This is the ultimate nightmare we’ve all had, even prior to Michael Cohen testifying that Donald Trump will not peacefully leave office.
We know he believes he can file lawsuits, we know he can call people to the streets, we know he’s willing to claim an election is rigged, we know that Putin’s charge is to “destroy democracy and America” (even more than Trump “winning”), we know that Barr is shameless, and we know that Trump believes his authority is absolute.
We know.
And it is as terrifying as anything we can contemplate. The Washington Post [1] says we better begin preparing so that we know what to do when it happens:
We don’t know whether Trump will be reelected. But, as we head toward November, you have to ask yourself: If he loses, would it be more surprising if Trump graciously accepts defeat and congratulates his opponent or if he claimed to be the victim of a rigged election and a “deep state” plot?
The answer seems clear.
Clear as a bell. His supporters expect it. Indeed, his supporters already believe that the only conceivable way Trump could lose is if the Democrats “steal” it from him – oh, the irony.
It’s worth reiterating that Trump’s claims are lies. The evidence is clear. Voter fraud is a minuscule problem in the United States. One comprehensive study [2] found 31 cases of voter fraud out of more than 1 billion ballots cast from 2000 to 2014, a rate of 0.0000031 percent of all votes. And lest you think that study was somehow biased against Republican claims, George W. Bush’s Justice Department went looking for voter fraud and basically came up empty [3]. Indeed, as Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Rutgers University has noted [4], in 2005, more people were charged with violating migratory-bird statutes than voter fraud. And that was while Bush’s administration was actively seeking fraud cases to prosecute.
So it doesn’t happen. What does happen is foreign powers enter into social media and set about flooding the nation with false information, while also mucking about in state voter databases – which we have never comprehensively studied. What were the Russians doing in those databases? We were told they didn’t change a vote. But they don’t need to, they need only erase names from the rolls.
Ironic.
What will happen if Trump loses and then takes to Twitter to say he actually won? It’s not hard to see how deadly that could become, particularly given that Fox News personalities are already absurdly throwing around the word “coup [5]” to describe lawful investigations and oversight [6] of the president’s conduct. When people in positions of authority and influence invoke the language of political violence and then lose power, violence often ensues [7]. It would be a mistake to assume the United States is somehow immune from that possibility.
Our only real hope is that Trump loses by such a wide margin that most people would find it more pathetic rather than compelling. But it is silly to have such hopes. The election will be close.
How ironic that in the election in which Trump is accusing Obama of “the greatest political crime in history” Trump was deemed the winner, after losing by 2.7 million total votes, and threading a needle of 70,000 votes over 3 states, with Russia’s help. No one cried foul.
But Trump will, and it will be our worst nightmare.
****
Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom