When I sluggishly hopped onto the hamster wheel of life yesterday (this is what happens to one’s mood when the sun sets at lunch), little did I know I would be treated to the most entertaining dramatic production I have ever seen, a masterwork to rival Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” It was the Trump campaign’s latest set of election fraud hearings in Michigan, wherein they presented a set of “extraordinary witnesses” of alleged voter fraud, who testified in front of members of the state legislature in an attempt to flip Michigan’s electoral votes.
I think many people assumed that Rudy Giuliani’s sweat-drenched screed from a few weeks ago, during which his own hair dye poured down his contorted face like toxic sludge, was the most ridiculous moment in the grand farce that is the Trump campaign’s failing election results battle. But it was just the beginning. Compared to what we witnessed yesterday, the Giuliani incident was the apex of professionalism.
The day started off with a veritable carnival of eccentrics, who had a lot to say about what they saw as votes were counted in Michigan. For example, there was this man who said that his evidence of fraud was that the room was too hot.
There was this woman who said that her evidence of fraud was that an “Asian man” brought in a box of ballots.
But the highlight of the day’s clown show was Melissa Carone, the campaign’s “star witness,” a “freelance IT consultant.” She delivered her testimony while noticeably slurring her words, with the gusto of a woman trying to stay standing upright in a McDonald’s at 2 a.m., convinced that the chicken nuggets she ordered and already ate never arrived. Melissa, who worked a 24-hour shift at Detroit’s TCF Center on Election Day doing IT for Dominion Voting Systems, had already been declared “simply not credible” by a Michigan judge after a rambling appearance on Fox News, where she made a series of unverified claims to Lou Dobbs.
First, Melissa talked indignantly about how she was upset to learn she would be parking in a parking lot, and then shuttled to the vote counting location by a shuttle.
Then Melissa said speaking out about election fraud has made her scared for her life, unable to find a job, and so worried about her safety she had to delete her social media.
(A few hours after delivering her testimony, she updated her Facebook profile picture.)
At one point, Rudy Giuliani tried to shush Melissa as she repeatedly interrupted one of the state representatives, saying things like, regarding a county poll book, “What did you guys do, take it and do something crazy to it?” and repeating “I know what I saw,” with tremendous confidence. It was an exchange that could have been reproduced verbatim on Saturday Night Live.
Finally, after all of this, Giuliani, counsel to the President, audibly farted while delivering testimony.