Why the 'Brooks Brothers riot' of 2000 inspired Trump's campaign operative in 2020 [View all]

[Nevilledog]

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


CNN
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“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.

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