An ode to Melissa Carone, the Michigan Dominion worker

Rudy Giuliani, the head of the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the election results, may have to cede his current fame to a new starlet. Cockburn found himself entranced yesterday by Melissa Carone, the Trump team’s top witness alleging voter fraud in Michigan.

Carone is an IT contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, the company that lawyer Sidney Powell has accused of having ties to the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela. Carone claims that poll workers in Michigan were double counting ballots and that vans meant to be carrying food were actually shuttling fraudulent ballots. A judge previously deemed her claims ‘not credible’, but Carone still became an internet superstar on Wednesday as clips from her appearance in front of Michigan House panel went viral.

Putting aside whether or not Carone is telling the truth, there is something about her that is unbelievably compelling. Cockburn thinks it must be the combination of her hairstyle that is somehow simultaneously done and undone, her glasses and scarf combo that brings to mind Elle Woods’s law school outfits in Legally Blonde, her delightful Midwestern accent, or her attitude, which matches that of a small-town gossipy hairdresser. Her eyebrows are sharp and her lipstick is bold. She is perhaps the perfect American woman.

Holy smokes the sequel is even better!

Rudy Giuliani tries to shush her to calm her down and the Republican even tries to reel her in!

She treats this Republican* like he’s a Chick-fil-A employee and the milkshake machine went down.

*corrected pic.twitter.com/CK1HqGpp2d

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) December 3, 2020

When asked by a Republican lawmaker why they didn’t see any discrepancies in the poll book, Carone whipped back, ‘What’d you guys do, take it and do something crazy to it?’

‘I know what I saw, and I signed something saying that if I’m wrong, I can go to prison. Did you?’ she asked her questioner sassily.

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Isn’t she great? Cockburn isn’t sure if food trucks were really smuggling illegal ballots in Michigan, but he’d love to buy Carone a glass of wine for her cojones. And she makes a good point about the consequences of lying to a court:

‘I am a mother, I have two children, I have two degrees. I don’t know any woman in the world that would write an affidavit under oath just to write it. You can go to prison for this.’