Kudos to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin for posting to the web copies of tapes that prove that Lyndon Baines Johnson stole his seat in the Senate when first running for it. Johnson went on to absolutely dominate the Senate as Majority Leader, and from there he managed to become president when JFK was assassinated in his home state of Texas while he was VP.

The stolen election was the Democrat primary, which back then was tantamount to election because Democrats dominated the segregated South of the era. Johnson defeated former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson by 87 votes, after a box of votes was “discovered.”  

It is honorable of the Library, which after all is devoted to LBJ’s memory, to allow this blot on his record to be aired. They are more honest than the man whose presidency they commemorate.

But the Associated Press, whose reporter made the tapes in 1977 and who wrote about them then, is less forthright in its article about the release.

It does provide the basic information:

 The audio recordings from Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan’s interviews for the 1977 story were posted this week on the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum’s archival website, Discover LBJ. After Mangan’s death in 2015 at the age of 87, his family found the labeled cassette tapes at his San Antonio home and donated them last summer to the library on the campus of the University at Texas at Austin.

Luis Salas, the former South Texas election judge, told Mangan for the story: “Johnson did not win that election; It was stolen for him. And I know exactly how it was done.”

Senator Johnson

But it obviously occurred to someone at AP that this story about Democrat election fraud at the very basis of one of it presidents who served within living memory kind of makes the possibility of election fraud now seem more realistic. Can’t have that! The AP has become a propaganda outlet for the Democrats, and reinforcing the narrative of Republicans just can’t be done on its wires. So, it added Democrat gospel:

And now, at a time when election fraud is rare but former President Donald Trump and his allies amplify baseless allegations blaming it for his 2020 loss, the tapes and story show what compelling evidence of actual fraud looks like.

Does anyone believe that today’s Democrats – fighting against Donald Trump whom they believed was the ultimate evil -- were more honest in 2020 than in 1948, when LBJ first his Senate seat by defeating another Democrat who had been Governor of Texas?

Photo credit: public domain