Why the 'Brooks Brothers riot' of 2000 inspired Trump's campaign operative in 2020

[Nevilledog]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/politics/brooks-brothers-riot-trump-what-matters/index.html


CNN
—
“Make them riot,” a Donald Trump campaign operative said the day after Election Day in 2020, when Trump supporters were converging on the massive vote counting center in Detroit as votes were being counted. “Do it!!!” the operative added.

The request for a “riot” was similar to efforts in other swing states by Trump’s campaign in 2020, according to newly unsealed allegations filed by special counsel Jack Smith in federal court in Washington, DC.

It also echoes through the last 25 years of American politics, since the Trump operative, identified only as Person 5, had been warned there could be unrest reminiscent of the infamous “Brooks Brothers riot” that helped stop a recount in Miami-Dade County weeks after Election Day in 2000.

That 2000 episode looms large in the memory of people who lived through the election of hanging chads – perhaps in part because it has the benefit of a catchy nickname, which was meant to impart that the well-dressed Republican operatives were part of an army of lawyers and staffers that flooded into Florida. They were dressed supposedly in clothes from Brooks Brothers rather than whatever people in Miami might have been wearing at the time.

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

Just one of the reasons I will never mythologize/rewrite/forget/forgive/let pass/rationalize the Bush years or anyone connected to them.

[murielm99]

2. I thought the "Make them riot" comment has been declared false.

[Nevilledog]

3. It was false that Trump said it. Mike Roman did.

[murielm99]

5. Okay. Thanks.

[zorbasd]

4. Yeah, guess who was instrumental in both events,

that traitorous piece of shit, Roger Stone.

[pecosbob]

6. It should be reframed as 'the GOP staffers riot.