Rigged: How David Bossie Cost
Donald Trump the 2020 Election

David N. Bossie, the Citizen in Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate cash in American elections, the author of take-down books against the Clintons and puff-books for Donald Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign siphoned plenty of unlimited corporate cash – that David Bossie – has released a new movie called Rigged complaining about unlimited corporate cash in the 2020 election.

Rigged makes a case that the 2020 election was stolen by Mark Zuckerburg and other corporate donors who ran successful get out the vote drives to ensure all Americans would be able to exercise the franchise. In hindsight, Bossie, Trump, Steve Bannon and Ted Cruz don't like that and think "it shouldn't be allowed," to quote Donald Trump being interviewed by Bossie in the film.

By saying it "shouldn't be allowed," Rigged gives up the game, admitting that it is currently legal for big corporations and wealthy individuals to give unlimited money to nonprofit organizations to increase voter turnout. It's legal because of David Bossie's dark-money-driven efforts to make his organization, Citizens United, producer of Rigged, a black cesspool of billionaire patronage.

David Bossie is a live-by-the-sword political provocateur turned Trump propagandist. He has been involved in one sleazy effort after another to trick, trap, and trash Democratic politicians. His reputation is on a par with political trickster Roger Stone, with whom he has collaborated. Another frequent mudslinging partner is the campaign strategist from hell, Steve Bannon, with whom Bossie collaborated on the 1.5-star documentary Occupy Unmasked in 2012. Bannon's War Room podcast has been running Rigged trailers nonstop, beating a war room drum for the live release party at Mar a Lago on April 5.

ALL the votes counted were legitimate votes from registered voters

Virtually every single vote cast for Joe Biden has been checked and verified that it was a vote made by a real voter who intended to vote that way. All the complaints of Cult Trump come down to how the ballots were handled – lack of chain of custody, for example – and not due to unregistered voters. There were virtually zero votes from unregistered voters in the 2020 election. No matter how many boxes you watched come out from under a desk in ballot counting rooms, no matter how many times you watched someone filling-in multiple ballots, in the end 99.99% of all votes counted were from registered voters who intended to vote the way their ballots indicated. The only real complaint of Cult Trump how the ballots were handled, which makes no difference at all.

There is only one key issue raised by Trump's attorneys, advocates and pillow purveyors: They don't like that ballots were mailed to registered voters. Tough! Many states, including Utah and Colorado, have been doing it for a long time. Republicans never complained before. They're only upset at the states that made the switch due to the pandemic, greatly benefiting Trump's turnout as well as Biden's. "I got 10 million more votes," Trump says in Rigged, mumbling "How could I lose?" Apparently, the "stable genius" does not comprehend that 81 million is more than 74 million, and that 306 electoral votes is a lot more than 232.

If you throw out all mail-in ballots, maybe you get a Trump victory in 2020? He seems to think so. Trump himself mailed his ballot. Throwing out all mail-in ballots, even though you can prove that statistically every one of them is from a registered voter who intended to vote that way, would retroactively disenfranchise millions of Americans under the theory that it would remove enough votes to swing 2020 for Trump.

Big baby Bossie doesn't like that states reacted to a pandemic by mailing ballots to voters, whether they asked for them or not. So what? What difference does it make how you get a legitimate vote? Cult Trump has had dozens of opportunities to show evidence of voter fraud, from the laughable Arizona audit to Mike Lindell's Cyber Symposium implosium, they have failed to show unregistered voters voting, or registered voters voting more than once.

Trump seemed to briefly accept his loss after the 2020 election

There was a time, in the first weeks after the November 2020 election, when it looked like Donald Trump was going to accept Biden's "massive landslide victory" -- to use Trump's own words describing his electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton by a slightly smaller margin than Joe Biden beat him. There were just too many states to pressure, bully, and cajole into invalidating enough voters to flip the result.

Trump belatedly sent out the clowns to contest his obvious loss, culminating in Rudy Giuliani oozing hair dye in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, but there was no legal case to be made. However, by that time Trump's Svengali, Steve Bannon, and his Goebbels, David Bossie, defibrillated Trump's ego just as Will Smith zapped the minds of people in Men In Black. Trump is now convinced down to his d.n.a. that he won and was cheated. He will never hint of believing otherwise.

2022 Republican candidates caught between a lie and a hard place

This obstinance on Trump's part means that either you repeat his Big Lie that the election was stolen or you don't get his endorsement. This lie detector test is making Republicans who face primaries uncomfortable. Mo Brooks, running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Alabama, suggested Republicans put the 2020 election "behind you," and Trump unendorsed him. For Trump, there is no other issue that matters. For the electorate, there is hardly an issue that matters less. Trump losing the 2020 election does not make the top 20 issues Americans care about. Even "election integrity" barely registers, with "improving political system" crawling in at #7 on Americans' priorities in the latest Pew Research Center survey.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Republicans facing tough primaries thought they caught a break. Trump's failure to condemn Vladimir Putin has eroded the power of his endorsement. Can Republicans oppose Putin and still get Trump's endorsement? We'll see. With war in Ukraine on the front burner, Republicans desperately want to put Trump's 2020 nonsense on the back burner. Then along comes David Bossie, putting the finishing touches on his $500K documentary proving the left wing's billionaires are just as engaged as the right wing's billionaires. All billionaires, foreign and domestic, were invited to this dance by David Bossie, Steve Bannon, Peter Schweizer, and Koch Industries – one of the last multinational corporations still doing business with Putin – the moving forces behind Citizens United.

The premiere of Rigged at Mar-a-Lago was an insurrectionist reunion

On April 5, the premiere of Rigged was held at Trump's Mar-a-Lago. It was an insurrectionist reunion with the likes of Bossie, Kellyanne Conway, Corey Lewandowski, Peter Navarro, Hope Hicks and Reince Preibus.

Rigged begins with the resurrection of Newt Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House in the previous century, who seethes with hatred as he says San Francisco is a "virus-ridden area in terms of the brains of people." Wow, great put-down for a man named after a lizard. The "father of modern conservatism" – "we say no to anything but tax cuts" – is also the spouse of several registered voters.

Five minutes in, the pussycat is again let out of the bag when "one of the most unethical justices" in Wisconsin Supreme Court history, sham election auditor Michael Gableman says, "They stole it fair and square." Huh? That's right, throughout the film, Trump's top spokespeople admit that what Mark Zuckerburg did was legal. It was made legal by Citizens United. The Zuckerbucks actually did go to nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) – just like Koch money goes to Club for Growth. The Zuckerberg money was actually spent to increase voter turnout, a legal use of those funds.

The 2020 election was rigged by too many people voting

Again and again, the insurrectionists interviewed in Rigged admit that what Democrats did in the 2020 election to boost turnout was clever and legal. Bossie says the CTCL conducted a "massive mail-in voting drive." Yup. Not illegal. At one point, Michael Gableman blames a "huge infusion of private money coming from declared partisans." Yup. Just like your Robert Mercer money and your Charles Koch money and your Sheldon Adelson money. It sucks because it's legal and it's legal because of David Bossie's claim to fame, Citizens United.

About half way through the film, Ken Cuccinelli, the former unconfirmed deputy secretary of Donald Trump's lawless Department of Homeland Security who Virginians know as "Vaginal Ultrasound Cuccinelli" after his attempts to require unnecessary invasive examinations repeatedly prior to an abortion – that Ken Cuccinelli – complains that "under the banner of nonpartisan funding [CTCL] engaged in political activities." Shocked! I'm shocked to find nonprofits are spending anonymous millions in partisan activities! Someone call the FEC!

Rigged reveals shocking truth: corporations are buying influence

Anytime the FEC decides to take down 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations for "political activities" the entire structure of corporate suppression of democracy would be crushed overnight! Left and Right, it's these organizations who now control the nominating process, supplanting both the Democratic and Republican parties. The Supreme Court loves it. They consistently side in favor of donors and in opposition to voters. The entire "corporation is a person" bullshit justification for unlimited, anonymous money in American elections is thanks to David Bossie and the anonymous people funding his [nonpartisan? nonpolitical?] 501(c)4 organization, Citizens United, producer of Rigged.

Rigged spends most of its 42 minutes showing that more CTCL money went to places that voted for Joe Biden than to places that voted for Donald Trump. But the propagandist Bossie won't show that the money followed the population, and most dense population areas voted for Biden. Yes, in Wisconsin more money went to Milwaukee than Wausau; in Michigan more went to Detroit than Grand Rapids; in Pennsylvania, most went to Philly; in Georgia, most went to Atlanta. The money followed the population, not the polls, and it raised red turnout as well as blue.

Ted Cruz, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump lament billionaire influence

At one point in Rigged, Trump's water boy, Ted "Cancun" Cruz intones, "one of the most serious sources of voter fraud are mail-in ballots." Really? So far, the only real voter fraud uncovered in the 2016 election involves Mark Meadows and Lin Wood. A bigger fraud, in my opinion, is removing ballot drop boxes in Houston because they generated ZERO known cases of fraud in the 2020 election but they did make it easier for people in a blue district to vote. The hypocritical Koch Machine sock puppet Cruz ends Rigged complaining about billionaires buying elections. He neglects to thank Bossie for creating that situation.

At the very beginning of the film, Kellyane "Alternative Facts" Conway, who was working for billionaire Robert "Analytica" Mercer before joining the Trump Campaign, gloats that she ran six million Facebook ads in the last two months of the 2016 campaign compared to Hillary Clinton's sixty-six thousand Facebook ads [VIDEO]. Where did the money for the six million ads come from? Rigged is full of people who spent billions of corporate cash whining about billions of corporate cash being spent against them.

The stupid circularity of Rigged is best illustrated with a quote from the insurrectionist-in-chief, Donald Trump, perched on his chair, baby jazz hands style, when he says, "In my opinion, it's not fair, shouldn't be allowed, probably isn't allowed. It was hidden -- put in reports but hidden." [VIDEO] Yes, Mr. President, the election was "stolen fair and square." The Democratic plan to turn out the vote was "put in reports but hidden." Your loss was the result of unlimited corporate cash flowing into American politics as engineered by your own team of dark money cronies and hacks. You did this to yourself, Mr. President, you did it to yourself.

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STEVE O’KEEFE @steveokeefe is the author of several books, most recently Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers, from New World Library, based on over 250 interviews. He is the former editorial director for Loompanics Unlimited.