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Donald Trump is going on a furious Twitter tirade about the “rigged” election

Over the weekend, Donald Trump reinvigorated his pleas against the so-called rigged election in a barrage of tweets lambasting not only his political opponent Hillary Clinton and the media at large, but also Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan for being a bystander.

According to Trump, the media is rigging the election toward Clinton; the GOP establishment and Paul Ryan are working against him; and if Clinton wins in November, it will be because of large-scale voter fraud.

He tweeted:

Voter fraud! Crooked Hillary Clinton even got the questions to a debate, and nobody says a word. Can you imagine if I got the questions?
2:24 AM - 18 Oct 2016

WikiLeaks proves even the Clinton campaign knew Crooked mishandled classified info, but no one gets charged? RIGGED! http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-10-13/clinton-aides-sought-to-deny-any-classified-data-wikileaks —
1:58 AM - 18 Oct 2016 · United States, United States

Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!
11:33 PM - 17 Oct 2016

The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD
4:01 AM - 17 Oct 2016

Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!
11:31 PM - 16 Oct 2016

Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!
10:36 PM - 16 Oct 2016

Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
10:14 PM - 16 Oct 2016

Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election
11:23 PM - 15 Oct 2016

This election is being rigged by the media pushing false and unsubstantiated charges, and outright lies, in order to elect Crooked Hillary!
10:45 PM - 15 Oct 2016

This is certainly not the first time Trump has said the election has been — or will be — rigged against him; he first raised the conspiracies over voter fraud and Clinton-media cahoots in August and renews the claim every time he seems to be slipping in the polls. After Ryan said he would no longer campaign for Trump, the Republican nominee added him to the list of things working against him.

As it is now, days before the final debate, and less than a month before Election Day, the polls don’t look great for Trump. He seems to recognize this, tweeting about the negative impact the sexual assault allegations have had on his campaign (although he blames the media for putting out “fabricated” stories about them).

As my colleague Dara Lind explains, it is an attempt to preemptively excuse a possible loss in November and retain his much-cared-about image as a winner. But it also could have adverse results in November, fueling Trump supporters to rebuke — and possibly protest — the results.

Even Trump’s vice presidential pick Mike Pence thinks this is a bad idea, telling a supporter to stop calling for a revolution after Election Day. “We will absolutely accept the result of the election. Look, the American people will speak in an election that will culminate on November the 8th,” Pence told Chuck Todd on Sunday’s Meet The Press. “But the American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media. That's where the sense of a rigged election goes here, Chuck.”

That, however, hasn’t stopped Trump from pushing the idea that the election is unfairly rigged.

Vivek Ramaswamy #wingnut #ableist vox.com

In one of the most striking tangents of the night, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy even advocated for reopening “mental health institutions” that have closed over the decades as the country sought to cut costs (starting in the Reagan administration) and tried — but has largely failed — to invest in more humane home- and community-based services. He framed putting more people with mental health problems into those institutions as one of the most important ways to address crime.

“Just over the same period that we have closed mental health institutions, we have seen a spike in violent crime. Do we have the spine to bring them back?” he said. “I think we should. As president, I will.”

I have interviewed people who were subjected to the cruel treatment that was often commonplace in the mental health asylums of old. The new mental health paradigm is focused much more on treating people where they are. While the US has struggled to erect a sufficient mental health system given the scale of the country’s needs, few people who work in the field would argue that a return to the institutions of that era is the recipe for fixing our mental health crisis.

But Ramaswamy, the biggest non-Trump sensation of the GOP primary so far, does. He even implicitly allowed that “drugging up people in those psychiatric institutions with Zoloft and Seroquel” would be part of the program (but not the only part; he also wants a return to the patriotism, faith, and family that he believes constitutes the American character).

Clay Higgins #fundie vox.com

US Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana recently advocated for libraries to be replaced with “church-owned” alternatives. “Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding,” he tweeted. “We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”

Jeff Younger, Texas Republican House Candidate #transphobia #wingnut vox.com

Around age 3, Luna Younger started asking to wear dresses. Since the age of 5, she has insisted she is a girl. Now Luna is 7, and during court hearings, physicians, school staff, and family members have all testified that Luna has consistently, persistently identified as a girl.

While Luna’s mother respects her daughter’s gender identity — letting her wear what she chooses, whether it’s nail polish, dresses, or longer hair — Luna’s father does not. He insists Luna is not transgender. These polarizing differences over how to raise and treat a child are why trans families and advocates, as well as conservatives, have been closely watching the custody battle over the Coppell, Texas, trans girl.

After 15 months in court, on October 22, the jury awarded Luna’s mother, Anne Georgulas, full conservatorship of her daughter. It was a decision that brought relief to the trans community and outraged conservatives who believe supporting a trans child’s gender identity is tantamount to child abuse.

People were so riled up online, some sent threats to Georgulas; she was “viciously attacked and threatened by complete strangers,” her attorneys told the Daily Caller. Several prominent Texas officials even added to the fray, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who promised to order the state’s child protective services to investigate Georgulas. State Rep. Steve Toth said he would propose a bill to “add ‘Transitioning of a Minor’ as Child Abuse.”

National Rifle Association #fundie vox.com

[Transcript to an NRA scare ad]

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse “the resistance.”

All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

I’m the National Rifle Association of America. And I’m freedom’s safest place.

Marco Rubio #conspiracy vox.com

“A huge argument broke out at Senate Dem meeting last week over BDS,” he tweeted. “A significant number of Senate Democrats now support #BDS & Dem leaders want to avoid a floor vote that reveals that.”

But there is no evidence that any Democrats in the Senate support BDS; every one who has taken a public position on the movement has opposed it. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) called on Rubio to take down the tweet, telling his colleague that “you know it isn’t true.” And a senior Democratic Senate aide disputed Rubio’s characterization of the Democratic meeting last week about the bill, accusing Rubio of having sour grapes about his bill’s failure.

Samuel Alito #racist #elitist vox.com

One justice took umbrage with that invocation of racism: Justice Samuel Alito. His dissent was the latest in a string of opinions bristling at the idea that racism still shapes many policymakers’ decisions today, and that the legacy of past racism still affects people of color. In the most noteworthy of those opinions, 2018’s Abbott v. Perez, Alito convinced a majority of his colleagues to write such a strong presumption of white racial innocence into the law governing racial voter discrimination that it is now virtually impossible for voting rights plaintiffs to prove that state lawmakers acted with racist intent.

Alito does not appear driven by broad skepticism of racial issues. While he has repeatedly lashed out at the mere suggestion that white policymakers may have been motivated by racism, he took a drastically different tone in Ricci v. DeStefano (2009). In that case, Alito wrote a lengthy concurring opinion suggesting that a cohort of mostly white firefighters were denied promotions due to a conspiracy between New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and a local black preacher.

www.vox.com