Leftist groups openly plan mass disruption if Biden isn’t declared victorious. But media is more interested in stories of voter intimidation from the right.
Resistance Democrats want you to be worried about voter intimidation. They also want you to know that they will not be going gently into that good election night if President Trump wins again. It seems like threats of “creating serious disruption,” as one Resistance group expressed plans to do if Trump wins, might be a worrisome voter intimidation tactic. (If someone told me he would bring mass chaos to the streets if I voted for a particular candidate, I’d feel intimidated.) But the media and Twitter establishments are a lot more interested in a narrative where voter intimidation comes from the right. Much was made of emails circulating, allegedly from the extremist group “Proud Boys,” threatening to “come after” people unless they cast their votes for Trump. The Proud Boys denied sending the emails, and government officials eventually deemed the emails to be from Iranian hackers. John Ratcliffe, U.S. director of national intelligence, suggested that the emails may have been actually a plot to “damage President Trump,” possibly by associating him with the Proud Boys or with voter intimidation tactics. Still, the “right-wing voter intimidation” narrative continued. CNBC aired a video insinuating that Trump was encouraging voter intimidation. “Trump urged his supporters to go to the polls and look out for potential election issues,” the video noted, before quoting Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring calling Trump’s statement “dangerous.” Also cited in the CNBC video was Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who tweeted that Trump was encouraging “voter intimidation,” and threatened to prosecute anyone who tried it. The Washington Post engaged in a hand-wringing exercise over “jeering sign-wavers” and “caravans of honking trucks.” “There is an unmistakable effort underway to intimidate voters,” the Huffington Post blared, citing “bullhorns, honking cars with Trump flags, and shouting confrontations.” HuffPo and other outlets have also expressed concern that voters who possess the legal right to carry a firearm may intimidate other voters by being armed.
