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Democracy

Attack on innocent truck driver shows how dangerous election fraud claims really are

Attack on innocent truck driver shows how dangerous election fraud claims really are

The saying "elections have consequences" has never rung more true than it does right now, and in more ways than one. Right now, the consequence of the 2016 election is that we currently have a sitting president who refuses to accept the outcome of what state election officials have verified as a free and fair election, instead claiming that the election was "rigged" with "rampant fraud," insisting that he actually won in a landslide, and continuing to peddle falsehoods in an attempt to remain in power.

We'll get to those claims in a minute. But first let's look at a story that highlights how the consequences of those claims are growing more and more dangerous.

A former Houston police captain has been arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after a police investigation into an incident that occurred two weeks before the 2020 election.

According to ABC 13 News, Mark Anthony Aguirre had spent four days surveilling a man who he thought was heading up a huge voter fraud operation. Believing the man's truck was transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots, 63-year-old Aguirre rammed his SUV into the back of the truck, forcing it off the road. When the driver got out to check his truck and the welfare of the person who had struck his vehicle, Aguirre pulled out his pistol. He held the truck driver at gunpoint on the ground with his knee in his back until the police arrived.


The truck was not full of ballots. It was full of air conditioner parts and tools, and the man was an innocent air conditioner technician.

But it gets even darker and unhinged. Aguirre explained to police that he was part of a private citizen group called "Liberty Center" who were "investigating" an alleged voter ballot harvesting operation that the truck driver was supposedly running out of his shed behind his mobile home. Aguirre said he and some friends had set up a "command post" at a Marriott hotel and had been conducting 24-hour surveillance of the driver's home for four days. He claimed the driver was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots. He claimed they were using Hispanic children to sign them because their fingerprints wouldn't show up in a database. He also claimed that Mark Zuckerberg had paid the man $9.37 million to conduct the illegal voting operation.

None of this was true, of course. Police searched the truck driver's home, shed, and truck, and found no ballots. His home and shed contained normal home and shed things. And his truck contained exactly what you would expect an air conditioner repairman's truck to contain. The poor guy thought he was being robbed at gunpoint when Aguirre confronted him after ramming his truck.

So what of this "Liberty Center"? A grand jury subpoena of Aguirre's bank records show that he received three large payments from an organization called Liberty Center for God and Country—two for $25,000 in the month prior to the truck-ramming incident, and $211,400 the day after it.

The police officer who investigated the incident wrote in his affidavit that Aguirre told him he could be part of the solution or part of the problem, adding "I just hope you're a patriot."

Apparently, being a patriot means going along with someone being paid huge amounts of money to conduct bizarro "investigations" based on cuckoo conspiracy theories and committing felonies in the name of overturning a free and fair election.

We are so far past the point of "perusing legal channels" for ensuring the election was legitimate it's not even funny. Every state has verified its election results, including states with Republican Secretaries of State that ended up blue. Trump's legal team and other allies who have brought court cases have lost spectacularly. Every court case that has been put forth alleging either fraud or unconstitutionality of election changes due to the pandemic has been lost or dismissed except one, making Trump 1-59 in court. That includes rulings from Trump-appointed federal judges, the Supreme Courts of various states, as well as the SCOTUS itself.

There's a widespread claim that all of these cases have been dismissed on technicalities, but that's simply not true. You can read the court rulings here. There has been an unfortunately successful attempt at convincing a good portion of the public that there is evidence of widespread fraud, but multiple judges have been clear the evidence isn't there. The vast majority of "evidence" that has been presented are affidavits from people either misunderstanding normal election processes or describing normal processes in suspicious ways. Some of it has been flat out false information (such as the "expert" who mixed up counties in Michigan and Minnesota) and some of it has been flat out wrong assumptions based on a lack of relevant knowledge.

We can't get into every instance—and indeed, the absolute flood of b.s. is designed to make it virtually impossible to keep up with—but here's one example from this morning's Senate hearing. Much has been made of the forensic audit of the Dominion voting machines in Michigan, with countless breathless social media posts claiming a 68% error rate. Chris Krebs is a Republican who served as director of CISA—the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—until he was fired by Trump for fact-checking him about the election. He explained in two minutes what the real story is with that part of the audit report.

Watch:

And yet Trump is still claiming to have won the election in a landslide, his pet media outlets are peddling the same fraudulent claim, and millions are eating it up.

Let's be perfectly clear. Fake voter fraud claims aside, the idea of a landslide Trump win is absurd on its face. Nearly every single poll of likely or registered voters leading up to the election had Biden favored to win. And despite the fanatic enthusiasm of his base, Trump has been a historically unpopular president. His approval rating at the beginning of 2020 was 42.6%, the lowest of any president since 1976—and that was before his handling of the pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of American deaths. Forty-one separate polls show that he has never even reached, much less exceeded, a 50% approval rating during his entire presidency.

So yeah. Cheering, adulating, superspreading crowds at rallies do not a majority make. The idea that Biden could only have won if there were fraud doesn't even make basic logical sense, and the idea that Democrats would have rigged the presidential election and not the congressional races is just plain silly.

The longer these allegations continue to be pushed, the more danger American citizens and the country as a whole will be in. One man's insatiable narcissism is not worth destroying democracy. Enough is enough.

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Three women, three MS journeys: How multiple sclerosis looks different for everyone

Gina, Nathalie and Helga share their reactions to being diagnosed with MS and how they stay informed and positive in the face of ever-changing symptoms.

Courtesy of Sanofi

Helga, Nathalie and Gina all have MS, and their experiences show how differently the disease can manifest.

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It’s been 155 years since neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot gave the first lecture on a mysterious progressive illness he called “multiple sclerosis.” Since then, we’ve learned a lot. We know MS causes the immune system to attack healthy tissue, including damaging the brain and spinal cord. Resulting symptoms can be debilitating and include fatigue, blurred vision, memory problems and weakness. Huge advancements in our understanding of MS and its underlying causes, as well as treatment advances, have been made in the past few decades, but MS remains a complex and unpredictable reality for the 2.8 million+ people diagnosed around the world.

Ironically, the only real constant for people living with MS is change. There’s no set pattern or standard progression of the disease, so each person’s experience is unique. Some people with MS have mild symptoms that worsen slowly but sometimes improve, while others can have severe symptoms that drastically alter their daily lives.

All people with MS share some things in common, however, such as the need to stay informed on the ever-evolving research, find various lines of support and try to remain hopeful as they continue living with the disease.

To better understand what navigating life with MS really looks like, three women shared their MS stories with us. Their journeys demonstrate how MS can look different for different people and interestingly, how the language used to talk about the disease can greatly impact how people understand their realities.

woman with horse, woman riding horseGina loves riding her horse, Benita.Courtesy of Sanofi

Gina—Hamburg, Germany (diagnosed with relapsing multiple sclerosis in 2017)

When her youngest son was 4 months old, Gina started having problems with her eye. She’d soon learn she was experiencing optic neuritis—her first symptom of MS.

“Immediately after the diagnosis, I looked up facts on MS because I didn’t know anything about it,” Gina says. “And as soon as I knew what could really happen with this disease, I actually got scared.”

As her family’s primary income provider, she worried about how MS would impact her ability to work as a writer and editor. Her family was afraid she was going to end up in a wheelchair. However, for now, Gina’s MS is managed well enough that she still works full-time and is able to be active.

“When I tell somebody that I have MS, they often don't believe me the first time because I don't fulfill any stereotypes,” she says.

Overwhelmed by negative perspectives on living with MS, Gina sought support in the online MS community, which she found to be much more positive.

“I think it’s important to use as many positive words as you can when talking about MS.” It’s important to be realistic while also conveying hope, she says. “MS is an insidious disease that can cause many bad symptoms…that can be frightening, and you can't gloss over it, either.”

To give back to the online community that helped her so much, Gina started a blog to share her story and help others trying to learn about their diagnosis.

Though she deals with fatigue and cognitive dysfunction sometimes, Gina stays active swimming, biking, riding horses and playing with her sons, who are now 11 and 6.

Cognitive dysfunction is common in MS, with over half of people affected. It can impact memory, attention, planning, and word-finding. As with many aspects of MS, some people experience mild changes, while others face more challenges.

Gina says that while there’s still a lot of education about MS needed, she feels positive about the future of MS because there’s so much research being done.

woman in wheelchair holding medal, woman rowingNathalie is an award-winning rower with multiple international titles.Courtesy of Sanofi

Nathalie — Pennes Mirabeau, France (diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in 2002)

Nathalie was a teenager and a competitive athlete when she noticed her first symptoms of MS, but it would take four years of “limbo” before she was diagnosed.

“Ultimately, the diagnosis was more of a relief, than a shock,” she says. “Because when you have signs and you don’t know why, it’s worse than knowing, in the end, what you have.”

However, learning more about the disease—and the realities of disease progression—scared her.

“That glimpse of the future was direct and traumatic,” she says. Her neurologist explained that the disease evolves differently for everyone, and her situation might end up being serious or very mild. So, she decided to stop comparing herself to others with MS.

She said to herself, “We’ll see what happens, and you’ll manage it bit by bit.”

By 2005, Nathalie’s MS had progressed to the point of needing a wheelchair. However, that has not dampened her competitive spirit.

Nathalie began her international rowing career in 2009 and has won multiple world titles, including two Paralympic medals—silver in London and bronze in Tokyo. Now, at 42, she still trains 11 times a week. Fatigue can be a problem, and sometimes hard workouts leave her with muscle stiffness and shaking, but she credits her ongoing sports career for helping her feel in tune with her body’s signals.

“Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my body, letting my body guide when I need to stop and take breaks,” she says.

Nathalie explains that she used to only look backwards because of the initial shock of her diagnosis. In time, she stopped thinking about what she couldn’t do anymore and focused on her future. She now lives in the following mindset: “Even when doors close, don’t miss out on those that open.” Instead of focusing on what she can’t do, she focuses on the opportunities she still has. Right now, this includes her training for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, where she will compete for another rowing medal.

“I only go forward,” she says. “Well, I try, anyway…It’s easy to say, it’s not always easy to do. But that’s what I try to do.”

woman exiting water after swimming, woman with great daneHelga's Great Dane has become a helpful and beloved companion.Courtesy of Sanofi

Helga—Johannesburg, South Africa (diagnosed with relapsing multiple sclerosis in 2010)

When Helga first started having balance issues and numbness in her feet, she chalked it up to her training as a runner. But when the numbness moved to her face, she knew something was wrong. She never guessed it was MS.

“When I was diagnosed, I felt completely overwhelmed and clueless,” Helga says. “I felt that I had nowhere near enough information. I did not know anything about the disease…I had no idea that it was going to be a process of continually monitoring and adjusting your lifestyle.”

In the beginning, Helga’s symptoms developed slowly, and she didn’t appear ill to others. She was even able to run for a few years after her diagnosis, but she couldn’t do marathons anymore, and she began to fall frequently due to balance issues and right-foot dragging. Then her cognition issues became more problematic, especially in her job as a trainer in a printing company.

“My executive function, decision-making and short-term memory were affected to the point that I was eventually medically unfit for work,” she says. She stopped working in 2017.

However, she didn’t stop living life. Even though she could no longer run, she continued to swim competitively. She got a Great Dane puppy and trained him as a service dog to help her walk. She also serves as vice chair of the patient support organization Multiple Sclerosis South Africa, and she advises others who have been diagnosed to join a patient advocacy group as soon as possible to get reliable information and meet others with MS.

Helga says she is “hopeful” about the future of MS. “I must say that I am so grateful that we have all the new medications available, because my life would not be the same if it wasn't for that,” she adds.

Part of how she manages her MS is by looking at the positives.

“If I could tell the world one thing about MS, it would be that MS is an incurable disease of the nervous system, but it's also the greatest teacher of valuing your health, family, friends, and managing change in your life,” she says. “My life is diversified in a way that I never, ever thought it would, and MS has been honestly the greatest teacher.”

Each MS journey is unique – with each person impacted experiencing different struggles, successes, and feelings as they manage this unpredictable disease. But the common thread is clear – there is a critical need for information, support, and hope. We are proud to participate in World MS Day and share these incredible stories of living life while living with MS. To learn more about MS, go to https://www.sanofi.com/why-words-really-matter-when-it-comes-to-multiple-sclerosis.

MAT-GLB-2301642-v1.0-05/2023

This article was sponsored by Sanofi. Participants were compensated when applicable.

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