If Hillary Clinton Never Conceded

Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe where Hillary Clinton refused to concede defeat on November 9, 2016. Here’s a timeline of events from Election Day, November 8, 2016 through Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, in the Twilight Zone:

• November 8, 2016: At 11:48 pm ET, CNN declared Donald Trump the winner.

Trump won 306 electoral votes, thanks to his narrow victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Clinton won the popular vote, and by the end of November, she would be ahead by 2.8 million votes.

• November 9, 2016: All the major networks, news outlets, including MSNBC, referred to Trump as President-elect. World leaders congratulated Trump on his victory. Trump supporters flooded the streets singing “Bow, Bow, to the President-elect.”

• November 10, 2016: Former Mayor of Reno, Nevada Bob Cashell headlined a press conference in front of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Deli and All-Night Bowling Alley announcing a series of lawsuits that would show the election was rigged against his client, Hillary Clinton. Cashell alleged that precincts in four states had purged voter rolls and that entire polling sites mysteriously disappeared after hundreds of thousands of Clinton supporters had cast their votes.

• November 16, 2016: Under pressure from Clinton surrogates, President Obama fired FBI Director James Comey. Over the next week, Obama would fire dozens of DOJ staff whose name appeared on a secret list. Obama dismantled the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) after one of their officials deemed the 2016 election to be free of foreign interference.

•November 23, 2016: Lawyers McGill, Gould, and Gilligan alleged that Russian hackers changed votes on machines manufactured in Hungary. They presented a handy chart showing the connections between Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the owners of Preeminence Voting Systems. McGill vowed to ‘Release the Loch Ness Monster,’ which became a slogan for online radical democratic conspiracy theorists. A few days later, Clinton’s people would say Jimmy McGill (who changed his name to Saul Goodman) never worked for the Clinton campaign.

• December 10, 2016: Clinton and a few of her major donors paid for recounts in several counties in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well as two recounts in Michigan. Trump’s lead grew stronger with each recount. This did not satisfy Clinton and her radical supporters.

• December 13, 2016: Minnesota’s Attorney General Lori Swanson announced a lawsuit against the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, asking the US Supreme Court to invalidate their votes because of alleged irregularities and bad election management. Obama Appointee Merrick Garland had joined the court in September. Clinton lawyers felt confident that they had the votes on the Court. Senator Al Franken offered to argue Minnesota’s case.

• December 15, 2016: 17 Democratic Attorneys General signed amicus briefs in support of the Minnesota lawsuit.

• December 16, 2016: Clinton asked Nancy Pelosi to pressure Democratic members of the House to sign onto the MN lawsuit. Pelosi hinted that there would be a price to pay for not signing on. 120 House members did as they were told.

• December 17, 2016: The US Supreme Court dismissed the Minnesota lawsuit, stating that Minnesota did not have a “judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

• December 18, 2016: Thousands of Clinton supporters rally in Washington, DC, outside the Supreme Court headquarters chanting ‘Stop the Steal.’ Clinton addressed the crowd and later tweeted: “We have just begun to fight.” Religious leaders representing the Order of the Flying Spaghetti Monster claimed victory for Clinton in the great FSM’s name.

• December 18, 2016: Disgruntled with the Supreme Court’s inaction, and the loss of their last lawsuit in Wisconsin, along with the loss of 6o other lawsuits, officials in CA, OR, and WA met to consider seceding from the Union. Their new Confederacy would be called Cascadia.

• December 19, 2016: Electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia met and cast their votes. 304 were cast for Trump. 227 were cast for Clinton. 7 faithless electors, 2 pledged to Trump and 5 to Clinton, voted for other candidates. Clinton’s surrogates sued the 5 unfaithful electors. State houses in CA, CO, NY, and VA had to close as dozens of armed Clinton supporters threatened violence against the electors.

• Jan 6, 2017: Congress narrowly accepted the votes cast by electors on December 19. 120 House Democrats voted against accepting electors from WI, MI, and PA, as did five Senate Democrats. As Vice President Joe Biden read the results for the record, bystanders in the gallery began to chant ‘Stop the Steal,’ ‘Lock Him Up,’ and ‘Release the Loch Ness.’ The Gallery had to be cleared.

• January 6, 2017: The U.S. government’s intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 elections to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

• January 7–18, 2017: Tens of thousands of demonstrators continued to march in Washington, DC and around the nation in support of Clinton. Radical Democrats attacked the mainstream media and left their former home, MSNBC, in record numbers, gravitating to alternative news sources that validated their beliefs. This was a boon for alternative news sites such as Wag the Dog Network, Wollstonecraft Chronicles and Loch Ness News. Clinton launched her own news magazine, called Rodham Review.

• January 18, 2017: President Obama refused to hold a briefing with the President-elect. Outgoing Obama staff threw a party on Jan 19 and trashed the White House offices. According to the Washington Post, the food fights were epic.

• January 20, 2017. For the first time ever, the outgoing President did not attend the incoming President’s inauguration. As a crowd of about 100,000 people gathered on the Mall for Trump’s inauguration, tens of thousands of Clinton supporters spread throughout the city spray-painting images of the Loch Ness Monster onto monuments. By the end of the day, there were little fires everywhere.

• January 21, 2017. Hillary Clinton’s supporters held rallies in DC and across the country pledging resistance to Trump. Hillary announced her intention to run again in 2020. Over 5 million people participated in the rallies. In DC, dancers dressed in white donned blue MADA (Make America Dance Again) hats and performed Beyoncé’s “Run the World.”