The GOP House Thugs Followed the 2000 Brooks Brothers Riot Intimidation Playbook That Stopped the Florida Recount That Would Have Ended in Al Gore's Election
October 24, 2019
Roger Stone, currently under a seven-count indictment relating to the 2016 Trump campaign, was a leader of the Brooks Brother Riot in 2000 that used physical intimidation and mob action to stop the Miami-Dade County, Florida, vote recount. The thuggish confrontation at the board of elections is credited with changing the narrative from Gore probably won to Gore is trying to steal the election. (Victoria Pickering)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
On October 22, Donald Trump tried to divert attention from the devastating testimony of US Chargé d'Affaires to Ukraine, William Taylor, by distracting the media with the claim that the impeachment inquiry was a “lynching.” On Wednesday, Trump gave his personal support to a thuggish storming of a secure House impeachment inquiry room by bullying GOP House members to again attempt to switch the conversation and muddy the waters.
Three House impeachment inquiry committees, including Republican Representatives serving on those committees, were meeting in closed door session in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). The witness for the day was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper, who had been subpoenaed.
However, before the deposition could get underway some two dozen Republican Representatives — none of whom are on the investigating committees —barged into the secure room, pushing aside capitol police and yelling at committee members. They put national security at risk by bringing in their cell phones and tweeting and making calls, which is prohibited to ensure the classfied nature of the meetings held there.
Led by Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Minority Whip, and Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the menacing group took over the SCIF room for nearly five hours and engaged in “reckless, pizza-fueled, rule-breaking, and potentially law-breaking,” behavior, according to Law & Crime. They yelled accusations such as “this is a sham,” and “Let us in” before storming there way in.
Prior to the siege, the violators of SCIF regulations held a news conference in which they engaged in bombastic rhetoric aimed at shifting attention from Trump’s Constitutional violations onto lambasting the process of the impeachment inquiry.
“This is a Soviet-style process,” declared Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican. “It should not be allowed in the United States of America. Every member of Congress ought to be allowed in that room. The press ought to be allowed in that room.”
Of course, the Republicans, in their usual hypocritical manner had used a SCIF for some of their endless Benghazi hearings. The purpose of closed-door hearings at this time is two-fold: 1) to make sure that future witnesses don’t change their testimony to conform to other witnesses; and 2) to limit the amount of information that is leaked to Trump, the subject of the impeachment inquiry.
However, the Wednesday invasion of the impeachment inquiry hearings had nothing to do with process and everything to do with changing the narrative from the overwhelming evidence that Trump engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors..
There are two parallel ongoing developments to monitor as the impeachment inquiry proceeds. One, is the actual impeachment inquiry. It appears that Trump has already lost that fight, even as more revelations and corroborating evidence are yet to come.
The second narrative to watch are the efforts of Trump and his followers to win the war of influencing public opinion. That is what the brutish takeover of the deposition on Wednesday was about. The Republicans are following Trump’s lead that the facts damn him, so make the process seem unfair. The goal of that second narrative is to help the right-wing echo chamber convince enough Americans that the impeachment inquiry is allegedly rigged against Trump.
So although it is easy to dismiss yesterday’s mob behavior as a GOP stunt, it is possible that it can bolster Trump’s victim’s and grievance narrative.
For a precedent as to how Trump and his supporters on the Hill, along with the right-wing media echo chamber, can win the political narrative war even if they lose the impeachment war in the House, one should go back to the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that was the pivot point that changed the narrative from Al Gore winning the 2000 election when the recount of votes would be completed to Al Gore is trying to steal the election from George W. Bush through the recount.
The intimidating and physical harassment occurred at the Miami-Dade County Florida Board of Elections office a little over two weeks after the 2000 election. Bush was maintaining an infinitesimal lead of a little over 500 highly questionable votes over six million contested votes cast. Whoever won Florida won the presidency.
Gore’s lawyers were adopting a legal strategy to ensure a recount of contested votes. The Bush campaign, however, adopted a three-pronged strategy of engaging in a legal battle, fighting the recount and a public relations campaign to sway US voters into believing that Gore was, as noted above, trying to steal the election.
Meanwhile, some of the Bush campaign advisers — including perennial dirty trickster Roger Stone, Ted Cruz and former Congressman Tom DeLay — decided to shut down the recount in Miami-Dade County, the largest of the hand-recount counties, through mob action. In this case, the mob was composed of GOP Congressional aides and campaign workers. Since many of the Congressional staffers wore blazers or collegiate apparel, the event became known as the “Brooks Brothers Riot.”
On the day before Thanksgiving of 2000, the assembled GOP operatives stormed the Miami-Dade County Board of Elections, pushing anyone aside who was in their way. They banged on the doors where the recount was being undertaken and shouted, “Stop the Count! Stop the Count!” They harassed people leaving the recount room, accusing some of allegedly stealing ballots marked for Bush. They bullied and intimidated, as well as shoved and jostled some of the recounters.
“The idea we were putting out there was that this was a left-wing power grab by Gore, the same way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba,” Roger Stone said. "We were very explicitly drawing that analogy.”
That would parallel Trump’s claim that the impeachment inquiry is a “coup.”
After the chaotic and frightening “Brooks Brother Riot,” the Miami-Dade Board of Elections voted to stop the recount until further notice. From that point on, the media narrative shifted, for the most part, to the perception that Gore was challenging Bush’s “victory.” (Gore won the national popular vote in 2000 by more than 500,000 votes.) The cessation of the Miami-Dade County recount, precipitated by the GOP mob action, became moot when into an unprecedented Supreme Court 5-4 decision anointed Bush the president.
In November of 2018, The Washington Post ran a lengthy article recalling the “Brooks Brothers riot,” in which if noted:
Gore’s campaign didn’t seem concerned about the optics on the ground, just the situation in the courts….
“Gore left a leg off the stool, and that’s why the stool fell," [a Bush 2000 campaign official] said.
And so it was that when [the Democratic Party county chairman] showed up at the courthouse on Nov. 22 to grab a sample ballot, he found himself surrounded not by sympathetic Democrats but by angry GOP operatives.
Let Gore’s failure to develop a counter-narrative be a lesson to the House Democrats. Yesterday, they had their “Brooks Brothers Riot,” and they need to sustain a cogent narrative that not only wins an impeachment vote, but wins the hearts and minds of the American pubic. Otherwise, Trump may succeed in sustaining a narrative that the impeachment inquiry itself is an unfair kangaroo court.
The Republicans are very good at intimidating Democrats through thuggery and influencing the overriding narrative in the mass media. The House Democrats and Democratic presidential candidates are going to have to step up their game in order to make sure the Trump White House and its GOP Congressional supporters don’t steal the narrative and turn public opinion against the impeachment.
Continue the conversation at the BuzzFlash Nation group on Facebook.