In his latest masterful maneuver to overturn the election, Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani, fresh off his peak successes with hair dye and Four Seasons Total Landscaping, went to a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday to present what he’d touted as “extraordinary witnesses” with compelling proof of egregious election fraud in the state.
His parade of speakers included a guy who said the polling place was so hot his thermometer reached 85 degrees; a woman who said all Chinese people look the same so they’re probably cheating; a woman who reported an Asian man brought in the ballots—Period. That was it—and Melissa Carone, 33, allegedly either a freelance IT worker or a contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, the nefarious company Sidney Powell says is run by Hugo Chávez though he died over seven years ago. Carone had been billed as the day’s star witness, and in a deeply unhinged, possibly drunk sort of way, she was. Brassy, slurring, combative and often talking over the Republican lawmakers struggling to get a sliver of coherent information from her, she was also “a glorious train wreck,” “the ultimate Karen,” “a hysterical disaster,” the perfect metaphor for the regime, a shoo-in for Elle Woods’ sassy law school upstart in Legally Blonde, and the call that every journalist working the Saturday night shift in a newsroom has gotten. She also, it was universally agreed, aced her Saturday Night Live audition, though social media spent the rest of the day arguing if she should henceforth be played by Kate McKinnon, Victoria Jackson or Cecile Strong’s Girl At The Party You Wished You Never Started A Conversation With.
Though a judge earlier deemed her claims “not credible,” Carone sloppily argued she was not “uncredible” and repeated them: Poll workers ran ballots through machines “thousands of times,” 30,000 votes were counted multiple times, ballots were cast by dead people and “illegals,” food trucks hauled away thousands of ballots she thought and wished were sandwiches, she wasn’t happy she had to take a shuttle from the parking lot, their poll book is “completely off! I’d say that poll book is off by over 100,000! Wildly off!” because there are “Zero” registered voters on there, now she can’t find “an actual job because Democrats ruin your life.”
When lawmakers said they didn’t see the 30,000-vote discrepancy she cited, she erupted: “What’d you guys do?! Take it and do something crazy to it?!” “I signed something saying if I’m wrong I can go to prison,” she sneered. “Did YOU?!” In what you know is a bad sign, Carone proved too bonkers even for Rudy, who tried to shush her; he later clarified he’d just met her earlier that day. He probably still doesn’t know her tawdry backstory: According to The Daily Mail, at this point the perfect source, Carone just finished serving 12 months of probation for computer crimes; she’d struck a plea deal with prosecutors who dropped a first-degree obscenity charge against her. Still, she’s already a bit of a right-wing media star, and her day’s testimony went viral. She told legislators she’d had to “get rid of my social media”—see Dems ruining life—but she then went on her (totally live) Twitter feed to post pictures with Rudy. She also responded to queries if she was drunk with, “Absolutely not.” Later, Trump proudly re-tweeted a link to a story about her testimony. Because of course he did.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Abby Zimet has written CD‘s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning print journalist for newspapers and magazines, she lived in the Maine woods for about a dozen years before moving to Portland in 1983. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.
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My Cousin Vinny gets out-bonkered by the ultimate Karen and it is… something
Posted on December 7, 2020 by Abby Zimet
In his latest masterful maneuver to overturn the election, Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani, fresh off his peak successes with hair dye and Four Seasons Total Landscaping, went to a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday to present what he’d touted as “extraordinary witnesses” with compelling proof of egregious election fraud in the state.
His parade of speakers included a guy who said the polling place was so hot his thermometer reached 85 degrees; a woman who said all Chinese people look the same so they’re probably cheating; a woman who reported an Asian man brought in the ballots—Period. That was it—and Melissa Carone, 33, allegedly either a freelance IT worker or a contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, the nefarious company Sidney Powell says is run by Hugo Chávez though he died over seven years ago. Carone had been billed as the day’s star witness, and in a deeply unhinged, possibly drunk sort of way, she was. Brassy, slurring, combative and often talking over the Republican lawmakers struggling to get a sliver of coherent information from her, she was also “a glorious train wreck,” “the ultimate Karen,” “a hysterical disaster,” the perfect metaphor for the regime, a shoo-in for Elle Woods’ sassy law school upstart in Legally Blonde, and the call that every journalist working the Saturday night shift in a newsroom has gotten. She also, it was universally agreed, aced her Saturday Night Live audition, though social media spent the rest of the day arguing if she should henceforth be played by Kate McKinnon, Victoria Jackson or Cecile Strong’s Girl At The Party You Wished You Never Started A Conversation With.
Though a judge earlier deemed her claims “not credible,” Carone sloppily argued she was not “uncredible” and repeated them: Poll workers ran ballots through machines “thousands of times,” 30,000 votes were counted multiple times, ballots were cast by dead people and “illegals,” food trucks hauled away thousands of ballots she thought and wished were sandwiches, she wasn’t happy she had to take a shuttle from the parking lot, their poll book is “completely off! I’d say that poll book is off by over 100,000! Wildly off!” because there are “Zero” registered voters on there, now she can’t find “an actual job because Democrats ruin your life.”
When lawmakers said they didn’t see the 30,000-vote discrepancy she cited, she erupted: “What’d you guys do?! Take it and do something crazy to it?!” “I signed something saying if I’m wrong I can go to prison,” she sneered. “Did YOU?!” In what you know is a bad sign, Carone proved too bonkers even for Rudy, who tried to shush her; he later clarified he’d just met her earlier that day. He probably still doesn’t know her tawdry backstory: According to The Daily Mail, at this point the perfect source, Carone just finished serving 12 months of probation for computer crimes; she’d struck a plea deal with prosecutors who dropped a first-degree obscenity charge against her. Still, she’s already a bit of a right-wing media star, and her day’s testimony went viral. She told legislators she’d had to “get rid of my social media”—see Dems ruining life—but she then went on her (totally live) Twitter feed to post pictures with Rudy. She also responded to queries if she was drunk with, “Absolutely not.” Later, Trump proudly re-tweeted a link to a story about her testimony. Because of course he did.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Abby Zimet has written CD‘s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning print journalist for newspapers and magazines, she lived in the Maine woods for about a dozen years before moving to Portland in 1983. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.