Voter Suppression

The Trumps Apparently Blame Bannon for Everything Now

Written by SK Ashby

Trump's sham "voter fraud" commission was disbanded last night because it has done basically nothing and the overwhelming majority of states, including Republican-controlled states, have refused to cooperate with the commission. One member of the commission was even suing the commission.

The whole thing was Trump's idea, but this is all Steve Bannon's fault according to the White House.

White House officials laid blame Wednesday less with Democrats than with the ex-colleague they said was responsible for its creation: former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was slammed in a statement by Trump on Wednesday after accusing Donald Trump Jr. of treason.

This was his idea, and it was not a good one,” the official said.

The commission was a “blundered Bannon rollout” and “should’ve never been in place,” another person familiar with the effort said.

Look, I am not defending Steve Bannon. Bannon is responsible for many terrible things, but this is laughable.

The only reason the commission even existed is because Trump was butt-hurt about losing the national popular vote by an incredibly wide margin of over three million votes. The commission was created because Trump wanted to prove that he actually won the popular vote. He wanted the commission to produce evidence that millions of immigrants voted illegally. It was created for his vanity. It was created to assuage his ego.

Members of the commission had their own ideas. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and others wanted to use the commission to fine-tune their suppression tactics, but it never would have been created if Trump didn't spend most of the election cycle and the days following the election claiming there was "mass voter fraud."

Furthermore, Mike Pence was the chairman of the commission, not Steve Bannon and Bannon hasn't been with the White House for many months. The commission was shut down just last night.

I don't know which "White House officials" spoke to Politico about this, but I suspect they're close to Mike Pence.