Republican front-runner Donald Trump is leading the incumbent US president in key battleground states which Joe Biden managed to win in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, according to polling data aggregator RealClearPolitics. Moreover, Virginia, a blue state, has also become a "toss-up" for the 2024 race, according to recent polls.
"I doubt Biden won these [battleground] states in 2020," Dr. Paul Craig Roberts told Sputnik. "Democrats used their control over the largest city in each of these states to steal the elections. They still control the large cities."
According to various polls, over two-thirds of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats. Biden won the race due to a string of victories in swing states which were all taken by the Democratic hopeful by a small margin. At the same time, most of them came into the spotlight for alleged voting irregularities, involving duplicate votes, unmatched ballot totals, apparent non-citizen votes, and "phantom" ballots. Ballot harvesting, loosening of ID check barriers, and enhanced mail-in voting under the pretext of COVID-19 also prompted much suspicion among Republicans.
The 2022 midterms reinvigorated election fraud suspicions amid reports about glitches in election equipment, long queues, messy conduct of election authorities, and days-long ballot counting in a number of states. Back then, Roberts explained that the alleged "theft" of votes usually occurs in big cities of the battleground states where "measures are used to minimize Republican voting and to maximize Democrat voting."
This year, however, "the question unknown is whether the election will be close enough that the Democrats can get away with the steals," the economist underscored.
Biden Campaign Reportedly Desperate
"The Biden campaign is currently offering possible meetings with movie stars like Julia Roberts and Clooney in exchange for campaign donations, which sounds to me like desperation," Dr. Roberts said.
One of such Biden-Harris campaign emails, authored by Hollywood star George Clooney, reads: "I’m not exaggerating when I say that this election is the fight of our lives… We need as many people as possible to chip in to defeat Donald Trump once and for all."
Left-leaning pundits continue to focus on Trump's current 91 criminal counts in four separate prosecutions. In one of these cases, opened by prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, the former president was found guilty of falsifying his business records.
"This was a disgrace, this was a rigged trial," Trump told reporters following the court's verdict.
Such legal problems has not lessened his election odds; on the contrary, some surveys showed that his rating has slightly risen, according to New York Magazine's analysis.
For its part, a CBS study indicated that 80 percent of Republicans, 42 percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats believe that the latest Manhattan case was somehow engineered by the Biden administration to prevent Trump from winning the race. The other three cases are viewed similarly by Republican voters as a weaponization of law – "lawfare" – against Trump.
"The public doesn't believe Trump is guilty of the New York conviction for incorrect reporting of a business expense," said Dr. Roberts. "Both the trials in Georgia and Florida have been suspended by the judges while the Democrat prosecutors are investigated for lying to the judges and other inappropriate behavior. If the other trials fall apart, it will further discredit the New York conviction, which will almost certainly be overturned eventually by the US Supreme Court."
22 November 2020, 15:00 GMT
Democrats' 'One Party System' Goal
Team Biden and the US establishment are unwilling to lose and are "capable of doing anything to keep Trump from being president, including releasing a new pathogen to cause a pandemic and assassination of Trump," according to Roberts.
The latter assumption does not seem an exaggeration given the recent assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was shot several times in the central Slovak town of Handlova in mid-May. The attempted murder evoked strong memories of Cold War era Operation Gladio – a CIA-NATO secret warfare against the West's political opponents, which included false flag operations, assassinations and terrorist attacks.
The Democratic Party and their allies in the Republican camp are seeking to maintain the established status quo in US politics, with a focus on aiding Ukraine to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia and militarizing the Asia Pacific region to contain China.
In his previous interviews with Sputnik, Dr. Roberts referred to then Democratic-controlled House efforts to pass The For the People's Act (later renamed as The Freedom to Vote Act) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as a "statement of intention" to turn the US political landscape into a "one-party system."
Once these pieces of legislation are passed by Congress "voting in America would be pointless," the economist noted in January 2022. According to him, new election rules would allow Democrats to cheat through unsolicited mail-in and absentee ballots and weaponize illegal immigrant votes to tip the balance in the Democratic Party's favor.
This reality has been taking shape for quite a while, apparently originating in the late 1980s, when "unregulated globalism took root to the detriment of the national government," Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik back in November 2020, while reflecting on the Democratic Party's legislative push.
Ortel noted that the US has been ruled by the same dynastic political families and their associates in the justice system, academia and intelligence community for nearly three decades, referring to the Bush, the Clinton, the Obama and the Biden families.
Global Meddler and Rightful Heir of CIA: All You Need to Know About National Endowment for Democracy
25 November 2022, 09:56 GMT
US Establishment Uses 'Color Revolt' PlayBook in America
Over the past several decades, the US establishment has mastered meddling in foreign elections and fomenting regime changes across the globe. What's more, all these tools have been repeatedly used domestically to manipulate public opinion and peddle disinformation within the US while keeping "undesired" candidates away from power, according to Dr. Roberts.
"The CIA's influence over the media began in the 1950s and has grown dramatically over the years. As the Twitter Files proved, the FBI has been able to censor social media and prohibit free speech that challenges official narratives," the economist said.
Under these circumstances, Washington tolerating Volodymyr Zelensky's unconstitutional power grab in Ukraine after his presidential tenure expired sends a worrisome signal about the Biden administration's next moves. It raises questions, however, how the American people will react to a similar power grab in the US, according to Dr. Roberts.
"If this time the election is again stolen or Trump is assassinated and the majority recognize the fact, will they rise up in anger or will they be demoralized by a sense of powerlessness?" he asked.
"It is curious that the establishment is willing to demoralize the population, destroy national unity, or create an uprising while at the same time the establishment creates foreign enemies – Russia, China, Iran – to destroy. How can a country in internal shambles take on powerful countries abroad?" he concluded.