(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Election security expert fired by Trump feels vindicated by Meadows flip, warns of future dangers [1] [] Date: 2023-10-25 As Shakespeare first noted, “The truth will out.” He wasn’t writing about Donald Trump, of course, because if had been, King Lear would have been far less mentally stable and Julius Caesar would have spit up a minimum of four Shamrock Shakes during that fateful moment on the Ides of March. But the old adage applies to our ongoing American tragedy as much as it ever did to Shakespeare’s dramas. And now that former White House Chief of Staff and prominent Big Liar Mark Meadows is changing his Big Bullshitty story about the 2020 election after flipping against his erstwhile mob boss, a little more truth is leaking into the brains of our body politic. That’s welcome news to Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whom Trump fired after Krebs told the truth about the 2020 election, calling it the “most secure in American history.” Krebs appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday to respond to the news about Meadows. And as a foot soldier for democracy against lying wannabe autocrats like Trump, he celebrated the recent wins for American democracy while issuing new warnings about its future. RELATED STORY: Mark Meadows flips, reportedly makes deal to testify against Trump In other words, it was both a hopeful and chilling discussion—like a lot of what happens in our increasingly fragile political ecosystem these days. Watch: x YouTube Video WILLIE GEIST: “I want to remind people that your organization, after the election, said that this was the, ‘Nov. 3 election was the most secure in American history,’ a subgroup of your organization. And when you were fired for saying that, you tweeted, quote, ‘Honored to serve, we did it right. Defend today, secure tomorrow.’ What is your reaction to this news from ABC that we’re still working to confirm here at NBC that Mark Meadows may have been granted immunity and now is going to tell everything he knew?” KREBS: “Well, there’s been a bit of a flood of good news, I think, on the 2020 election front. You have a number of defendants in Atlanta pleading guilty to various claims associated with the 2020 election and the prosecution going on down there that was just mentioned. Frankly, it’s things that we all knew. It’s things that those of us at CISA [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] knew in 2020. It’s things that the thousands of election workers across the country knew when they put their blood, sweat, and tears into ensuring that the American people could vote in the middle of a global pandemic—they could vote safely and securely—these are all things we knew. And so it is as a minimum heartening to see that these folks that lied and pushed these false claims around the 2020 election are finally being held to account, and it’s going to be critically important going into the 2024 election that we do have a series of guardrails in place that ideally, hopefully, it will not happen again.” Guardrails would be nice. But putting Trump in a Hannibal Lecter mask and wheeling him out to the exercise yard on a dolly for a brisk daily game of dodgeball would probably go even further in restoring faith in our democracy. That said, Krebs, who knew all along that the claims promoted by Trump and his hangers-on were naught but barmy bullshit, isn’t above spiking the football. JONATHAN LEMIRE: “So Chris, I know you’ve stressed the importance of the integrity of the election, but let’s … weigh in just a little bit on a personal level. You were fired on the basis of a lie. You were fired because Donald Trump and his top advisers, including Mark Meadows, disputed your accounting of what happened with the election, and now we’re learning that Meadows himself, privately, agreed with you.” KREBS: “You know, I kind of think of some claims that we heard a little while ago from the former president that maybe we’re getting a little tired of winning. I’m not getting tired of winning. We need to continue exposing those that sought to undermine the public’s confidence in our public institutions, in our very elections. If we do not have confidence in our elections then, to a certain extent, what’s the point?” The point? Unfortunately, the whole point for the Big Lie Brigade is that democracy is only tenable when they win. How else can they ensure that they’re always in charge of everything? Of course, they desperately want the appearance of democracy—luckily, their grand illusion is slowly but surely dissipating. But Krebs isn’t entirely sanguine about the future. Russia and other critics of democracy are still working hard to undermine our system of governance by installing a whiny, weak-ass strongman at the head of our federal government. JOE SCARBOROUGH: “So what is the state of election integrity? Obviously, it’s been a rocky ride since 2020. What should we fear going into 2024?” KREBS: “Well, we have to continue making the appropriate investments in election systems around the country, and that’s ensuring that virtually every vote that’s cast has a paper ballot associated with it so you can go back and recount, and you can audit the election in the run-up to the certification. And that’s what happened in Georgia prior to 2020. They switched to systems that had paper ballot backups for every vote, and they counted and recounted that election three times, so that we could have confidence in the outcome down in Georgia. Beyond that, we have to keep our eye over the horizon. In my conversations with national security officials right now, they're gravely concerned about the deterioration of the information environment, particularly as you think about some of our adversaries, the bad actors between Russia, China, and Iran that have access to AI tools. And so the quality of information we’re going to see over the next year-plus is going to significantly degrade, and it’s going to be very hard, I think, for the average person to really be able to determine and discern what’s real and what’s not. So if you think it’s bad now, it’s probably going to get worse.” Yes, we still have a lot to fear. In 2016, thousands of voters were led to believe, based on a viral fake news story, that Pope Francis had endorsed Trump. With the rise of deepfake videos, these same brainiacs could soon be convinced that Trump has since become pope and declared that Catholics can now eat meat on Fridays during Lent, but only if the McRib returns. Indeed, there’s almost no limit to what many Americans will believe. More importantly, though, Krebs gave the mic-drop response to all those election deniers who continue to carry Trump’s water. Not only did 93% of all votes cast in the 2020 presidential election have paper ballot backups, Georgia—whose election Trump tried especially hard to steal—counted its own paper ballots three times. In other words, anyone who knows anything about elections—including, it appears, Mark Meadows—knows the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. But because of the extraordinary and ongoing perfidy of Trump and his enablers (foreign and otherwise), future elections could be outright pilfered if we don’t stay vigilant. RELATED STORY: Four Trump co-defendants have plea deals in Georgia. Who should Trump be worried will flip next? Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/25/2201540/-Election-security-expert-fired-by-Trump-feels-vindicated-by-Meadows-flip-warns-of-future-dangers?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_3&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/