Transcript

This will cover some old ground, and I apologize in

advance to those who recognize familiar themes and perhaps

even familiar phrases.

But not 36 hours after it was said, the monstrosity and the

evil of Donald Trump's refusal to commit to honoring the

election outcome during the third election debate has come

into even sharper focus.

It is, in short, the greatest existential threat to this

country's government since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is easily the greatest internal existential threat

to this country's government since the Civil War.

And it is, by itself, the worst moment of governmental

instability and vulnerability since 9/11.

And Donald Trump's apologists continue to pretend it doesn't

matter or didn't happen or it was no worse than Al Gore's

challenge in 2000 or any of a dozen other nonsensical

excuses that can only be even remotely rationalized by a fat

paycheck because they have no grounding in reality,

no grounding in democracy, no grounding in what was actually

said and recorded at six minutes

and 38 seconds past seven o'clock

Pacific Daylight Time in Las Vegas, Nevada on the night of

October 19, 2016, the exact moment at which the clock began

to run out on the Republican Party's opportunity to

disconnect itself from a man whose petulance and arrogance

hit its peak and began to subvert

our fair and free elections.

The comparison to the Gore challenge is particularly venal.

No one commenting on the political scene has much personal

anguish about and disappoint with Al Gore as I do, but that

doesn't change the fact that the 2000 election and the

Gore v. Bush Supreme Court Case bears no resemblance to what

Donald Trump said first on September 30th and then again

twice during the third debate.

None!

Firstly, because Gore did not in any way question

the validity of as much as one vote before Election Day.

Gore did not, 38 days before Election Day, say he was

reconsidering a public pledge to honor its outcome as Trump

did in September.

He did not, 20 days prior to the vote, answer the question

will you absolutely accept the result of this election?

with the statement, I will look at it at the time.

He did not, two minutes later, scoff at an opportunity

to back away from a preempted subversion of the Democratic

process by adding, I'll keep you in suspense, okay?

Anyone whose partisanship takes such priority over their

patriotism that they can defend Trump, especially by

comparing him to Gore, has symbolically burned the word liar

into their own forehead.

The third of Trump's campaign managers, Kelly Anne Conway,

did so in the immediate aftermath of Trump's second

and third repetitions of the words

that will damn him throughout

American history.

Do you remember 2000 when Al Gore contested the election,

she said to a CNN reporter.

He actually retracted his concession to George W. Bush.

Gore retracted his concession because his aids learned

he was only a few hundred votes behind.

The eventual margin of his loss there was so small that

by law they, the state, had to recount the vote.

So much for Ms. Conway.

Trump advisor, Jeff Sessions,

the Senator from the tree of

the Keebler elves, quote, Al Gore

challenged the election results

and everybody has that right.

It was quite a legal battle.

In fact, the legal challenge and the legal battle were

not initiated by Gore.

They were provided for by the laws of the state of Florida,

and it was ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States

overruling the Supreme Court of the state of Florida

that settled the election for Bush.

So much for Senator Sessions.

I think it's the height of hypocrisy for Democrats now,

said Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, to get all upset that

Donald Trump said that, when it was their democrat Al Gore

who conceded the election on Election Day, took it back

because it was too close, then we waited two months for

the Supreme Court to decide it.

In fact, the entire process was concluded in five weeks

although Mr. Giuliani's inference that Gore should not

have bothered to wait for a decision by the highest judicial

authority in the land is at least consistent with his

opinion a year later that he should stay as Mayor

of New York, even after his term of office expired,

because to hell with democracy, he was the only one

who could handle the post 9/11 crisis.

So much for Mr. Giuliani.

Trump debate guest Sarah Palin per a Washington Post

reporter, Trump will only accept a legitimate election

and anything else would betray those who died for freedom.

As was said eight years ago so still it must be said,

that woman is an idiot.

So much for half-governor Palin.

And as noted here yesterday, we are approaching the point

at which this country will say so much

for the Republican party.

It has long been anticipated that the runaway train quality

of the Trump campaign would eventually claim, as its

collateral damage, all or most of the GOP and its leaders.

But that was always considered to be an event that would hit

on Election Day or thereafter like the purge of Barry

Goldwater's people from that party in the months after his

landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

But this train crashed in Las Vegas Wednesday night.

Trump's third public refusal to recognize the cornerstone

of this or any other democracy.

You accept the electoral outcome.

Move this from political embarrassment

to fatal political infamy.

To the Republican leaders, I ask again, when will you

disembowel this anti-Democratic demigod?

When will you de-fund him?

When will you deny him?

Conway, Sessions, Giuliani, Palin, Chris Christie,

Mike Pence, Corey Lewandowski, Roger Stone.

These people are done in this country's politics.

Who's next?

Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell?

Who else will this madman Trump take down?

This is not a presidential candidate losing an election

by 537 shaky votes out of 105 million cast after a recount

mandated by state law and the intervention

of the Supreme Court.

This is not a procedural dispute over

an election already completed.

This is the presidential nominee of the Republican party

refusing to promise that he will accept the results

of the election 20 days before the election.

This is the moral equivalent of treason.

When, Republican leaders, will you speak up?

Speak up, not in your self interest, not as a strategic move

for your own campaign, not as positioning for the future,

when will you speak up for the Constitution?

When will you speak up for the Democracy?

When will you speak up for the United States of America?