Trump's Final Deadly Game
This is Trump's legacy: a broken democracy unable to recover from his presidency.
Image: Patrick Semansky | AP Photo
by Ben Cohen
“No president has ever lost one election so many times,” remarked Jimmy Kimmel recently. And sadly, no matter how many times Donald Trump loses the 2020 election, he isn’t going to concede. After court losses all over the country and his own Attorney General admitting there was no evidence of voter fraud and nothing that could have “effected a different outcome in the election,” Trump is still denying Joe Biden beat him at the ballot.
By continuing to pretend that he won, Trump continues to decimate the country’s confidence in democracy and is undermining Biden’s presidency before it gets going.
The deadly game
Trump spent the first few weeks after the election using every official method he could to stop the timely transition, and only recently agreed to allow the The General Services Administration to begin the formal transition process. Given the ferocity of the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s behavior will likely cost lives given Biden’s team will have to make up for several lost weeks of prep time. Trump’s move to allow the GSA to begin the formal transition is of course an explicit acknowledgement that he did in fact lose, so the constant whining on Twitter and idiotic Rudy Giuliani led press conferences is clearly performance art for the Red Hats. But this has real world consequences too.
The delegitimization of Biden’s presidency before he gets in will seriously affect his ability to see the country through the last months of the Coronavirus pandemic — months when potentially hundreds of thousands of Americans will die. An astonishing 52% of Republicans believe that Donald Trump actually won the election, and 68% believe the vote was likely "rigged" in a counting processes that favored Biden. With these sorts of insane numbers, Biden’s chances of building bridges with Republicans becomes almost impossible.
The future of democracy
Undermining confidence the election and the democratic process without any evidence also has incredibly serious consequences for the future of American democracy. Trump’s insistence that the system is rigged and that Biden cheated now means millions of Americans believe democracy in their country is under threat. There are of course genuine threats to democracy — from voter suppression, rule rigging, and gerrymandering — the right to vote is not a given in America. The problem is, almost all efforts to thwart voting is done by Republicans. In order to maintain minority rule over the country, conservatives have engaged in these highly undemocratic practices for decades (well, centuries to be precise), and as demographic changes continue to favor Democrats, Republicans are ramping up efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters across the nation.
If this wasn’t bad enough, in the inverse universe created by Trump and the right wing media, millions now believe the exact opposite is happening.
Fox News viewers believe hordes of Mexicans are jumping the border to vote, single black mothers are voting twice, and liberals are coming back from the dead to cast illegal ballots. Trump’s claim that the election was “rigged” and that millions of votes were counted “illegally” have added gasoline to the fire, creating a scared population of gullible Republicans ready to take to the streets to fight what they genuinely believe to be an illegitimate President. This despite literally no evidence whatsoever of widespread fraud.
The damage to future elections is incalculable and we can now look forward to a future where Republican voters believe every election that doesn’t go that way must be down to Democrats rigging the vote. Republican politicians will of course use this continue real voter suppression tactics.
Chaos is the plan
Trump lost the election, and he knows it. He also knows that his power and leverage is waning, so he is using what resources he still has to inject as much chaos into the system as possible before he goes.
Trump’s entire presidency has been based on chaos — the more of it, the better. That is where Trump thrives, and that is why he has been able to control the media and the narrative. The country is moving on from his presidency, and so too is the media. Trump no longer dominates the headlines, and he feels this acutely. The country isn’t just tired of his antics, it is no longer interested in him. So Trump’s departing gift is to ensure the democratic system is damaged for good. Trump may have lost the chess match, but he is tipping over the board and damaging all the pieces on the way out.
This is Trump’s ultimate legacy — a broken country unable recover from four years of his leadership. Biden may be able to repair some of the damage, but the longer Trump is in the White House, the harder it is going to be. The remaining days of Trump’s presidency won’t be about bringing the country together or helping a new Biden administration grapple with the raging Coronavirus. It will be about undermining the new government and smashing America’s faith in its democracy.
Read the latest for Banter Members:
Biden Needs To Brag (Loudly) About Everything He Does
Republicans are planning on destroying Joe Biden when he gets into office. He needs a plan to thwart them, says Justin Rosario.
“Biden’s chances of building bridges with Republicans becomes almost impossible.”
Biden’s efforts to build bridges with Republicans should be severely limited. And contingent on an actual demonstration by Republicans that they have stopped their shit.
A clear, declarative statement by all Republican leaders that trump lost before being willing to negotiate with them, for example.
It’s shameful that a leading political party in our own country has to be treated like a foreign adversary that we’re trying to hammer out a non-proliferation treaty with. But that’s what the a Republican Party is: indistinguishable from Iraq or the Taliban.
Nailed it!
But Trump is by no means done. In fact, he's really just gotten started. Now he can finally "pivot" to a place he's most comfortable: on the sidelines, complaining, criticizing and deriding others from a position of RIGHTEOUS GRIEVANCE and INDIGNATION. With nearly 48% of the electorate on his "side" and 2/3 of them believing the election was "stolen," and with a free Twitter account in good standing, Trump can continue to broadcast his incoherent diatribes 24/7, lambasting whomever he pleases with impunity and endless echoes on Twitter to ensure continuous media attention, day in and day out. I fully expect and am willing to wager Trump will "launch" his new "platform" on Inauguration Day--likely in a deep Red state with a "rally"--and that the media will fall in line, dutifully covering it as "news" and giving it the false credibility it so rich doesn't deserve, all in the name of "fairness" and "balance."