When Wisconsin Republicans opened an office earlier this year in the historical Bronzeville neighborhood, it was meant to be a physical symbol of President Trump's commitment to urban voters. Signs on the window declared "Black Voices Matter," and the address was on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

But on Friday, as state officials began recounting ballots in Milwaukee County at the request of Trump’s failed reelection campaign, the office had become, for many residents, a symbol of Republican hypocrisy.

“The president kept talking about Black voices mattering when he attempted to make inroads with the African American community,” said Cavalier Johnson, president of the Milwaukee Common Council. “Then he loses the election, and turns right around and targets the same communities that these Black folks came from.”

Johnson, who is Black, reflected deepening outrage over the president’s push for a recount, which some characterized as an attempt to disenfranchise Black voters in a desperate and chaotic bid to stay in power. Though Trump courted Black voters — and improved his showing over 2016 — he and his allies are now trying to deny President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in key battleground states by targeting ballots cast in heavily Black cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee, arguing that these Democratic strongholds are hotbeds of fraud.

While appearing on Fox News, Steel was asked about claims made by Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, who has promised a “biblical” lawsuit to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election. She has suggested that Dominion officials bribed elected Republicans in the state of Georgia in a conspiracy to make Joe Biden president.

“No, this is a non-partisan American company,” Steel told Fox News host Eric Shawn on Sunday. “It is not physically possible for our machines to switch votes from one candidate to the other.”

“There is no way such a massive fraud could have taken place,” he said. “And there are no connections between our company and Venezuela, Germany, Barcelona, Katmandu — whatever the latest conspiracy theory is.”

The Dominion official went on to explain that electronic vote tallies can be audited with a paper trail.

“If any electronic interference had taken place, the tally reportedly electronically would not match the printed ballots,” Steel said. “And in every case where we’ve looked at — in Georgia, all across the country — the printed ballots, the gold standard in election security, has matched the electronic tally.”

Sure enough, Republicans saw an opportunity. Painting Democrats as supporters of “defunding” the police became the focus of campaign literature, TV and digital ads, and live televised debates. That forced Democratic candidates to divert resources that might otherwise be used discussing COVID-19 relief, health care or education to be used disavowing themselves from the slogan and otherwise defending themselves.

Out of 31 broadcast TV ads that Trump and other allied campaign groups used to attack Biden and other Democrats for being soft on law and order, 11 spots ― that aired a total of 77,647 times ― explicitly mentioned “defund the police,” according to an analysis Kantar Media/CMAG conducted for HuffPost. And out of 216 Republican broadcast TV ads in congressional races blasting Democrats, 157 spots that aired 103,000 times used the phrase.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and the GOP’s Senate campaign arm hit her Democratic opponent, Sara Gideon, in a TV ad for links to a “defund the police” billionaire. The basis for the ad was Gideon’s attendance at a fundraiser hosted by an environmental coalition that includes NextGen America. NextGen, funded by liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, supports defunding the police.

You just cannot make this stuff up.

Donald Trump’s crack legal team Thursday filed a lawsuit alleging Michigan fraud that cited a list of seemingly irregular township voting percentages. Unfortunately, the data in a supporting affidavit might have more persuasive had it not come from two states away in Minnesota.

Yes, it appears “MI” for Michigan is easily confused by “MN” for Minnesota if the lawyers on your “elite strike force” legal team aren’t actually all that elite. In this case, the grievous error was flagged by none other than Powerline.com, a blog authored by some extremely conservative attorneys.,,,

“Evidently a researcher, either Mr. Ramsland or someone working for him, was working with a database and confused “MI” for Minnesota with “MI” for Michigan. (The postal code for Minnesota is MN, while Michigan is MI, so one can see how this might happen.) So the affidavit, which addresses “anomalies and red flags” in Michigan, is based largely, and mistakenly, on data from Minnesota.