next up, what of the various Republican-adjacent raids that were made within days of the election? Chances are you aren't aware of these, the first being the raid by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS, the Department of Defense agency that investigates terrorism, cyber crime, fraud, bribery, public corruption, and more), the US Secret Service, and IRS agents conducted at the home and Immokalee business of Alfie Oakes two days after the election. Oakes, if you've never heard of him, is a bit of a celebrity farmer/grocer in the Naples, Florida area known for being the owner of Oakes Farm and Seed to Table supermarket, for being a prominent Republican political figure and donor, for being an ambassador for Turning Point USA (an organisation that pushes Christian nationalist talking points), for being a close friend with Mike Flynn (a pusher of QAnon and election denialism conspiracies, who's lied to the FBI about discussions with the Russian ambassador, and who hosted a party at Oakes' supermarket on election night 2022), for liking to get chummy with Donald Trump, for being a white supremacist anti-vaxxer that calls SARS-CoV-2 a "hoax", and to top it all off for being someone who funded a bus trip for about 100 individuals to attend what turned into the attempted insurrection at the US capitol on January 6^th, 2021 (an insurrection which Oakes blamed on supposed left-wing activists).

Since the Secret Service declined to comment on the raids and the only thing to go on was the claim by the DCIS that they were conducting "official law enforcement activity", it's unknown whether or not the raid had anything to do with the $2.8m lawsuit brought against Oakes for failing to pay back loans, or if it was in fact due to an entirely different issue. That being said, the fact that an agency such as the DCIS was involved suggests something beyond the "mere" defaulting on loans. Whether they had something to do with Oakes' political activities, and possibly in relation to the election in some way, is anybody's guess.

Polymarket

What's also anybody's guess is why the FBI raided the home of Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan barely a week after the election (seizing his cellphone and other electronic devices, but not arresting or charging him). Polymarket, for those similarly unaware, was founded in 2020 and is what's referred to as a cryptocurrency-based "prediction market" that offers "event contracts", meaning it allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events (such as weather patterns, awards, the amount of times Elon Musk may tweet in a week, the results of political elections, etc.). The provision of "event contracts" is a fancy way of saying a service that allows for peer-to-peer gambling, but with betting on elections being illegal in the US under federal law, the service blocked access to Polymarket for Americans as of 2022 following Polymarket's settlement with the CFTC after it was accused of running an unregistered derivatives-trading platform. In turn, many Americans now get around the block via usage of VPNs and so continue to use Polymarket, presumably for betting on elections and all the rest of it.

So why exactly did the home of Coplan, the founder of Polymarket, get raided? Well, according to Coplan himself, it was some sort of retaliation for the platform's users overwhelmingly betting that Trump would win the election. According to The Wall Street Journal, at one point in mid-October bettors were giving Trump a 60% chance of winning and Harris a 40% chance, even though virtually all polls at the time were indicating that the two candidates were neck and neck. As Coplan himself stated,

It's discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents. We are deeply committed to being non-partisan, and today is no different, but the incumbents should do some self-reflecting and recognize that taking a more pro-business, pro-startup approach may be what would have changed their fate this election.

Putting aside Coplan's attempt to election-splain to Democrats, the fact that he tried claiming that Polymarket is "non-partisan" may raise a few eyebrows. Because the fact of the matter is, while Polymarket raised $25m in its Series A funding round led by General Catalyst, it raised another $45m in its Series B funding round, the lead investor being Founders Fund, the venture capitalist firm owned by none other than Peter Thiel. That is, the South African "tech broligarch" that not only was part of the PayPal Mafia with Elon Musk, but who funded vice president-elect JD Vance's 2022 Senate run to the tune of a record $15m. Perhaps it shouldn't just be a few eyebrows being raised but also some red flags.

Regarding the restrictions place on Polymarket, one reason for not permitting betting to occur on elections is because by introducing financial incentives into elections, the motivation of voting could be altered from that of political convictions to financial calculations. That doesn't seem to be raise much cause for concern by a certain somebody, said person believing that polling based on financial calculations is – for some unexplained reason – more accurate than regular old polling based on political considerations.

Which is a bit of a weird take, considering that betting on US elections through Polymarket isn't permitted. On the one hand, is Musk suggesting that what's supposed to be non-US bettors have a superior grasp on the results of the US election than what Americans possess? (And if so, from which non-American countries are these bettors primarily emanating from? Russia?) On the other hand, if these bettors are in fact (primarily) Americans getting around restrictions with VPNs, is Musk effectively championing Americans breaking federal laws?

But what's possibly of more concern than "polling" based on "money [...] on the line" being in some way a superior and more accurate methodology of determining voter trends than conventional polling methods is the fact that Musk went out of his way to validate Polymarket's authority as a leading determinate on the outcome of the 2024 election, quite possibly for similar reasons to the "heads I win, tails you lose" approach that Trump took to the 2024 election results.

Prior to the election, Trump repeatedly claimed that the only way he could lose is if it was rigged by the Democrats. When asked why Democrats – who are of course in the White House now but weren't in 2020 – supposedly stole the 2020 election but didn't in 2024 when they'd presumably have more means to do so, Trump replied "because I think it was too big to rig" (even though voter turnout was smaller in 2024 than it was in 2020, even though he didn't even get 50% of the votes, and even though it was one of the closest elections in decades).

Similarly, and as The Wall Street Journal put it, "If Trump loses, his favourable odds in the betting markets could bolster arguments that the election was stolen from him". But conversely, if Trump were to win, then betting markets could just as well provide credence for the victory – because, after all, "[Polymarket is] more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line". Again, "heads I win, tails you lose".

What's also of concern is the manner in which public sentiment about the election could be artificially influenced by prediction markets such as Polymarket, particularly by foreign parties. As was mentioned earlier, with federal law restricting Polymarket from allowing Americans to bet on elections, Musk's championing of Polymarket indicators as seen in the tweet above could very well be the championing of foreign parties running an influence campaign to assist in the nudging of the election in a particular direction.

That's not mere hyperbole, as four Polymarket accounts collectively placed in the area of $30m worth of bets on Trump winning the election. Speculation was rife that the four accounts were in fact operated by the same individual/party, but the fact that it was revealed that the four accounts (which ended up being 11 accounts that in total bet more than $70m) did in fact all belong to a single French national doesn't dismiss the possibility that the bets were placed in the attempt of generating social-media buzz for Trump. Because seeing how Polymarket operates with crypto rather than American currency (as its largest competitor does, Kalshi) and so enables bets to be anonymised, the platform is effectively an ideal vector for foreign influence campaigns. Foreign influence campaigns that could be run on the platform that happens to be funded by none other than Peter Thiel, and that happens to be promoted by none other than Elon Musk.

NATO's Article 5 and the ICC

While the Alfie Oakes and Polymarket raids didn't involve any wishcasting (that I've noticed) and were more along the lines of curious situations that could plausibly be tied to questionable activities, I've saved the most absurd wishcasting for last, that being the invocation of NATO's Article 5. The first part of this wishcasting that came and went involved Trump who, now being a convicted felon, would be arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) upon his visit to France (where he'd be for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral). Suffice to say, Trump wasn't arrested.

Following that, and due to something or another, the invocation of NATO's Article 5 is somehow "critical" to all this and supposedly means that "President Biden stays in place". Furthermore, the result will be that the ICC will step in, seeing how following special counsel Jack Smith dropping his cases against Trump "strategically eliminat[es] potential priority and jurisdiction issues for the ICC".

I'll waste no more of your time on that nonsense.

Otherwise, there's a few other small wishcasting-esque plots such as what's known as drop-off voting, as well as a theory revolving around bullet ballots by a self-described hacking and counter-hacking expert, cyber-security adviser, and government contractor Stephen Spoonamore (whose company website listed on his LinkedIn page appears to not be very active at time of publishing). I wrote about 600 words or so essentially debunking his theory (I could see no explanation for why election hackers would forget to cover up such an obvious clue of failing to fully fill out ballots, which is what his theory was based on), but as his unsourced numbers regarding bullet ballots turned out to be incorrect (no surprise there), a week and a half later he subsequently withdrew his initial theory and started off with a new one, and I in turn deleted my now-negated debunking.

Which is how a lot of this stuff goes. Yes, there could very well be some mirth in some of the non-election denialism situations and some of the wishcasting scenarios presented throughout this post. However, regardless of how many theories the Twitter/X (and other social media) accounts toss out for the sole purpose of engagement farming (and then never pause for self reflection on why they were previously wrong), the one thing that's guaranteed is that if my hunch turns out to be correct that in one way or another Harris gets inaugurated instead of Trump come January 20^th, all of these engagement-farming social media accounts – who would have inherently been wrong 99% of the time – are going to claim vindication, that they were right all along, while their overly desperate followers will hang off of their every word. But in the world of grifting off of people's hopes, that's just how it goes I suppose.

Conclusion

Even though I stated from the very get-go that what I'd originally intended to write was a piece explaining the background of why I'd concluded that Kamala Harris was going to be inaugurated as the 47^th president of the United States and the background story of how various events of the past four years all lead in the direction of that outcome, I also stressed that I had no smoking gun or confidential information about the exact manner in which an outcome as such would eventuate.

Nonetheless, having relayed a wide range of theories and scenarios throughout this piece, and supposing that Harris actually will be inaugurated come January 20^th, I figure I should at least offer somewhat of an "educated" guess as to what might be the scenario that leads to that outcome. And by "educated" I mean no more than a scenario that fits what I redacted and refrained from writing.

To start off by ruling out those that don't fit what I redacted and refrained from writing, special counsel Jack Smith – who has stated that he'll be resigning and closing his two prosecutions against President-elect Donald Trump before Trump takes office – is set to submit his final report to the Department of Justice imminently, a report which attorney general Merrick Garland could soon thereafter make public. The report is expected to include a significant amount of damning material that has never been made public before, material that could very well sway just enough Republicans to vote against Trump in a motion to disqualify him as an insurrectionist. Nonetheless, and although I won't state my reasoning, I can say that I don't expect a possible Harris-as-president to come about via Section 3 of the 14^th amendment, revelations made in time by Jack Smith or not.

On the other hand, what I do expect is that Harris-as-president would come about via something more along the lines of the rectification of some kind of election interference that occurred. How might discovery of that interference be revealed? Technically it could come about via Executive Order 13848, although I have a hard time seeing that happening as I see no reason why those doing the investigations and such would go out of their way to fast-track their work and thus not utilise the entirety of their 45 day allowances (be it because they quietly have allegiance to Trump or not). Discovery of election interference could also come about via a forensic audit, but although very much possible I nonetheless have a hard time seeing it as I imagine that the public would have in one way or another heard about and noticed various aspects – physical aspects – of the election system being investigated.

What else might there then be? Well, it's possible that an individual or individuals, having seen the hypocrisy and chaos and absurdity that has emerged since Trump's win, could grow a conscience and turn into whistleblowers. It's possible. Likewise, it's possible that an individual or team of sleuths could somehow unearth some kind of irregularity which is then passed on to the relevant authorities who then conclude that something was interfered with and that Harris actually received more votes in the electoral college than Trump. The most I can say about this is that I've seen and read some claims about irregular voting patterns, but while said claims seem interesting on the face of it I've either been unable to verify them myself and/or without further extrapolation onto a national scale they don't amount – as is – into something big enough to sway the entire election.

So while those are my vague take(s) on all this, I will at least add – in what is perhaps my one bout of conspiratorial thinking – that I have a hard time believing that – as the Twitter account (whose handle Musk appropriated off of a Twitter user) of Musk's America Pac stated – Republicans not only won all seven swing states, but that they increased their vote share in every single state in the union.

Otherwise, while do I suspect that two men are about to find themselves in a bit of hot water, the one thing I know if Trump does in fact take office come January 20^th is that Biden's greatest legacy will be to go down as an accomplice to the end of American democracy who presided over the last open election in the United States. Alternatively, the one thing I do know if Harris somehow manages to take office come January 20^th is that it'll be rather amusing to see if Polymarket, who would have effectively assisted in the fleecing of Harris bettors, is forced to pay up to all the individuals that voted for Harris, regardless of whether or not it was able to get back the "winnings" from Trump bettors.

Sounds of the Pandemicene, with Fanfare Ciocărlia

It's once again gonna be a bit of a stretch to regard this piece as belonging to the "Sounds of the Pandemicene, with Fanfare Ciocărlia" series, what with SARS-CoV-2 having been no more than mentioned three times and H5N1 once, both in passing. Nonetheless, we'll count those as good excuses.

Because with Moldova having managed to keep Russia at bay (at least, for the time being) in its recent election, cause for celebration is due. And what better way to mark the occasion than with Fanfare Ciocărlia's rather celebratory sounding song, "Moldavian Mood".

Fanfare Ciocărlia – Moldavian Mood

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But unfortunately it's not the time for celebration in all other parts of the world, one particular case being that of Moldova's neighbour Romania, Romania having recently annulled the results from the first round of its election of which are due to be re-held sometime in early-2025. To be a bit more specific, the election was annulled by Romania's Constitutional Court, a court which consists of nine members and in which three (Romanian) members are appointed by one of three government bodies: the President, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Furthermore, three (Romanian) members are renewed every three years.

That all being so, and with Romania being in need of something more fierce than a celebratory song for the redo of its first round of voting, something to put them in more of a fighting mood in light of Russia's continued hybrid attacks, then here's no less than Fanfare Ciocărlia with what can be fairly acknowledged as a clarion call of a song, entitled no less than "3 Romanians".

(With several European countries at the very least putting in the effort to rid themselves of their Putin backed puppets, we'll see if in the coming days and weeks if the United States can take on some of that "3 Romanians" spirit.)

Fanfare Ciocărlia – 3 Romanians

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"Moldavian Mood" can be found on the album "Gili Garabdi", available on Bandcamp, while "3 Romanians" can be found on the album "Onwards to Mars", also available on Bandcamp or wherever else you purchase and/or stream music from.