Is President Donald Trump’s unprecedented assault on the US election results an ongoing coup, or a mere political spectacle? In this golden age of conspiracy theories, few can agree.
Apparently, Trump is exercising his right to complain that the recount he showed Democrat Joe Biden with a solid, albeit close victory, was wrong. “Election rigged!” he tweeted in his latest volley on Thursday. But the president doesn’t make much sense.
Many American elections have been as close as or closer to their November 3 defeat, and no incumbents have claimed their victory was stolen or refused to budge. The American elections simply don’t have those kinds of problems.
More than a week after Election Day, not a single piece of credible and significant evidence of fraud has been provided. So what is really going on?
For some, Trump is finally showing his true authoritarian colors. This is a president who openly admires people like President Vladimir Putin, the king of democratic institutions warped to empower himself. Now, the theory goes, he is following suit.
But what if Trump is more of a sloppy showman than a Machiavellian mastermind?
If your team’s embarrassing courtroom glitches and a strange press conference from your fixer Rudy Giuliani at a Philadelphia garden center called Four Seasons Total Landscaping are something to go through, that may be the most logical answer.
The hit theory
Yet when Trump fired his relatively independent-minded defense secretary Mark Esper on Monday, and then several other high-ranking officials, blood pressure levels skyrocketed among those already nervous.
“In the last 24 hours, the Secretary of Defense (SecDef), the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD-P) and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intell (OUSD-I) have been fired … Why? “tweeted Alexander Vindman, a retired Army officer-turned-White House staff member who was fired after testifying against Trump during his 2019 impeachment trial.
Alarms also soared when Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, authorized federal prosecutors to join Trump’s search for electoral irregularities.
Justice Department chief election crimes officer Richard Pilger resigned in protest. Barr is “allowing the department to be used as a weapon to try to overturn the results of this election,” former Pentagon senior attorney Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann, who were part of the special counsel team investigating the links, wrote in The Washington Post. Trump with Russia.
In the most extreme scenario, some warn of a coup within the Electoral College. This is the mostly symbolic body made up of representatives sent from each state to elect presidents based on popular vote.
What if Republican state legislatures managed to send handpicked voters who would ignore the vote and elect Trump in his place? The doomsday scenario is being widely discussed in the media, but it seems implausible in real life.
“To begin with, even talking about doing so would cause massive unrest and put lawmakers under unprecedented pressure,” wrote Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California.
But given the great risks, nerves are on edge. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s bizarre comment Tuesday that the administration is gearing up for “a second Trump term” didn’t help.
Circuses and races
The alternative theory is that Trump is just being Trump, the perpetual entertainer who cannot bear to be out of the spotlight and will leave the stage only after putting on the show of his life. Despite coming in second, Trump garnered more than 72 million votes, and that large fan base is famous for its loyalty.
According to a Politico / Morning Consult poll, a staggering 70 percent of Republicans don’t believe the elections were free and fair, testimony to the power of Trump’s persuasion.
So it would make sense for a man whose brand is largely based on macho concepts of “fighting” and “winning” to fall the way his followers expect.
Beyond riding a political circus, Trump may have more personal goals: his financial and professional future.
With 74 energetic and in possession of a gigantic database of voter information, Trump clearly has options beyond quietly curating a presidential library.
One clue lies in his frantic requests for money.
Read the fine print in the mass emails from Trump’s “Official Election Defense Fund” and it will become apparent that the donations will not just go to the fight against the “left-wing MOB.”
A large chunk is going to pay off Trump’s campaign debt in 2020 and more will go to a newly formed Political Action Committee or PAC that will help you endorse elected candidates in the future or even launch a possible new one. presidential candidacy in 2024.
Whether or not Trump pursues electoral politics, he is expected to dive into broadcasting, with a mission to punish Fox News for what he sees as insufficient loyalty.
Fox “forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot about the Golden Goose,” he said Thursday in a flurry of tweets attacking Rupert Murdoch’s network and pushing the conspiracy theory that sells right-wing Newsmax channels. and OANN.
Could Trump’s post-election chaos actually be the pilot episode for the former reality star’s upcoming series?
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