He Said It. He's A Fascist. Plan Accordingly.
Yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump said words about himself that we pretty much always assumed were true, which is why we almost didn't notice at first. We've been entertaining "questions" for a long time about whether Trump would accept the results of the election, and if he would leave the White House. We say "questions" because they're not really questions. He's "joked" that he wants to serve multiple terms — or, recently, that he wants to "negotiate" for a third term — because of how he's been treated so poorly. That he's "entitled" to one. You know, even though people who know himhave told us that Trump doesn't joke, because he doesn't have a sense of humor, and that this is really what he wants.
He always says the election will be "rigged" against him. Hell, he's still claiming he really won the popular vote in 2016, because of how he says, with zero evidence, that three million undocumented immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton.
But yesterday, he said out loud that he will not commit to a peaceful transition of power, which, if you've been paying attention, means there won't be one. Not only that, he said the votes of the people should not matter, should not count. He said things will go fine if you "get rid of the ballots," because you know how he's been complaining about the "ballots." This time he really didn't even specify which "ballots." We don't know if he meant all mail-in ballots, or just the ones sent by people who didn't vote for him. We don't know if he meant the ballots of all people who didn't vote for him, in general.
Quite frankly, we don't know if he's so obsessed with mail-in ballots because he knows from his millions of phone calls with Vladimir Putin that he can't get re-elected without most of the ballots coming from voting machines, which the Russians might have successfully hacked.
He said if you "get rid of the ballots," everything will be fine, because we won't have to have a transition of power, we will have a "continuation" of power. His power.
He was responding to a reporter.
President Trump won't commit to peaceful transfer of power if he loses the electionwww.youtube.com
"We're going to have to see what happens. You know that. I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster," Trump said, alluding to his unsubstantiated arguments about widespread mail-in ballot fraud.
"Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else."
STFU, you fucking fascist.
Just yesterday, we had an article about how the Trump campaign is literally planning to mount a coup, because they know there isn't a chance in hell Trump could actually win a fair election on November 3. Barton Gellman had revealed in The Atlantic that among other contingency/chaos plans, Trump campaign people told him they were planning on leaning on friendly governors and legislatures to invalidate the votes of the people, and instead send electors to Washington to select Trump as Dear Leader.
We're going to copy/paste a bunch of that for you a second time:
According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires. [...]
The Trump-campaign legal adviser I spoke with told me the push to appoint electors would be framed in terms of protecting the people's will. Once committed to the position that the overtime count has been rigged, the adviser said, state lawmakers will want to judge for themselves what the voters intended.
"The state legislatures will say, 'All right, we've been given this constitutional power. We don't think the results of our own state are accurate, so here's our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,' " the adviser said. Democrats, he added, have exposed themselves to this stratagem by creating the conditions for a lengthy overtime. [...]
In Pennsylvania, three Republican leaders told me they had already discussed the direct appointment of electors among themselves, and one said he had discussed it with Trump's national campaign.
"I've mentioned it to them, and I hope they're thinking about it too," Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican Party's chairman, told me.
Gellman's piece focuses on the so-called "interregnum," the space between the election and noon on January 20, the day the Constitution says the new president's term shall begin. That Trump is planning a coup with the electors is but one of the revelations. And if indeed results on election night show a closer race — they're calling it the "red mirage," and then as more ballots are counted, things tilt solidly toward Biden, the "blue shift" — the Trump campaign will shift into high gear to invalidate all the rest of the ballots. The FBI warned us this week that the Russians will help Trump with messaging on that front.
And then, as if to confirm Gellman's reporting, Donald Trump just said it out loud yesterday.
Adam Jentleson, who used to work for Harry Reid, succinctly explained last night where we are right now:
However you react to Trump's comments tonight is how you react to fascism. Most people think they would instinctive… https://t.co/Ecde2dnGFV— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@Adam Jentleson 🎈) 1600912658.0
Rachel Maddow said much the same thing. That what you are doing right now, and what you do over the next 40 days, is how you'd react to the rise of Hitler or any other fascist leader. It's not hyperbole, it's happening.
We've been ending a lot of posts by marking the countdown to the election, which is 40 days away, because of how it is absolutely fucking vital, if we want to forestall any of this, for Joe Biden to so thoroughly beat the shit out of Trump — yes even on election night — that Trump's fascist games will be laughed out of the room. There is still hope for that.
But perhaps we need to add another countdown, to reflect where we really are from the perspective of American history.
So here you go. We are 118 days from inauguration day, 2021. What are you doing today to make sure we have an America to live in on that day?
On that note, here's an article from the Waging Nonviolence website on "10 things you need to know to stop a coup." You're gonna need to bookmark it.
[The Atlantic / NPR]
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