There’s a tendency by those who would prefer to go ahead and put the Trump era behind the collective American consciousness and start embracing a Biden administration to view further discussion of election integrity failures as borderline conspiracy theory territory, if not an outright express train to Crazyland (those are not technical terms).

So former New York Mayor and current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is a problem for them, especially since he’s talking about widespread fraud and is fearless in mentioning the verboten D-word (-ominion voting machines). President Trump already gives those who believe the election has been decided plenty of reason to fret when he tweets the following in all caps:

“REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.” @ChanelRion @OANN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2020

The standard line is that any mention of such things is simply insanity. There’s not much effort to explain why it’s any different to claim absolute certainty these things didn’t happen as it is to claim absolute certainty they did absent some investigation into the matter. And an investigation could happen if the DOJ decides it wants to focus on the technical glitches of the voting software. But until that time, there are just lines being drawn in the sand, with some expecting Biden to ultimately prevail, and others expecting Trump to triumph. And neither side would admit it, but there are striking similarities in how the two factions approach what they “know” to be true.

The wave of initial vote fraud rumors has been decisively debunked, so now the president retreats to the farthest fringes of conspiracy theory, to the software vote fairy that magically changes the count. https://t.co/v5YkRakLgL

— David French (@DavidAFrench) November 12, 2020

But given the news out of Philadelphia Thursday:

BREAKING: Pennsylvania.🗳️

Judge orders segregated ballots should *not* be counted. It rules the PA Secretary of State "lacked statutory authority" to override election law. Critically, the state has a Republican state legislature.#SCOTUS may ultimately decide the case now. pic.twitter.com/2VO6mkl66M

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 12, 2020

This interview Giuliani gave Just the News Wednesday sounds less kooky than some would insist it is.

Speaking with Navy SEAL and former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, host of the “Actionable Intelligence” TV program, Giuliani focused mainly on Michigan and Pennsylvania, where lawsuits have already been filed. He also talked about Dominion Voting Software, which holds over one-third of the voting-machine market in the U.S., operating in 28 states, and which hired Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s former chief of staff as a lobbyist in 2019.

Giuliani said that the Trump campaign legal team has an affidavit in the Michigan case from someone who worked for Dominion, who said that 100,000 ballots were brought in at 4 a.m. that were all Biden ballots, not a single Trump vote.

…

In Pennsylvania, Biden was down 800,000 votes, and as hundreds of thousands of late votes came in election night, the Republicans didn’t get to review those ballots as they were being counted.

Giuliani said that these cases may end up at the Supreme Court, but the state legislatures, which choose the electors who will vote on the president, is where these matters belong. He says that he “can’t imagine they won’t do the right thing.”

Meanwhile, the American people continue to wait — likely ready to accept either outcome with some hope for the future, and almost assuredly less likely to think they know exactly what went down in the early days of November 2020. They’ll wait and see until more information becomes available before making their definitive pronouncements. Washington could learn from them.