Day 1,386: Trump is having a dangerous and antidemocratic meltdown in real time as election loss lingers
Donald Trump is going to lose the presidency.
At this point, the numbers don’t lie and the math is too much for Trump to overcome. News outlets aren’t ready to formally call the race done, but some combination of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada are going to give Trump’s time in office the death blow, and it’s possible all four end up in Joe Biden’s column.
Speaking at the White House, and surely being told the grim data, Trump gave possibly one of the most antidemocratic speeches by a president — and maybe any high-level federal official — since the Civil War. Trump has made such speeches a habit over the past few months, but Thursday’s was the worst.
The speech was so breathtakingly dishonest — a day after Trump laid the foundation for it — that one-by-one the major networks ceased covering it. Trump invented that the idea that there were “legal votes” and “illegal votes” during the election.
His arguments were so nonsensical that he was simultaneously arguing both for and against the counting of outstanding votes.
Trump baselessly blamed a likely loss in Pennsylvania on “corrupt[ion],” which he claimed to know about because he went to school in Pennsylvania over 50 years ago.
Trump is doing everything he can to get the Supreme Court to throw out millions of votes so that he can somehow, undemocratically, claim victory. (Since Election Day, the Trump legal team has suffered a near-unanimous string of defeats at the district court level and the Supreme Court hasn’t taken any up on appeal.)
On Twitter, Trump was similarly trying to sow unrest, apparently claiming that because Biden won, there must have been fraud.
In Trump’s mind, if he wins a swing state there must be no fraud, and if Biden wins a swing state there must be fraud.
There’s no proof for any of Trump’s claims. Not an iota of it. Trump is simply a remarkably poor loser, and would gladly set fire to the nation if it meant he got to remain in office for another term.
When Trump loses, and all signs show he will, the 2.5 months until Biden’s inauguration are going to be especially divisive and nasty. Trump has already shown a propensity to foment violence by the mob, and must delight in seeing his surrogates stoke election animus to his supporters.
Patriotism and the Constitution were never the goal to uphold. That’s been laid barer than ever. It’s about pure, unadulterated power for Trump and his lackeys.
The American people have spoken and Trump is trying to muzzle them by any means possible because he has too much hubris to ever admit he lost a fair election simply because he didn’t earn four more years from voters.
1,386 days in, 76 to go
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