The Trump cabal's attempts to corrupt the election

Because the crush of governmental manipulation to serve Trump’s personal and political ends is so relentless, we often focus only on isolated examples as they skate past.

But we need to connect the dots. Taken together, they tell a larger story that is truly staggering in its levels of corruption:

Rushing coronavirus treatments. [...] [S]cientists inside Trump’s own government are warning that the White House is laying the groundwork to increase pressure to approve a vaccine before Election Day, “even in the absence of agreement on its effectiveness and safety.”

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Trump pushed top health officials to approve a plasma treatment for the coronavirus without the full vetting some officials wanted, and in a way that resulted in officials wildly overstating its benefits.

Trump has explicitly tied the vaccine to his reelection timetable and has lashed out at scientists, saying they’re slow-walking the process to hurt him politically.

This comes even as the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to award a $250 million contract to an outside communications firm in part to package a message of “hope” about the coronavirus. Democrats are investigating whether this is a taxpayer-funded “political propaganda campaign.”

Twisting intelligence to support campaign agitprop. A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower has revealed that top officials pressed for findings about civil unrest to be revised to downplay white-supremacist violence and pump up the illusion of an organized leftist domestic terror threat.

Helping cast doubt on Russian electoral sabotage. Attorney General William P. Barr may reportedly release an interim report on his department’s ongoing “review” of the origins of the Russia investigation before the election. Barr reportedly wants the U.S. attorney doing the review to move faster.

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Limiting disclosure of knowledge of Russian sabotage. Meanwhile, Trump’s intelligence officials have announced an end to in-person congressional briefings on what they’re learning about ongoing Russian efforts to sabotage this election.

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Meanwhile, the statements that intel officials have released about Russian interference are extraordinarily circumspect and muddy the waters with false equivalences about Chinese and Iranian efforts, which mislead the public and thus further facilitate it.

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Trump isn’t trying to persuade a majority of U.S. voters to support him. Instead, he’s trying to get within what you might call cheating distance of pulling another electoral college inside straight even while losing the popular vote, just like last time.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.