This year, national Democrats had high hopes that "Uncle Joe" Biden might win all 254 counties in Texas, especially in the highly idiosyncratic Panhandle, but that didn’t happen.
The Lone Star State is, for now at least, as it has been for many decades, a Big Red state, and its senior senator, John Cornyn, who is part of Team Mitch, was unfortunately re-elected on November 3.
Bush Two (many of us entrenched Dems are, because of Donald Trump, almost nostalgic about his eight years in the White House — but not really) used to be Governor there.
The attorney general of Texas is a man named Ken Paxton, and he’s not a Democrat.
Today on a superemergency basis Paxton asked SCOTUS to overturn Trump’s clear loss to Biden because of Covid-19-related factors in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — four states that Trump won four years ago, only Biden flipped them (https://abc13.com/ken-paxton-texas-attorney-general-election-results-lawsuit-sues-battleground-states/8609339/; https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/04/politics/ken-paxton-texas-ag-investigation/index.html).
Our Chief Texas Correspondent, Patricia Malinowski, breezed into Paxton’s richly panelled office in Austin just in time to hear him announce that if his BigTime hero, Donald Trump, chooses not to try a Grover Cleveland in 2024, he wants to be first in line.
“Everything here in Texas is big,” he told Malinowski. “An' Ah intend to persuade Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Gorsuch, along with Justice Alito and my close personal friend Clarence Thomas, that the Constitution requires that for the good of everybody in Texas and all over the world, the election on November 3 was a total fraud.”
Malinowski, who is not shy, asked him why he says that, when there has been no evidence produced in any court of any fraud or other illegal activity that might have affected the outcome of the election. She also asked him why he has higher political ambitions even though he’s been accused by eight attorneys on his staff of having committed bribery.
She also told Paxton that the Supreme Court has already thrown a great deal of water on Paxton’s Hail Mary move.
“Patricia, yew sure got yaself a lotta nerve, attackin' me fer engagin' in unlawyalike conduct, but yew seem ta ferget that Mr. Trump lives in a alternate universe.”
Paxton has been under indictment since 2015 for felony securities fraud charges, and he faces fresh criminal allegations from eight of his top deputies, who say they know that he broke the law by using his office to do favors for a political donor; the FBI is investigating (https://www.texastribune.org/2020/12/08/texas-ken-paxton-election-georgia/).
Malinowski promptly reported her conversation with Paxton to us and to DNC Chair Tom Perez.
Not only that, in Washington, in other news that also happened, Judge Emmet Sullivan, the United States District Judge presiding over the prosecution of Michael Flynn, issued a blistering 43-page decision criticizing William Barr’s Justice Department for its exoneration of Flynn (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/politics/michael-flynn/index.html).
Judge Sullivan criticized the Justice Department’s argument, calling it a pretext and not in line with legal standards.
Then, our DC-based associate solitary reporter, Keith Coleman, observed Flynn, a retired Army Lieutenant General who joined Trump’s 2016 campaign even though he’s a Democrat, as Flynn sought entrance to the Pentagon, maskless, of course, in the manner of the morbidly obese man who pardoned him.
Flynn told the armed guards at the Pentagon’s entrance that he wanted to hobnob with all the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Because he was maskless, Flynn was quickly escorted out of the building for his obvious noncompliance, until Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley (who was wearing a mask) and told him to let Flynn swagger himself in to the building.