Trump, the most undemocratic president in modern American history

• President Donald Trump has challenged America’s democracy throughout his presidency, and he’s taking this to new conspiracy heights as votes are still counted in the 2020 election.
• Trump falsely declared victory in the 2020 election and called for votes to stop being counted. He also stated that votes that arrive after Election Day “WILL NOT BE COUNTED”, which is false; Vote counting is also a process over which the president has no authority.
• When leaders of other countries have behaved like Trump at this time, the Trump administration has condemned their behavior and asked them to resign.
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No president in modern American history has shown more disdain for the democratic process or spread more disinformation during an election cycle than Donald Trump.

Trump falsely and prematurely declared victory in the elections early Wednesday morning with millions of votes still to be counted and vowed to go to the Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes, in a move that reflects the behavior of dictators.

Authoritarians claim victory in elections they have not won and seek to exploit the powers of the state to stay in power, democratic leaders do not.

With his path to victory in the 2020 election tapering off Thursday, Trump called for the vote counting to be stopped. He said that legal votes that arrive after Election Day “WILL NOT BE COUNTED”, which is false and is a process over which he has no legal authority. Trump has made unsubstantiated claims that elections are being stolen and that “surprise” ballots are being thrown in warring states to increase former Vice President Joe Biden’s chances.

Votes are counted, not stolen.

What Trump is doing is akin to a losing NFL team in the Super Bowl calling for the game to be stopped with a quarter remaining while accusing his opponent of cheating when he has clearly just been outbid. To put it another way, the president is throwing an electoral tantrum because he is losing.

Trump is getting desperate

It is a normal part of the process that vote counting continues after Election Day and the full results are never available on Election Night. Many states accept absentee or mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, including from overseas military voters. The president has talked a lot about his support for the troops, but what he has demanded would potentially disenfranchise thousands of military voters.

For months, Americans were warned that there would be delays in the results of the 2020 elections. An unprecedented number of people voted by mail this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and officials take much longer to process and count. mail ballots than votes in person.

States also have different rules about which ballots count first, and laws in key battlefield states like Pennsylvania limited the ability for officials to begin counting mail-in ballots before Election Day. Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania also blocked efforts to allow officials to start counting some of those ballots before November 3, which is allowed in several other states.

It is no mystery why more votes are coming in, and it is not a conspiracy to disenfranchise Republican voters. There are countless reasons why it takes longer than usual to declare a winner in this race.

Basically, the president has suggested that any outcome that is not in his favor is fraudulent.

Consequently, Trump has filed lawsuits to stop votes from being counted in three states, including two where he is currently ahead of Biden in terms of available results: Pennsylvania and Georgia. Meanwhile, Trump wants voting to continue in two states where he is behind the former vice president, Arizona and Nevada.

No substantial evidence has emerged to suggest that voting integrity has been significantly compromised in any of the 50 states or Washington, DC. Actually, the process seems to be going better than anticipated. But Trump is still working to demand his path to victory with his re-election prospects looking bleak.

Trump is a danger to America’s democracy

Trump’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 elections began long before November 3. Throughout 2020, the president spread misinformation about voting by mail, furthering the unsubstantiated claim that it leads to widespread electoral fraud. In reality, voter fraud is extremely rare in the US.

The president also refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power before Election Day, indicating that he is unlikely to relent if defeated. It is vital to the health and longevity of America’s democratic process that presidents accept election results if they lose.

Every president since John Adams in 1800 has peacefully relented and resigned when they have been defeated in an election. Although the United States is far from flawless, this aspect of its political system has been a beacon to the world for centuries. When leaders do not accept election results, it can cause chaos and violence in the streets.

Last December, Trump was indicted in connection with allegations that he solicited a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. The president had urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, while holding the country’s military aid while waging war with Russia. This was in connection with unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had abused his power as vice president to protect Hunter from an investigation into a Ukrainian gas company in which the young Biden served on the board.

To put it another way, Trump was asking the leader of another country to publicly defame a political rival who was seen as the likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidate at the time. The president has dismissed the idea that he did something wrong.

Trump is not the first president in US history accused of engaging in nefarious activities to increase his chances of re-election. Richard Nixon is perhaps the closest example. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 when he faced impeachment over the Watergate scandal. The infamous scandal centered on Nixon’s efforts to cover up his ties to thieves arrested at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

But Trump has even surpassed Nixon in terms of his assault on democracy in America. The president has routinely attacked the free press, has shown more admiration for autocrats than America’s democratic allies, and has shown a relentless dislike of events. A democracy cannot work if people cannot agree on basic things, and Trump has made it that much more difficult by consistently making wrong claims on vital issues.

Before Election Day, leading experts on authoritarianism warned that Trump was behaving much like the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Trump continues to follow a dictator’s playbook at this time and is testing America’s political system in unprecedented ways while frantically tweeting disinformation about the elections to his millions of followers. When leaders of other countries have behaved like Trump at this time, the Trump administration has condemned their behavior and asked them to resign.

There was widespread fear among experts on extremism and democracy that there would be violence around the elections.

On Wednesday night, a large group of Trump supporters, some of them armed, gathered outside a vote-counting center in Phoenix, Arizona, and demanded that the votes be counted. This was related to an unfounded conspiracy theory that election officials were tampering with the ballots. In other US cities, people took to the streets to protest Trump and his call for the vote counting to cease. Dozens of arrests were made overnight in Seattle, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, according to the Associated Press.

The country, ravaged by a pandemic that killed more than 234,000 Americans under Trump’s supervision, appears to be more divided than it has been at almost any time since the Civil War. Trump is stoking the tension in dangerous ways, with potentially irrevocable consequences.