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Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections
Mollie Hemingway applies her talent—rigorous and thoughtful old-school journalism—to documenting the 2020 assault against America perpetrated by the evil alliance of the progressive movement, the entrenched bureaucracy, modern “journalism”, and big technology firms. Yes, the election was rigged. But the core of Rigged is the story of years of lawfare, private takeovers of election boards by well-funded progressives, ill-considered and/or uncontested consent agreements, the flouting of long-standing election law, and the shielding thereof by a twisted judiciary.
This book does not lay out specific proof that Trump won on November 3, 2020. It does show how the unprecedented surge in mail-in voting, and the suppression of the anti-fraud measures that are supposed to accompany it, made 2020 a perfect storm for untraceable fraud. Meanwhile, the media’s four-year campaign to oust Trump by any means necessary ground on, with regular assistance from an entrenched bureaucracy willing to do anything to avoid draining the swamp. Add in a huge assist by abrupt changes in the censorship practices of big social media firms, and you have the tools to lift a mediocre basement-dweller over the most energetic and energizing politician of my lifetime. (I’m 54, fwiw.)
My copy of Rigged, pictured, is festooned with Post-It flags for the statements and quotations that were new to me or struck me as particularly significant. I can’t possibly mention them all in this review—I placed 77 of these markers. But I can hit the highlights of each chapter.
Mollie sets the stage with a brief prologue, letting you know that you aren’t crazy if you think Trump’s victory was stolen.
The first chapter is a discussion of the changes in voting laws over the history of the United States, from pre-colonial times to the present. Some of this was completely new to me, especially that the secret ballot wasn’t really all that secret until late in the 19th century, with the introduction of “Australian-style” ballots printed by the government. Fully public and partially public voting practices prior to this were shockingly prone to coercion and fraud, especially in the form of vote-buying. The reforms of the time were particularly focused on abolishing voting by mail, and eliminating long time periods for voting. Election day was established by amendment to be the Tuesday after the first Monday of November to avoid influencing the outcome of states that voted later in the calendar based on reports of the outcome in other states. Mollie’s exposition shows how we (these United States) are going backward to known-abusive voting procedures.
The second chapter discusses how Trump’s enemies were strewn through the establishment, and included antagonistic Republicans. Trump’s policies are poison for big-government enthusiasts in both parties, and those policies’ successes across a variety of topics were embarrassing to the failures that preceded him. His foreign policy successes, like Peace in the Middle East, demonstrated the bankruptcy of the establishment’s own policy preferences. Meanwhile, Trump’s economic policies were so successful, across all classes and among minorities, that re-alignment of traditional Democratic constituencies was in full swing. The establishment desperately needed to stop Trump.
The third chapter lays out the impact Covid-19 had on the presidential contest. And how every twist and turn in the course of events was portrayed in the media in the worst possible light for Trump, and the best possible light for his antagonists (particularly Cuomo in New York), regardless of the hypocrisy. The politicization of science, already a grave problem in any topic that lives on public research funds, reached new heights in 2020 (and continuing today, I might add). Mollie doesn’t really dwell on the scientific details of Covid-19, as that isn’t really relevant to the theme of Rigged. Her presentation is focused on the excuse Covid provided for activists to push a huge expansion of mail-in voting—precisely the tool needed to enable untraceable fraud on a grand scale.
Chapter four moves on to the horrifying violence that engulfed major cities in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd at the knee of Derek Chauvin. The initial impressions of Floyd’s demise, now known to be not quite so simple, were seized by anti-police activists in the black community to advance their agenda. An agenda that is Marxist to its core, and contemptuous of American standards of justice. Mollie lays out point after point showing how the progressive movement’s vested interest in stopping Trump’s gains in minority communities led its politicians, media apologists, and social media censors to do everything they could to keep tensions simmering. And to hide the truth about Antifa and BLM activist behavior.
Chapter five covers the convention season, and how the lackluster “virtual” convention held by the Democrats was outshone by a very unconventional Republican convention. Unconventional because all the usual players were unavailable, and the Charlotte host site was effectively sabotaged by North Carolina’s Democrat governor. The good news for Trump could not be allowed to stand, and the mainstream news media leveraged conveniently anonymous sources to gin up a controversy over a canceled visit to a military cemetery in France. That numerous eyewitnesses contradicted the “sources”, insisting that Trump did not defame any soldiers, was ignored. Corrections to the record were naturally held until they could help Trump anymore. No apologies from Fake News, of course.
Chapter six describes the debate season and the journalist malpractice that surrounded it. Mollie highlights the shameful conduct of the Commission on Presidential Debates and points out that it is likely to have no future.
Chapter seven is a deep dive into Big Tech’s assistance to the progressive movement, with a particular focus on the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), Mark Zuckerberg’s vehicle for buying elections. Specifically, CTCL gave huge sums, with strings attached, to election boards around the country. The strings were basically to push mail-in voting to the max, and eliminate the signature matches, address checks, witness requirements, and any other anti-fraud measure that normally accompanies mail-in voting. And “cooperate” with CTCL “advisors”. Mollie documents how that meant CTCL running some elections. Georgia was the biggest recipient, at $31 million. More on that in chapter ten.
Chapter eight is all about Hunter. And all the trouble he creates for the Biden family while leading the family’s worldwide grift. Trouble that reflects poorly on his father, and so must be suppressed. Especially the classic October surprise: Hunter’s abandoned laptop with oodles of embarrassing and incriminating content. The journalistic malpractice (or to be more honest, malice) was breathtaking. Major media, big tech, and bureaucrats closed ranks to silence all news about this event. At least until the election was safely in Biden’s pocket. Yes, anyone inclined to bypass major news media for more trustworthy sources knew all about it, but the general public doesn’t do this. Numerous polls, after the fact, show that earlier knowledge of this scandal would have changed many Biden voters’ minds. More than enough to flip the result.
Chapter nine is about the legal and judicial shenanigans used in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to suppress the Green Party and candidates that would siphon voter support on the left, plus an account of similar legal and judicial misconduct to suppress poll-watchers and post-election challenges to signature verification misconduct. The election boards in both states flouted state laws with impunity, thanks to sympathetic judges. Mollie throws stones at Rudy Guiliani, too. He disrupted Trump’s legal efforts quite badly, as Mollie explains.
The tenth and final chapter focuses on Georgia’s Fulton County and Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensburger. As a Georgia resident myself, much of this has been covered locally ad nauseam. However, one bit about Raffensburger’s stonewalling on FOIA requests, requests needed by Mark Davis, a local election integrity expert, for Trump’s legal challenges, left my jaw on the floor. I was already upset at Raffensburger for the outrageous consent agreement that changed mail-in ballot handling, but the sheer malice towards conservatism shown by the post-election conduct Mollie documents has me furious. Not to mention the mind-boggling revelation that Raffensburger’s right hand in the office is a clear Democrat activist.
Mollie adds a brief epilogue to tie it all back together.
I thoroughly enjoyed Mollie’s writing, and learned a few things I’d missed in the past year or so. I highly recommend you get your own copy.
Published in Elections
Or re-write/edit them on the fly.
Statistical anomalies are anomalous and should be looked at. The problem is that there isn’t anything to actually look at. Take, as an example, the vote count oddities where Biden had a huge surge and either claimed the lead or almost did. Shown by these two graphs:
On the one hand we have votes coming in over time showing Trump ahead and looking like he would win and then…very late we see a massive surge for Biden…and improbably surge at that.
But, are a set of questions that I have been unable to actually get a solid answer on.
Where is this real-time data?
Where did it come from?
Who reported it?
How was it aggregated?
Absent a clear understanding of where this data came from, how can we judge if its effective or even correct? For example, Prior to this past election I never saw reports that showed the counting over time. It was just the current numbers. My assumption is that someone aggregated this data in a timeline, but was it “official”? I suspect it wasn’t and thus there is a massive loophole for any election official answering for these data graphs. This data wasn’t official and thus we cannot comment on its accuracy. The only “official” numbers are the ones we report at the end of the counting.
Not having read her book yet, but looking at this and other sources, her basic premise was not that the election was hacked, but rather that it was rigged. I suppose the subtle difference is that she isn’t trying to prove that there was fraud, but rather that the conditions were changed so that any fraud would be impossible to stop.
Both impossible to stop at the time, and they tried to make it impossible to detect and prove later.
I’m waiting for my autographed copy…which she hasn’t yet promised to me but has something up her sleeve, apparently…
Excellent book review in that you presented a thorough overview, but with just enough detail to make me want to read more. Thanks, @philturmel.
It’s my next listen on Audible. After I finish the Macdonald thing.
Odd. I saw and read a question about future possibilities. I saw no statements or misstatements of facts.
Correct, You beat me to it.
Laurence Fox endorses it. I assume that she will be on the Ricochet podcast this week.
I was never impressed by these graphs. There are perfectly plausible explanations for such things, such as large Democrat-majority counties reporting at the end of the night. I’ve seen others in which votes were supposedly “switched” when it was actually a perfectly proper correction, as where a news outlet erroneously counted a jurisdiction’s votes in the wrong column, and then fixed it. I’m not saying that this definitely happened, just that relying on interim reports isn’t a reliable methodology, in my view.
I do think that there were serious irregularities with the election, but some of the claims were not plausible, in my view.
As I recall, a lot of those sudden changes came from areas where counting supposedly stopped for the night and observers went home, but counting didn’t actually stop.
Back when Mollie and I used to be married, I always told her that she’d make it big someday.
Why’d you break it off?
He fell for Claire Berlinski.
I’d bet on fell ON Claire Berlinski. (That would explain her brain injury.)
I’d come back to the podcast for Mollie anytime!
I’m so glad this has come out. I heard she was working on it. Claiming it’s a big lie is missing the point, because the point is that it’s set up so that you can never prove it’s a lie to begin with, or to have any confidence that it wasn’t.
It’s like chain of custody of evidence for a trial. If the rules to protect that chain haven’t been followed, it doesn’t matter if you can’t prove the evidence has been corrupted. The presumption is that it has been. Because it has to be. People who are constantly bitching that there’s no proof of election fraud are like a desperate prosecutor insisting that there’s no actual proof that evidence has been corrupted even though the chain hasn’t been followed.
I was an easy mark.
Never go Full Berlinski.
1000%
They were terrible elections. They are bad every year in this sense, and it was way worse for this one.
Do you two need to be separated?
This chart by itself really never proved a thing. Just like the spreadsheet showing the same “data”. I can make and excel spreadsheet right now that will tell you whatever you want it to tell you. The question was always where the data came from.
Not this week, but soon.
I’m not sure that’s votes illegally cast or counted, which is what I’m primarily aiming to figure out.
But dang is that ever a damning situation–and quite the response to the “Trump lost all the court cases, so shut up about fraud!” line.
The simplest explanation I’ve come up with is that the cases were dismissed before the election for “standing” – i.e., no damage had yet occurred – and dismissed after the election as “moot” (due to “laches” or whatever) without even considering any evidence. The one judge I’ve heard of who was willing to look at evidence, still announced beforehand that even if the case was proven he would not provide any “relief” so it was still pointless.
Sadly, the last explanation becomes slightly more probable every day that goes by without some cry ringing o’er the hills that “THE DATA ARE FAKE!”
The last explanation becomes slightly more probable every day that goes by without some cry ringing o’er the hills that “THE NERDS WERE LYING ABOUT THE LOGS AND THE DATA!”
The last explanation becomes slightly more probable every day that goes by without some cry ringing o’er the hills: “HERE’S THE EXPLANATION FOR THE WEIRD RATIOS!” or “HERE’S THE EXPLANATION FOR THE DISAPPEARING VOTES!”
Only slightly. And I have to be wary of the possibility that some cry rang out somewhere while I was listening o’er a different hill.
But I fear that this might be like the Hunter Biden emails: They aren’t denying it, so it’s probably true.
Correction: I could organize that crap I’ve already written, and it could be a book then.
Not that I have a lot of time for that.
Also, I don’t know how to publish it. This information is for all who want it, but I suppose I could make a summary PDF available and self-publish and sell a whole book for a dollar. I dunno. Maybe there’s some publisher who wants this.
No, @django and I are on the same page. Literally.
Like really literally. Page 2