December 24, 2020

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Vigil of Christmas – Vigil of Hope!

In Times of Anguish and Despair 

Friends,

Once again I return to a Christmas essay I authored several years ago, as I think it may have even more resonance now in today’s world which is increasingly consumed by madness, apostasy, and outright rebellion against the laws of Nature and of God.

We have just experienced a rigged and stolen election, with the Powers of Darkness reasserting their control over this decaying nation. Now perhaps more so than ever we behold the awful visage of sheer Evil—in the scowls of our leaders, in many of our institutions (the media, the church, education), and, yes, in the very faces of our neighbors. Truly, it is a kind of demonic possession, not so much in the traditional theological sense, but, yes, as a type of intellectual possession full-blown, which directs thoughts, actions, indeed, language itself. This rampant Evil refuses to accept dissent. Those of us who oppose it are labeled disdainfully “deplorables” or “irredeemiables,” and worse:  we are called racists, bigots, homophobes, white supremacists, misogynists, not worthy of any consideration except for our very extinction.

As a “woke” student son of some friends lectured me several years ago: “You older conservatives will die off in a few years, and with you, your bigoted views. Then we young people will take full control of this country!” Those words were burned into my thoughts and memory, because there is some truth in them—because with our schools and colleges now captured by the progressivists, the triumph of critical race theory and woke socialism, each year thousands of newly-minted demonic automatons are spewed out like zombies. With the subservience of both political parties to managerial Deep State globalism, the future looks bleak.

At times it seems that all hope is dimmed, that a new Dark Age descends irresistibly over us, that we are helpless before its ravages and destructive power. But what I wrote back a few years ago I firmly hold to, for in fact Hope has not been exiled from the World. In these darkest moments, in the apparent despair, it continues to light our way, if we would listen and take heart.  For that reason I offer that essay this special day.

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Today is the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord, a day filled with anticipation and scarcely concealed joy as we await the memorialization and recreation of that ineffable Event—unimaginable in human terms—that forever changed human history.

The sin of Adam—Original Sin—affected all mankind and left descendants marked, indelibly stained by that original fault.  Adam’s sin was a form of disobedience, but a disobedience so grave and monumental against God’s Creation, that only the Coming of the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead, could repair it. And the Son of God would be Incarnate in a woman who would be pure and herself immaculate, untouched by the inheritance of sinfulness (by the merits of her Son). Only such a pure womb would be fitting for the Incarnate God. And only the Incarnation into one of His creatures would serve the purpose of demonstrating that Our Blessed Saviour would come to us, not only as God, but also in the form of Man—this was fitting because it was to Mankind that He was sent.

For hundreds of years the People of Israel had awaited the coming of a Messiah to lead them, to liberate them and, if you will, to repair Adam’s Fall. But this vision—whether expressed in the revolts of the Maccabees or in later violent episodes like the revolt of Simon bar Kokhba against the Romans (132 A.D.)—implied not just satisfaction for sinful ways, but increasingly the establishment of an earthly and insular kingdom for and of the Hebrews.

And although Our Lord and Saviour indeed came first to the Jews, and offered them His reparative Grace and Salvation, it was by no means to be limited to them. Indeed, His message was universal (as it had been to Abraham). And those Hebrews who accepted the Messiah—and those gentiles who also joined them—became the Church, the “New” Israel, receptor of God’s Grace and holder of His Promises and carrier of His Light unto all the world.

While a majority of old Israel rejected Our Lord, demanding His Crucifixion before Pilate, those who followed Him and believed in Him entered the New Covenant, a New Testament. It is in this sense that the Christian church inherited the promises of Israel and the Old Testament, and fulfilled those prophesies. And that fulfillment continues.

St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus [2:11-15] summarizes both the dazzling and miraculous wonder of Our Saviour’s Grace amongst us and its inexhaustible power to transform us, as we await His final Coming in Glory: “The grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works. These things speak and exhort: in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We—the Christian church, those chosen out of Grace who accept God’s gifts—are in a journey to that final day when Our Lord will return. We have been given for that journey the armament of Our Lord’s graces in the Sacraments and through His love, our Faith, and a Hope that whenever we are tempted to despair, pulls us back and redirects our vision.

Years ago when I was doing my doctoral work in Pamplona, Spain, I had several dear friends. One of them, by name Teofilo Andueza, although he and wife lived in the city, kept his family’s ancestral home and farm up in the Pyrenees Mountains. On numerous Saturdays we would travel out there; the women would busy themselves in the kitchen to prepare roasted lamb chops, pork shoulder, “patatas fritas,” various “ensaladas mixtas,” all sorts of desserts (flan and pastries), and, of course, there would be plenty of Rioja wine and cognac. After eating—which usually continued off and on for most of the day—we would sit and smoke some “puros” (Cuban cigars—well, I didn’t worry about THAT aspect of Cuban Communism back then!).

I remember on one occasion Teofilo took me up to the crest of a nearby mountain; below we could see the city of Pamplona, as he related how in 1873 the city was occupied by “liberals” who supported the central and centralizing government in Madrid, but that elsewhere in all of Navarra, in every rural village and small hamlet, the people had risen up as one under the military banner of “God – Country – States’ Rights – and the Rightful King” (against the liberal king then installed in the nation’s capital). In July 1936 Teofilo, his father, and his elderly grandfather (who as a teen had joined the 1873 Traditionalist rising) all volunteered to fight under that same banner, the standard of the Traditionalist Carlist Communion against the secularist and socialist Spanish Republic (which is so loved by the establishment Neoconservatives these days).

Like his grandfather in 1873, Teofilo was barely 14 when he enlisted in 1936. And while his grandfather was too old to see active, front line combat in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 (serving in rear-guard duty), Teofilo saw combat in some of the fiercest battles against the Red Republic and marched in the Victory parade in Madrid in 1939.

But like my other Carlist Traditionalist friends—who were termed “Intransigentes” by more moderate (and compromising) partisans on the Right—Teofilo believed that Francisco Franco had not carried through with the actual re-establishment of a Christian kingdom as promised—too many foreign influences, too many compromises, and, lastly, opening the door in 1953 to all the worst aspects of American commercialism and cultural decay. The national reawakening promised in 1939 had not taken place, its fruits dispersed, and in exchange, Spanish society had increasingly accepted the worst features of American culture and secularist thinking.

At the top of that mountain crest, as we looked down at Pamplona, Teofilo became emotional. “My grandfather fought against that liberal contagion 100 years ago,” he exclaimed. “And in 1936 three generations of my family dropped everything and went to war against the communists and socialists, to a crusade for Christ the King—that He might reign in society.” And then, he turned to me, took me firmly by the shoulder, and said: “And now, if it were just you and me—and we were on God’s side—once again we would be victorious, for even if we are only two, nothing is impossible to men if they fight on God’s side!”

I have remembered that incident constantly over the years, especially when things appear dark or despairing.  For not only did Grace and Salvation and the Healing for sin come into the world in a humble Cradle in Bethlehem a little over 2,000 years ago, but Hope came also. And it buoys us up, gives us balance and equilibrium, and acts as “Faith’s Sentry” to protect our Faith from harm and the threat of despair and apostasy.

In the year 312 A.D., facing an immense military challenge, the Emperor Constantine prayed to the Christian God, asking what he should do. As related in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, he had grave doubts about the traditional Roman gods. He prayed earnestly that the Christian God would “reveal to him who he is, and stretch forth his right hand to help him.” His prayer changed the course of human history. The answer came in a vision emblazoned across the noonday sky, and upon it the inscription read: “In hoc signo vinces”—By this sign you shall be victorious. The emperor then ordered that his soldiers have the Christian cross inscribed on their shields.

Victorious at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine then issued orders that the Christian church was to be fully free in its mission and the exercise of its functions. Although he did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire, Constantine bestowed favors on it, built places of worship for Christians, and presided over the first general church council. He became the first emperor to embrace Christianity and was baptized on his death bed. In less than 300 years the faith of Christ born in humble surroundings in remote Judaea and persecuted mercilessly and ruthlessly, nourished by the blood of martyrs, now emerged from the catacombs, triumphant, a light unto the pagans, to continue its salvific mission.

Is this not the power of Faith supported by Hope? That even if we be in the catacombs, even if we see our civilization and culture coming apart at the seams, even if we see the Church subverted and false prophets in positions of immense authority preaching false doctrines—even in these circumstances, we  hold “fortes in Fide,” firm in the faith, bolstered by Faith’s Sentry.

So, then, as we approach the Holy Day of indescribable joy, we know with assurance that the ineffable Gift from God of salvation and forgiveness is ours, and that no one can take our Faith from us, buoyed, as it is, by the unbreakable assurance of Hope—which came to us that Christmas so long ago.

“Even if it were just you and me—and we were on God’s side—once again we would be victorious, for even if we are only two, nothing is impossible to men if they fight on God’s side!”

Saving Grace entered the world two millennia ago, and with it the Hope we possess.  And there are broad smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts.

Merry and Blessed Christmas!

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

                                          December 18, 2020

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

What 2020 Means and Why It is So Critical to Our Survival

 

 Friends,

During the past month, from shortly after the presidential election (from November 9 on) until now, seven installments in the MY CORNER series have been picked up and (re)published: over fifteen times…by LewRockwell.com, by The Abbeville Institute, by Straight Line Logic, by CAIRCO.org, Forums.TCM, and FiftiesWesterns (!), and these are just the outlets that I am aware of.  On my own site I count many thousands of visitors—record numbers for a minor blogger like me and many of them new readers; and on some other sites the number of readers of my pieces is far greater.

All of this is gratifying for me…although I wonder how long this can continue without “cancel culture” coming after me, even shutting me down. Already I have been doxxed, once very seriously. The Daily Tar Heel, over at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has attacked me more than once. The old, discredited canards put out by Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center (e.g., that I am a racist, etc.) continue to pop up from time-to-time. And I am now more or less used to the “hate calls” and anonymous messages (many of which have come from Chapel Hill/Carrboro or “the Peoples Socialist Republic of Durham, NC”) which occasionally show up on my answering machine.

My reason for offering what I write has always been to share my thoughts and ideas with others, if they should be interested. I believe that most of the topics I address are important, and that certainly applies to the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath. For what has transpired not just on November 3, but during this entire “pandemic year,” has been a kind of “The Empire Strikes Back” episode in our American saga, a true pivotal point in which the vast forces of our managerial elites, those elements of what we term “the Deep State,” have indeed finally—they hope—completed their “silent coup” against not just Donald Trump, but more significantly, against the growing reaction that he through his election in 2016, unleashed. Since 2016 those forces of the Deep State have done their damnedest to unseat and expel “the Donald,” for in so doing that they figured they could also behead the counter-revolution that he symbolized and incarnated. And somehow stanch that movement.

With the rigging of the 2020 presidential election, which we know now beyond any doubt was incredibly corrupted, they appear—they believe—to have accomplished their cherished goal. With the disgusting “fear and trembling” of the courts, with the pusillanimous attitude (and treasonous collaboration) of the establishment Republicans, with the complacency of millions and decades-old brainwashing by our educational elites, the media and Hollywood, all the ace cards were held by the managerial apparatchiks. And yet, despite that, it has become clear that Donald Trump actually won the election—it took pausing the count in six or seven crucial swing states late on election night for the minions of the Deep State to go “find” millions of newly-minted and created “votes,” stuff the ballot boxes, and—voila!—declare that Joe Biden, a senile empty-suit, had won in a landslide! When in actuality it was just the reverse: Donald Trump had won and won big.

In other words, the nation—ours—that once touted itself as “the world’s greatest democracy,” had and has become no better that an Eastern European Soviet satellite state, circa 1950, when "elections” were a flagrant and ridiculous farce. How is America, in this respect, any different from Communist Romania under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu or Russia under Josef Stalin?

Not a comforting thought is it, that the country created by the Framers in 1787 with what they hoped would be sufficient safeguards against the inherent tendency of “democracy” towards tyranny, would nevertheless throw off those safeguards and embrace the inevitable totalitarianism that “egalitarian democracy” produces. We have, at least since the conclusion of the War Between the States in 1865, with almost all the various constitutional amendments enacted since then, and with the defecation of so-called “civil rights” legislation and accompanying court decisions, been on a downward spiral, increasing inertially as we descend with apparent insouciance into what poet John Milton called “the slough of Despond.”

The election of 2016 was a sign that a national voice, in this case Donald Trump, had somehow made contact with millions of citizens who knew, at least intuitively, that something was wrong, that things were “not right,” that the promises of the Old Republic had somehow been not only derailed, but perverted and defiled by the elites. At last, millions believed that they might curb the power and control of the managerial class over the American nation.

Thus, President Trump became that bull-in-a-china shop, that vehicle for an incipient counter-revolution. He was, perhaps, an unlikely champion of that rebellion, for he came from the East Coast, New York billionaire class. He was a rough-language, at times abrasive businessman not a politician, and not someone who had studied profoundly or philosophically the deeper issues. His attempts to incorporate members of the Republican establishment (recall his entreaties to Mitt Romney, to John Bolton, to “Mad Dog” Mattis, and others) into his administration and to often please that establishment, were essentially disastrous, and would only undercut his tenure. His failure to get rid of the minions of the Deep State, those professionals deeply buried in his administration and in the White House, who actually despised him and did their best to sandbag and expel him, was a major fault. But, then, he did not come from the cutthroat political class.  And too often he depended on it. If anything perhaps, given the depth of penetration by those Deep Staters, such action, if he had seriously attempted it, would have resulted in another probably successful impeachment effort, or worse. But he should have….

There are a few Republicans in Congress—only a few—who plan to stand and object to the farcical voting of the Electoral College when its report is rendered. But we should not count on success at contesting what happened, for the great majority of GOP representatives will fall into line with the pronouncement of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and graciously accept their continued slavery in the Deep State.

Like the “democratic” deputies of the interim Russian republic sitting helplessly in the Russian parliament, the Duma, in November 1917 (old style October 1917), waiting for Lenin and the Communist to assume power, they will accept their bondage.

There is a superb post-Communist Russian film, “Burnt by the Sun” (1994), which in many ways is emblematic of this. Directed by brilliant cineaste Nikita Mikhalkov (a monarchist and anti-Communist), the film tells the story of Comrade Sergei Kotov, a loyal Soviet officer, who is accused of crimes he did not commit, but due to his loyalty to Comrade Stalin, he makes his confession. He has already accepted the Communist framework and template, he has, as it were, already “drunk the cool aid,” and after that, there really is no option left to him.

Our congress-people, and most of our political class, are like the frog in a pot of water on a stove that slowly has the fire turned up under it. At first the water is just fine, but slowly the frog is boiled alive.  Thus it will be for many of those who protest ever-so-loudly and insincerely that they “are with us,” that they “oppose the Revolution.” Either they must actually stand against the Revolution, probably losing their reputations and their lucrative positions, or they must finally accede to it, and like the frog or Comrade Kotov embrace their fate and slavery. 

For us we must go forth, like Colonel Mosby’s raiders—the “Gray Ghost”—to harass and bedevil the Enemy, with all the hardships that means, with conviction and commitment, knowing that “Nostra spes mea in Deo” – Our Hope is in God.” 

In the end evil must fall.

                                                       December 13, 2020

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Joe Biden is NOT My President

Friends,

This morning I opened my AOL account and immediately a story from The Huffington Post caught my eye. It seems that a New Jersey congressman,  Bill Pascrell, a Democrat,  “has called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bar 126 GOP representatives from the House, arguing that their support for the failed, baseless Texas lawsuit seeking to hijack the presidential election violated the Constitution.” Pascrell “accused the Republican congressmen of violating the Constitution by seeking to nullify Americans’ votes and instead choose a ‘dictator’. He cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War and designed to keep traitors out of government.”

Continuing on Pascrell said in a tweet accompanied by a statement on Friday: “Today I’m calling on House leaders to refuse to seat any Members trying to overturn the election and make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.” [Italics mine!] The “text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids Members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States,” he tweeted. “Trying to overturn a democratic election and install a dictator seems like a pretty clear example of that.”

It’s entirely logical, Pascrell’s demand. It represents the logical use, the perfect conclusion, once again, of the “gaslighting” and projection employed by the minions of the Deep State, those robotic members of the managerial elite who, in fact, run and govern this nation, and have done so, increasingly, for at least seven decades…despite Donald Trump and his (to them) “fluke” election in 2016.

The Trump election in 2016 was not supposed to have happened. Everything had been prepared back then, down to the smallest detail of Hilary Clinton’s mammoth election night celebration…which was to have been the celebration of the final and definitive victory of the Deep State, the permanent bureaucracy that has assumed near absolute power over our lives and destinies.

But somehow the guard posts were ill-attended. Somehow that upstart billionaire from New York, Donald Trump, rough in manners and uncouth in speech, and not willing to take all the orders from “his betters,” was chosen by the electorate.  He would mark his own path, at times ignoring those oligarchs who lurk behind the scenes mostly, but who control everything from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to our educational system and our corporate financial institutions, not to mention their iron grip on the media.

And that just was not permissible, not something that the managerial elites would accept. Even “the Donald” did not fully realize what they would do or attempt. Not that he had actually staged a giant counter-revolution. No; all he managed was to crack the door open, as it were, to let in a little fresh air, just a little light. And suddenly millions of normal Americans, those of us who live in “fly-over” country between New York’s Upper East Side swank penthouses and San Francisco and the millionaire dollar homes in Silicon Valley, began a rocky road to awareness. What had been largely mystifying to millions of “deplorables” up to then, and only clearly seen by a talented minority of writers like James Burnham (e.g., his books, including The Managerial Revolution, 1941; The Machiavellians, 1943; Suicide of the West, 1964), and his theoretical amanuensis, the late Sam Francis (e.g., his massive study, Leviathan, 2016, and also Revolution from the Middle, 1997), all of a sudden came into focus.

Practically speaking, we were in chains, chains of a new form of slavery, a slavery far more intense and profound than any earlier form. It wasn’t so much of the physical kind. Rather, it profoundly infected the mind, it perverted and changed the intellect, the very way we live, what we read, what we said and how we talked, what we valued in life. And, in the end we became like the programmed agent, Raymond Shaw, in that classic 1962 film noir psychological classic, The Manchurian Candidate: lulled into complacency and compliance to the ukases of our new masters.

Most of us did not realize it. Most of us were content to work our jobs, pay our bills, and raise our families. Yes, we did know that something was amiss, something fundamental. We had that odd feeling that we were not really in control. Yet, it took a ruffian like Donald Trump, himself not fully aware of his role, to partially tear off the fearful mask of the managerial Deep State permanent bureaucratic class, our new masters and overseers. And for many of us, for the first time, what we beheld was stunning in its awful power and terrible symmetry.

For the elites in the managerial class, for the Deep State apparatchiks, the 2016 election was a major fluke, an unforced error that they had let slip by…somehow they had not prepared well enough, somehow they had overestimated their power. And ever since they have desperately attempted to undo 2016, using the fraudulent Russia Hoax, the Ukrainian Caper, various impeachment farces. The coming of COVID presented them with a supreme opportunity. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste,” said former Democrat mayor of Chicago and Obama henchman, Rahm Emanuel. And for the Democratic and establishment elites in battleground states, under the cover of the Coronavirus scare, things could and would be perfected, election laws altered, fraud generated…many times in full view.

Most importantly, and as we see now quite vividly, the elites, the Democrats (and many Republicans) beholden to and agents of the Deep State knew that even if their skullduggery were finally revealed and discovered, that the malfeasance and rigging of an election would most certainly succeed this time. No one actually was an enthusiast for that no-account non-entity, half-senile, inspiring-no-one Joe Biden: he would simply provide their stalking horse, their Trojan Horse back into full power. He would be instructed what to do and what to say, and whom to pick to surround him. And in the end, their preparation for 2020 would bear success. The genie freed in 2016 could be put back and imprisoned once again in the magic lamp.

They understood fully well that after a completed election (which in fact they carefully prepared for months), that afterwards no court would be eager or willing to take it up. To do so would, as one jurist friend complained, “only engender intense and incredible confusion in the public mind, maybe even unleashing violence like we have not seen in 155 years.” In other words, we are told—like the verdict of the Texas case where SCOTUS refused to even hear the appeal (with only Justices Alito and Thomas favoring a hearing)—“the robbery, the theft, has already taken place; to try to right the wrong now would upset things too much. So, just be quiet and let it be.”

That is where our judicial system now resides, at the bottom of the barrel of putrid scum, either afraid to demur for fear of “upsetting the applecart,” or perhaps also intellectually communing with the Deep State template.

The managerial class, the Deep State minions, the elites—however we term them—have learned well the lesson of 2016, they have taken good advantage of COVID, they have run roughshod over law and justice, and dared anyone to do anything about it. They understood the innate (little “c”) conservatism of the judicial system, which is loath to, as my jurist friend opined, create intense confusion, even civil war.

In 1936 Spain had a General Francisco Franco willing to rise and lead a patriotic coalition of army units, Carlist traditionalists and monarchists, and conservative Catholics against a socialist/communist republic. In 1973 a General Augusto Pinochet was ready to lead a counter-revolution against the implanting of a Marxist dictatorship in Chile. Today there is no such force ready-made to lead a counter-revolution in the United States. The forces of the Progressivist Deep State have made sure of that.

We are on our own, perhaps headed to a catacomb far more desolate and dark and excruciating than anything our Christian ancestors suffered at the hands of an Emperor Nero or Diocletian. But persevere we must, with faith and determination, trusting in the Lord, while hoping like Charles Maurras in 1940 (with the advent in France of Vichy and Marshal Petain) for a “divine surprise.”

History has a way of producing quirks and entirely unexpected happenings, whether it be a Lenin shipped back by the German High Command to Tsarist Russia in a boxcar to initiate a Communist Revolution that would come very close to conquering the world, or its ignominious end in 1991, “not with a bang, but a whimper.”

For our republic to be recaptured and reborn its citizens must remember who we are. We must go forth, handicapped yes, but still into battle.  Perhaps our future lies in secession or separation. Indeed, one thing I can agree with Abe Lincoln on is this: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” However that may be, our journey will most likely be painful.

Let us recall as we begin our arduous pilgrimage of restoration, even as King Alfred the Great in the remote marshes of Somersetshire (878 A.D.) began his re-conquest of Wessex and of England, another statement of Maurras: “For monarchy to work, one man must be wise. For democracy to work, a majority of the people must be wise. Which is more likely?”

Commitment, intelligence, and a knowledge of our traditions, and adherence to them and to the firm faith handed down to us from our ancestors are requisite for our citizenry…along with a necessary prudence and skill. Today in America, for one half of the people who live in it, that is not the case: they are become as those artificial robots, those programmed “pod people” of whom I spoke in my little essay on December 2, 2020, like the Laurence Harvey/Raymond Shaw character in The Manchurian Candidate.

The only other path is enforced silence and defeat, our effective disappearance from the annals of history, and to be cursed by our descendants.

The Duke of Wellington supposedly said at the Battle of Waterloo: “May God help us—for no one else will.”

We are there now.

 

December 5, 2020

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Trump Speech of December 2, 2020

 

Friends,

Back on December 2 President Trump gave what he called perhaps “the most important speech I’ve ever made,” and certainly the most important regarding the November 2020 presidential election. This major speech was made available via several online sources but was either ignored by most media outlets, or scorned as a “falsehood-filled diatribe" (New York Times online edition), “escalat[ing] baseless attacks on [the] election with a 46-minute video rant" (Washington Post online edition), with CNN terming it “lies” and “propaganda.” [A Youtube video of the speech is here.)

So much for the “fake news” media (and I would include a large number of Fox News broadcasters here as well).

For each of the accusations and points that the president makes, there are substantial and ample confirming sources, evidence and affidavits.  But time is an enemy here, presenting immense hurdles for successful challenges to election fraud. The Constitution and election law prescribe fixed deadlines, which mean that any legal challenge must be researched, formulated and filed in just a few weeks, when normally such cases require months of preparation. Nevertheless, for the sake of the republic this case must be made.

Certain print editions of this speech were distributed in very raw form, without editing. I pass on below the speech slightly edited. The content and points made have not been altered. Although long, it reads quickly:

Here is the full transcript of Trump's speech:

Thank you. This may be the most important speech I've ever made. I want to provide an update on our ongoing efforts to expose the tremendous voter fraud and irregularities which took place during the ridiculously long November 3rd elections. We used to have what was called Election Day, now we have election days, weeks, and months, and lots of bad things have happened during this ridiculous period of time, especially when you have to prove almost nothing to exercise our greatest privilege, the right to vote.

As president, I have no higher duty than to defend the laws and the Constitution of the United States. That is why I am determined to protect our election system, which is now under coordinated assault and siege. For months leading up to the presidential election, we were warned that we should not declare a premature victory. We were told repeatedly that it would take weeks if not months to determine the winner, to count the absentee ballots, and to verify the results. My opponent was told to stay away from the election, don't campaign. We don't need you, we've got it. This election is done. In fact, they were acting like they already knew what the outcome was going to be. They had it covered, and perhaps they did, very sadly, for our country. It was all very, very strange.

Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint a winner, even while many key states were still being counted. The constitutional process must be allowed to continue. We are going to defend the honesty of the vote by ensuring that every legal ballot is counted, and that no illegal ballot is counted. This is not just about honoring the votes of 74 million Americans who voted for me, it's about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future elections.

Today, I will detail some of the shocking irregularities, abuses, and fraud that have been revealed in recent weeks. But before laying out just a small portion of the evidence we have uncovered--and we have so much evidence--I want to explain the corrupt mail-in balloting scheme that Democrats systemically put into place that allowed voting to be altered, especially in swing states, which they had to win. They just didn't know that it was going to be that tough, because on election evening we were leading in every swing state by so much, far greater than they ever thought possible.

While it has long been understood that the Democrat political machine engages in voter fraud, from Detroit to Philadelphia to Milwaukee, Atlanta, so many other places, what changed this year was the Democrat Party's relentless push to print and mail out tens of millions of ballots, sent to unknown recipients, with virtually no safeguards of any kind. This allowed fraud and abuse to occur on a scale never seen before. Using the pandemic as a pretext, Democrat politicians and judges drastically changed election procedures just months and in some cases weeks before the election on the third of November. Very rarely were legislatures involved, and constitutionally, they had to be involved. But very, very rarely--and you'll see that as we continue to file our suits.

It's constitutionally, absolutely incorrect what took place, even from a strictly legal standpoint. Many states such as Nevada and California sent millions of real ballots to every person on their voter rolls, whether those individuals had requested ballots or not, whether they were dead or alive, they got ballots. Other states such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin instituted universal absentee balloting right in the middle of an election year, sending absentee ballot request forms to all voters on all rolls. It didn't matter who they were. This colossal expansion of mail-in voting opened the floodgates to massive fraud. It's a widely known fact that the voting rolls are packed with people who are not lawfully eligible to vote, including those who are deceased, have moved out of their state, and even are non-citizens of our country.

Beyond this the records are riddled with errors, wrong addresses, duplicate entries, and many other issues. This is not disputed. It has never been disputed. Dozens of counties in the key swing states have more registered voters on the rolls than they have voting-aged citizens, including 67 counties in Michigan. All of this is evidence.

In Wisconsin, the state's Board of Elections could not confirm the residency of more than 100,000 people, but repeatedly refused to remove those names from its voter rolls before the election. They knew why, nobody else did. I knew why, they're illegal voters. It's a travesty that in the year 2020, we do not have any means of verifying the eligibility of those who cast ballots in an election, and such an important election it is, or determining who they are, whether they live in this state, or whether they are even American citizens. We have no idea.

We have in all swing states major infractions, or outright fraud, which is far more in numbers of votes than we need to overturn the results of a state. In other words, in Wisconsin, as an example, where we were way up on election night, they ultimately had us miraculously losing by 20,000 votes. And I can show you right here, that Wisconsin, we're leading by a lot. And then, at 3:42 in the morning, there was this. It was a massive dump of votes. Almost all Biden. And to this day, everyone's trying to figure out, where did it come from? But I went from leading by a lot to losing by a little. And that's right here, that's at 3:42 in the morning. That's Wisconsin. A terrible thing. A terrible, terrible thing.

But we will have far more, many times more than the 20,000 votes needed to overturn the state. If we are right about the fraud, Joe Biden can't be president. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of votes. We're talking about numbers like nobody has ever seen before.

Just as an example, in certain states, we'll be down by, let's say 7,000 votes. But we'll find later on, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 discrepancies or fraudulent votes, and that includes votes that went through when they were not allowed to be seen by Republican poll watchers, because the poll watchers were locked out of the building. Or people that innocently came to vote on November 3rd, who were all excited about their vote. They were happy. They were proud to be citizens of the United States of America. And they went up, and they said, "I'd like to vote." And they were told that they can't vote. "I'm sorry," they were told, "I'm sorry, you've already voted, by mail-in ballot. Congratulations. We received a ballot, so you can no longer vote."

They didn't know what to do. They had no one to complain to. Most just left and said, "That's strange." But many people complained, and complained vehemently. And in a lot of cases, they filled out a provisional ballot, which was almost never used. But in virtually every case, it was a vote for Trump. In other words, they wanted to vote, and they were told that they voted. And they didn't vote. And they left, and they felt horror, and they lost respect for our system. And this happened tens of thousands of times all over the country. That's how desperate the Democrats were. They would fill out ballots of people, not even knowing if these people were going to show up. And when they did show up, they said, "Sorry, you've already voted."

And on top of everything else, we have a company that's very suspect. Its name is Dominion. With a turn of a dial, or the change of a chip, you can press a button for Trump, and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this? We have to go to paper. Maybe it takes longer, but the only secure system is paper, not these systems that nobody understands, including in many cases the people that run them. Although, unfortunately, I think they understand them far too well.

In one Michigan county, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, this is what we caught. How many didn't we catch? Are there hundreds of other examples throughout the country? Are there thousands? We just got lucky, and they called it a glitch. But we found numerous glitches that evening. Ninety-six percent of the company's political donations went to Democrats, not surprisingly. And frankly, when you look at who's running the company, who's in charge? Who owns it? Which we don't know. Where are the votes counted? Which we think are counted in foreign countries, not in the United States. Dominion is a disaster.

Election authorities in Texas have repeatedly blocked the deployment of Dominion systems due to concerns about security, vulnerabilities, and the potential for errors and outright fraud. Every district that uses Dominion systems must be carefully monitored and carefully investigated, but not only for the future. Right now, we're worried about the present, and what went on with an election that we won without question.

Under my lead, the Republicans won almost every bell weather House seat in the United States, which they weren't expected to do. We went up 16 seats in the House. The numbers are still being tabulated, because there are still nine seats being counting. They don't know. Two weeks later, they're still under consideration, because it's a mess. Republicans were supposed to lose many seats, and instead they won those seats in the House. And a very important election that's coming up with determine whether or not we hold the Senate. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are two tremendous people. Unfortunately, in Georgia, they're using the same horrible Dominion system. And it's already been out that hundreds of thousands--think of it, hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots have been requested.

You check it out, who's requesting those ballots? The difference is, it's one state, and we will have our eyes on it like nobody's ever watched anything before, because we have to win those two Senate seats. We’ve had tremendous success in the House of Representatives, and we've had tremendous success so far in the Senate, unexpected success, all over the country and right here in Washington. It is statistically impossible that the person, me, that led that charge, lost.

The greatest pollsters—the real pollsters, not the ones that had us down 17 points in Wisconsin when we actually won, or the ones that had us down four or five points in Florida, and we won by many points, or had us even and down in Texas—had us winning by a lot. Not those pollsters, but real pollsters, pollsters that are fair and honest, said we can't understand a thing like this, it's never happened before. You led the country to victory, and you were the only one that was lost. It's not possible.

The Speaker of the House of a certain state said, "Sir, I expected to lose my seat. And instead, because of you, and because of that incredible charge and all of those rallies, we had a tremendous victory. And everybody knows it. You are much more popular than me, sir, except I got many more votes than you did and it's impossible that that happened. There is something wrong." I'll tell you what's wrong--voter fraud.

Here's an example, this is Michigan. At 6:31 in the morning a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in. Unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch…nobody knows anything about it. There's one of many. Here's what is normal and then all of a sudden, look at that. Then all of a sudden I go from winning by a lot to losing a tight race. It's corrupt.

Detroit is corrupt. I have a lot of friends in Detroit. They know it. But Detroit is totally corrupt. Look at this. Look at this. That's at 6:31 in the morning when the new votes unexpectedly came in. And the recent recount in Georgia which means nothing because they don't want to check signatures, and if you're not going to check signatures in Georgia, it doesn't work, but we have a secretary of state and a governor who made it very difficult to check signatures. Why? You'll have to ask them.

But without a signature match or a check, doesn't matter. They found thousands and thousands of votes that were out of whack. All against me. This was during a recount... they found many thousands of votes but that recount didn't matter. The one that matters is the one that's going on now.

That’s because of the fact it is so close they had to, by law, give another recount. But the recount has to be a recount where they check the signatures otherwise they're just checking the same dishonest thing. It won't matter. In this case the signatures on envelopes are the only thing that is relevant. We will compare the signature on the envelope to the signatures from past elections and we will find that many thousands of people signed these ballots illegally.

The Democrats had this election rigged right from the beginning. They used the pandemic sometimes referred to as the China Virus, where it originated as an excuse to mail out tens of millions of ballots which ultimately led to a big part of the fraud--of fraud that the whole world is watching. And there is no one happier right now than China.

Many people received two, three and four ballots. They were sent to dead people by the thousands. In fact, dead people--we have many examples of filled out ballots-- had applications filed for them and then voted which is even worse. In other words, dead people went through the process, some of them dead for 25 years.

Millions of votes were cast illegally in the swing states alone, and if that's the case, the results of the individual swing states must be overturned and overturned immediately. Some people say that's too far out. That's too harsh. Well, does that mean we accept a president where the votes were fraudulent? No. It means you have to turn over the election.

And everybody knows without going much further that they've seen the evidence but they don't want to talk about it.  What a disaster this election was--a total catastrophe. But we're going to show it and hopefully the courts in particular the Supreme Court of the United States will see it and respectfully, hopefully they will do what is right for our country.

Because our country cannot live with this kind of an election. We can say let's go on to the next one. But no, we have to look also right now. We can't let this happen. Maybe you will have a revote, but I don't think that is appropriate. When those votes are corrupt, when they are irregular, when they get caught, they are terminated and I would very easily win in all states, I very easily win these swing states. Just like I won them at 10:00 in the evening--the evening of the election.

So we're not looking to show you 25 faulty or fraudulent votes which don't mean anything, because they only overturn 50 or 100 votes. We're showing you hundreds of thousands--far more than we need. Far more than the margin. Far more than the law requires. We can show many times what is necessary to win a state.

The media knows this but they don't want to report it. In fact, they outright refuse to even cover it because they know the result if they do. Even what I'm saying now will be demeaned and disparaged, but that's OK. I just keep on going forward because I'm representing 74 million people and in fact, I'm also representing even all of the people that didn't vote for me. The mail-in-voting scam is the latest part of their four-year effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and it's been like living in hell.

Our opponents have proven many times again and again that they will say and do anything to get back into power. The corrupt forces who are registering dead voters and stuffing ballot boxes are the same people who have perpetrated one phony and fraudulent hoax after another. You've been watching it now for four years. These entrenched interests oppose our movement because we put America first. They don't put America first. And we're returning power to you, the American people. They don't want America first. They only want power for themselves. They want to make money. That's why they don't want me as your president.

I've been investigated since soon after I announced I was running for president. I immediately went to number one in the Republican primary polls. The investigations never stopped. They went on for four years and I won them all, I beat them all. Russia, Russia, Russia, the impeachment hoax, and so much more.

Robert Mueller spent $48 million of taxpayer money investigating me for two and a half years. Issued over 2800 subpoenas. Executed nearly 500 search warrants. Issued 230 orders for communications records and conducted 500 witness interviews all looking to take me down. In the end there was no collusion. None whatsoever.

Senator Marco Rubio, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated "the Committee found no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government," and I thank Senator Rubio for that statement.

Now, I hear that these same people that failed to get me in Washington have sent every piece of information to New York so that they can try to get me there. It's all been gone over. Over and over again. For $48 million you go through tax returns, you go through everything. The New York attorney general who recently ran for office campaigned without knowing me, stating, "We will join with law enforcement and other attorneys general across this nation in removing this president from office." I never met her. It's important that everybody understand, she said, that “the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.” This is a fair?

And all it's been is a big investigation in Washington and New York and any place that they can investigate because that's what they want to do. They want to take not just me but us, the American people, down. And we can never let them do that. Everything has been looked at. A friend of mine who's very smart said you’ve probably seen more than everybody else, you've probably been investigated more than anybody else, and for you to come out with a clean bill of health makes you probably the cleanest person in this country.

Some people in this administration, but fortunately not all, have been beaten down and disparaged; they just stopped fighting. Why aren't they active? Why aren't they involved? There's so much to be involved in. The corruption is so rampant. They just couldn't take it anymore. They were threatened by Democrats, with impeachment, and horrible things were said about them but they're good people.

Even recently, the head of the GSA was hounded and harassed like she has never been before. What can I say? We caught Comey cold, we caught McCabe cold, we caught them all. We're still waiting for a report from a man named John Durham, whom I have never spoken to and I have never met. They can go after me before the election as much as they want, but unfortunately, Mr. Durham, didn't want to go after these people or have anything to do with going after them before the election.

So who knows if he is ever going to even do a report. But if you look at the lies and the leaks and the illegal acts of behavior done by so many people and their desire to hurt the president of the United States, something should happen. The hardest thing I have to do is explain why nothing is happening with all of these people that got caught spying on my campaign--it's never happened before and it should never happen again to a president of the United States.

All you have to do is watch the hearings and see for yourself that the evidence is overwhelming. The fraud having to do with our election that we've collected in recent weeks is overwhelming. Everyone is saying wow, the evidence is overwhelming when they get to see it but then they say, really it's too late to change the course of an election. It's too late to change the outcome? In fact, there is still plenty of time to certify the correct winner of the election, and that's what we're fighting to do.

But no matter when it happens, when they see fraud, when they see false votes, and when those votes number far more than is necessary, you can't let another person steal that election from you. All over the country people are together in holding up signs, "Stop the steal." To understand how we will challenge this fraud it is important to know the problems with mail-in balloting. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and most other states allowed anyone to get an absentee ballot and cast their vote without showing any ID. The voting took place entirely on the honor system. No identification of any kind was required.

Most Americans would also be shocked to learn that no state in the country verifies United States citizenship as a condition for voting in federal election. This is a national disgrace. No other advanced country conducts elections this way. Many European countries have instituted major restrictions on mail-in voting specifically because they recognize the nearly unlimited potential for fraud. Out of 42 European nations all but two prohibit absentee ballots entirely from people who reside inside the country or else they require those who need absentee ballots to show a very, very powerful ID.

Throughout the Democrat effort to dramatically expand mail-in voting the Democrat Party leaders were also feverishly working to block measures designed to protect against fraud. Such as, signature verification, residency verification or voter ID and citizenship confirmation was almost unthought of that we should ask for it. Can you believe this?

These are not the actions of people who want fair elections. These are the actions of people who want steal elections, who are willing to create fraud. The only conceivable reason why you would block common sense measures to verify legal eligibility for voting is you are trying to encourage, enable, solicit or carry out fraud.

It is important for Americans to understand that these destructive changes to our election laws were not a necessary response to the pandemic. The pandemic simply gave the Democrats an excuse to do what they have been trying to do for many, many years. In fact, the very first bill that House Democrats introduced when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker was an attempt to mandate universal mail-in voting and eliminate measures such as voter ID, which is so necessary.

Dramatically eroding the integrity of our election was the Democrats' number one priority for a simple reason. They wanted to steal the 2020 presidential election. All of the Democrat efforts to expand mail-in balloting laid the groundwork for the systematic and pervasive fraud that occurred in this election. In Pennsylvania, large amounts of mail-in and absentee ballots were processed illegally and in secret in Philadelphia and Allegheny County without our observers present. They were not allowed to be present.

In fact, they weren't even allowed in the same room. They were thrown out of the building, and they looked from outside in, but they had no way of even seeing because there were no windows, and the windows that were there were boarded up. Democrats even went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to block observers from receiving access. There is only one possible reason that the corrupt Democrat political machine would oppose transparency during the vote counting.

It is because they know they are hiding illegal activity. It's very simple. This is an egregious and inexcusable and irreversible harm that stains the entire election, yet this unprecedented practice of excluding our observers, our vote watchers as some people call them, occurred in Democrat-run cities in key states all across the nation. Here are just some of the additional facts that we have uncovered:

Many voters all across Pennsylvania received two ballots in the mail, and many others received mail-in ballots for which they never applied. So many got ballots they didn't why, and again so many received more than one ballot, in some cases more than two ballots, and they happened to be, for the most part, Democrats.

In Fayette County, Pennsylvania, multiple voters received ballots that were already filled out. They didn't know what had happened. In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a poll watcher heard unregistered voters being told to return later to try to vote under a different name. Tens of thousands of voters across Pennsylvania were treated differently based on whether they were Republicans or Democrats.

Voters who submitted flawed ballots in some Democrat precincts were notified and asked to fix their ballots while in Republican precincts Republican voters were not so notified, which plainly violates the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. If you are a Democrat, we are going to fix up your ballot, make sure it's perfect. If you are a Republican, don't even ask about it.

In Michigan, a career employee of the city of Detroit witnessed city workers coaching voters to vote straight Democrat while accompanying them to watch who they were voting for, violating the law and the sanctity of the secret ballot. You can't do that. The same worker says she was instructed not to ask for any ID and not to attempt to validate any signatures. She was also told to illegally backdate many ballots received after the deadline. This is something that is unconstitutional, and she estimates that thousands and thousands of ballots were improperly backdated by her and many others.

Other witnesses in Detroit also saw election officials counting batches of the same ballots many times over as well as illegally duplicating ballots. One observer testified to seeing boxes and boxes of ballots all bearing the same signature. Another observer in Detroit gave sworn testimony that he saw countless invalid ballots that did not belong to properly registered voters and then witnessed election workers in Wayne County entering fake birthdates into the system in order to illegally count them.

Witnesses have signed sworn affidavits. In other words, you go to jail if you lie, testifying that after election officials announced the last absentee votes had been received, a batch of tens of thousands of ballots arrived, many without envelopes, all voting for Democrats. In Wisconsin, a record number of voters were categorized as indefinitely confined, a status reserved for severely disabled individuals, also for the elderly that allow them to vote without showing ID.

Last year approximately 70,000 people claimed this status statewide. This year the number miraculously was nearly 250,000 voters after election officials in Milwaukee, and Dane Counties, a couple of the most corrupt political places in our country, urged citizens to improperly register under this status, and register they did in levels that stretch belief.

In Wisconsin, there are approximately 70,000 absentee ballots that do not have matching ballot applications as required by law. In Georgia, nine observers have testified to seeing countless irregular ballots without the creases or typical markings, indicating that the ballots did not arrive in envelopes as required. A poll watcher in Fulton County estimates that approximately 98 percent of the large number of unusually pristine ballots that she witnessed were for Biden, an unbelievably unusual number.

In addition, thousands of uncounted ballots were discovered in Floyd, Fayette, and Walton counties weeks after the election, and these ballots were mostly from Trump voters. They weren't counted. They were from Trump voters.

In Detroit, everybody saw the tremendous conflict and the horrible way that the two Republican canvassers were treated because they wouldn't vote to certify when they saw that 71 percent of the precincts didn't balance, and also that there were more votes than there were voters. Think of that. You had more votes than you had voters.

In Arizona, in-person voters whose ballots produced error messages from tabulation machines were told to press a button that resulted in their votes not being counted. Also, in Arizona, the Attorney General announced that mail-in ballots had been stolen from mailboxes and hidden under a rock.

In Clark County, Nevada, where most of the state's voters reside, the standards for matching a signature using the signature verification machine were intentionally lowered to allow large numbers of ballots to be counted that otherwise would never have passed muster. This machine was set at the lowest level. According to one report, in order to test the process, nine voters in Clark County cast ballots with intentionally incorrect signatures, and eight of the nine ballots were accepted and counted. They said you could sign your name as Santa Claus, and it would be accepted. Last week, the Clark County Commission threw out the results of another, local election after the registrar reported finding quote "Discrepancies that we can't explain."

Also, in Nevada, some voters were entered into a raffle for more than a dozen gift cards worth as much as $250 if they could prove they had voted. This took place on Indian reservations. One of the most significant indications of widespread fraud is the extraordinarily low rejection rates for mail-in ballots in many key states. These are the states that I had to win. In swing state after swing state, the number of ballots rejected has been dramatically lower than what would have been expected based on prior experience over years and years of voting.

In Georgia, just 0.2 percent that is substantially less than 1 percent of mail-in ballots, have been rejected. In other words, almost none have been rejected. They accepted everything. Nothing was rejected practically compared to 6.4 percent in 2016, and there are those that think that 6.4 was a low number. So think of it--almost none were rejected, and the previous election, 6.4 percent were rejected.

We have seen similar declines in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan. Ballots weren't rejected, especially if they happened to be in Democrat areas. These irregularities are inexplicable unless there is a deliberate effort to accept ineligible ballots or fraudulent ballots.

In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state, and the state supreme court, in essence, abolished signature verification requirements just weeks prior to the election in violation of state law. You are not allowed to do that. It has to be approved by the legislature. A judge can't do it; a state can't do it, an official can't do it. The only one that can do it is the legislature. The reason for this is clear. They were not verifying signatures because they know the ballots have not been filled out by the voters in whose names they were cast. In other words, people filled them out that had nothing to do with the names on the ballot.

A simple recount of the ballots under these circumstances only compounds the fraud. The only way to determine whether there was an honest vote is to conduct a full review of the envelopes in the relevant states. You will find that many of them, tens of thousands, have fraudulent signatures. A full forensic audit is required to ensure that only legal ballots from lawfully registered voters that were properly cast are included in the final count. This election is characterized by great voter fraud, fraud that has never been witnessed like this before. It's about poll watchers who were not allowed to watch. This is so illegal.

It's about ballots that poured in, and nobody but a few knew where they came from, but they were counted, and they weren't for me. It's about big leads on election night, tremendous leads, leads where I was being congratulated for a decisive, easy victory, and all of a sudden, by morning or a couple of days later, those leads rapidly evaporated.

It's about numbers of ballots that were sent that nobody knows where they came from. It is about machinery that was defective, machinery that was mysteriously stopped during certain parts of the evening and Republicans told to go home, but miraculously to begin again early in the morning with an immense number of votes for my opponent. It was about many other things, but above all, it was about fraud. This election was rigged. And everybody knows it.

I don't mind if I lose an election, but I want to lose an election fair and square. What I don't want to do is have it stolen from the American people. That is what we are fighting for, and we have no choice but to be doing that.

We already have the proof, we already have the evidence, and it is very clear. Many people in the media and even judges so far have refused to accept it. But they know it's true, they know it's there, they know who won the election, but they refuse to say we are right. Our country needs somebody to say we are right.

Ultimately, I am prepared to accept any accurate election result, and I hope that Joe Biden is as well, but we already have the proof. We already have tens of thousands of ballots more than we need to overturn all of these states that we are talking about. This is an election for the highest office in the greatest country in the history of the world.

Every reasonable American should be able to agree, based on what we have already documented, that we need a systematic analysis of the mail-in ballots to review, in particular, the envelopes. It's about the signatures, and if they are on the envelopes, we can review the envelopes, and that will tell us everything. This is the absolute minimum we should expect. This is not just about my campaign, although it has a lot to do with who is going to be your next president.

This is about restoring faith and confidence in American elections. This is about our democracy and the sacred rights that generations of Americans have fought, bled, and died to secure. Nothing is more urgent or more important. The only ballots that should count in this election are those cast by eligible voters who are citizens of our country, residents of the states in which they voted, and who cast their ballots in a lawful manner before the legal deadline.

Moreover, we must never again have an election in which there is not a reliable and transparent system to verify the eligibility, identity, and residency of every single person who cast a ballot, a very, very cherished ballot. Many very smart people have congratulated me on all we have done. The biggest tax cuts in history, regulation cuts-- the biggest in history. We rebuilt our military. We took care of our vets like never before. Space Force and so much more.

But then they went on to say as big and as important as these events were, the single greatest achievement in your presidency will be exactly what you are doing right now, voter integrity for our nation. It's more important than any of the things that we have discussed. If we don't root out the fraud, the tremendous and horrible fraud that's taken place in our 2020 election, we don't have a country anymore.

So with the resolve and support of the American people, we will restore honesty and integrity to our elections, and we will restore trust in our system of government. Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.