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True The Vote, the group behind the wildly popular "2000 Mules" film that purported to document extensive election fraud in Georgia, has admitted to a judge that it doesn't have evidence to back its claims.
Y'all know I love my hobby horse, even if it's beaten into an absolute paste, and I admit at having ongoing puzzlement as to why 2020 stolen election claims retain so much cachet among republican voters and officials. TTV has a pattern of making explosive allegations of election fraud only to then do whatever it takes to resist providing supporting evidence. TTV has lied about working with the FBI and also refused to hand over the evidence they claimed to have to Arizona authorities. In Georgia, TTV went as far as filing formal complaints with the state, only to then try to withdraw their complaints when the state asked for evidence.
The founder of TTV was also briefly jailed for contempt in 2022 because of her refusal to hand over information in a defamation lawsuit where TTV claimed an election software provider was using unsecured servers in China.Edit: @Walterodim looked into this below and I agree the circumstances are too bizarre to draw any conclusions about the founder's intentions.I have a theory I'm eager to have challenged, and it's a theory I believe precisely explains TTV's behavior: TTV is lying. My operating assumption is that if someone uncovers extensive evidence of election fraud, they would do whatever they can to assist law enforcement and other interested parties in fixing this fraud. TTV does not do this, and the reason they engage in obstinate behavior when asked to provide evidence is because they're lying about having found evidence of election fraud. It's true that they file formal complaints with authorities, but their goal is to add a patina of legitimacy to their overall allegations. TTV's overriding motivation is grifting: there is significant demand within the conservative media ecosystem for stolen election affirmations, and anyone who supplies it stands to profit both financially as well as politically. We don't have direct financial statements but we can glean the potential profitability from how 2000 Mules initially cost $29.99 to watch online, and the millions in fundraising directed towards TTV (including a donor who sued to get his $2.5 million back). There's also a political gain because Trump remains the de facto leader of the conservative movement, and affirming his 2020 stolen election claims is a practical requirement for remaining within the sphere.
I know this topic instigates a lot of ire and downvotes, but I would be very interested to hear substantive reasons for why my theory is faulty or unreasonable! I believe I transparently outlined my premises and the connective logic in the above paragraph, so the best way to challenge my conclusion could be either to dispute a premise, or to rebut any logical deduction I relied on. You could also do this by pointing out anything that is inconsistent with my theory. So for example if we were talking about how "John murdered Jane", something inconsistent with that claim could be "John was giving a speech at the time of Jane's murder". I would also request that you first check if any of your rebuttals are an example of 'belief in belief' or otherwise replaying the 'dragon in my garage' unfalsifiability cocoon. The best way to guard against this trap would be to explain why your preferred explanation fits the facts better than mine, and also to proactively provide a threshold for when you'd agree that TTV is indeed just lying.
I'm excited for the responses!
Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."
You're missing the forest for the trees. There was a concerted effort to illegally influence the election. This manifested in many ways, mostly to do with mail-in-voting, and the evidence, if it ever existed, has been lost by now. You are focusing on details that don't matter, and have never mattered, instead of looking at what people have admitted, and what that means for what they will never admit.
This isn't what you wanted, of course. You want to argue like this is a court of law and pretend I didn't witness an obviously stolen election in real time. However, I will continue to trust my lying eyes. I don't care about TTV, and I don't care about their evidence. I saw what happened in Atlanta, in Philadelphia, in Detroit. I've been following the absolute shitshow in Arizona, whose elections were a fraud in 2022, too. If the courts are incapable of doing anything about it, I judge that to be a failure of the courts, and not of the charges, because I know the charges are true, and I won't be argued out of them.
The reason you get ire and downvotes is because you conspicuously highlight which side of the friend-enemy distinction you've chosen.
If they don't matter and never mattered, then the "mules" movie would not have been made, having been made would not have become popular, and having become popular, would not have been cited by commenters here as evidence that the election was stolen.
I also believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate. That belief does not preclude certain claims as to the specifics of its illegitimacy from being falsified.
Provably false claims of election interference do neither you nor I any favors, do they? Neither does a retreat to the unfalsifiable. My conclusion that the 2020 election was illegitimate does not stem from the "mules" movie or its claims, so debunkings of that film or its claims do not challenge my conclusions. Why should one think otherwise.
People should not come here to read things that they agree with written by their friends. They should come here for sound arguments well-made. I think @ymeshkout's arguments have a glaring blindspot in them. But until I have the time and energy to make my case with evidence and arguments, he's under no obligation to make the case for me, and I have no right to object to him making other cases based on his own evidence and arguments.
He thinks this specific movie is lying. Why is he wrong? If he's not wrong, why would you object?
I don't know about KMC, but the things I saw were rules being changed in ways which favor Democrats, blatantly illegally, and the courts just kinda shrugging. But what convinced me that there was more than the usual fraud (over and above election rules changes) going on was the whole Georgia water main thing. The claim by the crazy fraud-claiming Republicans was it happened a certain way. The claimants were called paranoid conspiracy theorists. It turns out it went exactly that way. The people who called them conspiracy theorists tried to split hairs and also claim it didn't matter anyway, and of course that narrative carried the day.
Rudy Giuliani had the perfect opportunity to present evidence of his claims when he was sued by the Georgia election workers for defamation, but he instead sandbagged and stumbled towards a default judgment. I think he acted that way because he knew he had no defense against defaming them. Do you think my conclusion is unreasonable?
Which is to say he was denied the chance to present evidence of his claims in court through procedural legerdemain.
Yes. I think the court acted that way to prevent him from defending himself. Because maintaining the appearance of integrity of elections is more important than maintaining their actual integrity, apparently.
That's interesting, how do you know that Giuliani actually had evidence to present instead of just bluffing? Assuming he had evidence, why didn't Giuliani just release the evidence elsewhere? I think the reason he didn't release evidence is because he was lying about having had evidence. Which part of my conclusion do you think is unreasonable?
I don't know what Giuliani had. I do know the court engaged in dirty tricks to prevent him from being able to use it to defend himself. I also know that regardless of what Giuliani had, the sequence of events described by the crazy conspiracy theorists in Georgia did in fact actually happen (and is no longer disputed).
So to loop it back, I said my theory for why Giuliani sandbagged his trial is because he didn't have the evidence he claimed he had. You claimed this was an unreasonable position to hold, but now you're saying that you don't know what evidence Giuliani had? If he hasn't released his evidence outside of court, do you still think it's unreasonable to think the man has been lying about that? At what point would you be willing to accept that explanation?
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