The Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000
A Republican dirty trick from 20 years ago that Trump is using to win the election.
There have been multiple reports of Republican crowds screaming at election officials counting ballots in key battleground states. The videos are troubling, and intended to be. They’re also awfully familiar.
It’s the same disruption strategy the GOP used in 2000 to stop the Florida recount during the infamous undecided-election between George Bush and Al Gore. At the time it was dubbed the “Brooks Brothers Riot.” And now the Republicans are doing it again to help keep Trump in office, contrary to the will of the voters.
On November 22, 2000, fifteen days after the presidential election, Florida was still counting votes. Bush was ahead in the latest count, and Republican activists, led by GOP dirty-trickster Roger Stone, came up with a plan to stop the recount entirely. They’d stage a fake riot in Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade — storming the office where the recount was taking place — in order to force election officials into calling it quits. And it worked.
Several dozen Republican operatives — most flown in from Washington, DC, but posing as locals — posed for the cameras, yelling and screaming and shoving election officials, demanding the recount be stopped, and scaring the wits out of them. Ultimately, the officials relented, and the recount was stopped for the “safety” of all involved.
The Republicans replayed the same strategy in 2009, when they sent yelling and screaming operatives to Obamacare townhall meetings being held by members of Congress during the August recess. It was the same playbook — stage a fake riot, convince Democrats that “the people” were enraged, and scare them into no longer support the Affordable Care Act.
This time, the Republicans have a few goals in mind. First, scare local election officials into doing something, anything, to tilt the tables towards Trump. In states where Trump is ahead, that means pressuring the vote counters to stop counting all together. In states where Trump is behind, you’d think Trump wouldn’t want the vote stopped. But, by feigning riots, Trump is hoping to influence the courts. If judges think the election is a done deal, and “the people have spoken decisively,” judges will (hopefully) be more reluctant to over the voters. If Trump can keep the election close (by stopping counting, and suing to get ballots thrown out), and use astro-turf protests to create the impression that the public is divided and this election-thing is getting out of control, he may have a better chance of convincing a judge to side with him in order to put an end to the “uncertainty.”
So the next time you see a Republican throwing a hissy fit because, God forbid, a local election official actually wants to count all the votes, remember the Brooks Brothers Riot, and that not everything is what it seems.