People make assumptions about Donald Trump as if he were a normal person or a normal politician. He’s not. What your experience observing normal human behavior has taught you about people and politicians does not apply in the extraordinary case of Donald Trump. Regular readers of Bad Dogs and Bakeries know that I’ve used this platform to push back against the narrative that President Trump can be understood in conventional terms. People think Donald Trump is lying. I’ve written here that he’s not. People think he’s the president of the United States. I’ve written here that he’s not. People think he’s running for re-election. I’m writing today to let you know that he’s not.
President Trump isn’t running against Joe Biden to win re-election. He’s running against the election. He’s running against democracy.
President Trump has said on numerous occasions that he intends to remain in the White House for three or four terms. He’s told us that he likes the idea of a “presidency for life”. He’s said repeatedly that the only way he will not be re-elected on November 3 is if the election is rigged. He’s delegitimizing the idea of a fair presidential election, and questioning the integrity of the U.S. electoral system.
In the last two weeks, President Trump has said a number of times — including during the first presidential debate — that he will not commit to abiding by the outcome of the November 3 election or participating in a peaceful transfer of power should Joe Biden win the election.
For months, President Trump has been sowing doubts about the legitimacy of the upcoming presidential election. He’s alleging that it will be rigged, that millions of fraudulent ballots will be cast, that ballots sent through the mail cannot be trusted, that foreign governments and his domestic enemies are conspiring to steal the election from him. He’s said that he wants congress or the Supreme Court — not American voters — to decide the outcome of the election.
The reason President Trump has given for wanting to rush the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett through the senate confirmation process is that he wants a Supreme Court with six conservative justices — three of them appointed by him — to decide who wins the election.
President Trump has already deployed an army of lawyers across the country who have drafted court documents, that they will file in various states on the day after the election, intended to stop vote counting, to invalidate mail-in ballots, and to throw out the results in certain Democratic-heavy precincts. President Trump intends to get these lawsuits invalidating the election results into federal court and ultimately before the Supreme Court before the electoral college convenes. He expects that the conservative Supreme Court will overturn the democratic outcome of the election and install him in the White House just as it did George W. Bush in 2000.
Donald Trump is not a U.S. president seeking re-election. He has no party platform. He’s unable to articulate a second-term agenda. He’s not reaching out to undecided or independent voters in an attempt to expand his voter base. Instead, he’s registering more of his base, getting his supporters to turn out and vote, encouraging his supporters to go to polling places throughout the country and intimidate Biden voters, and telling the Proud Boys to “stand by”.
President Trump’s disruptive behavior during his first presidential debate with Joe Biden wasn’t a mistake. It was deliberate. He’s trying to delegitimize the coming election, and turning elements of the election process — like the debates — into a circus contributes to the narrative that the entire election exercise is a sham. He’s trying to undermine a normal functioning democracy, and cause millions of Americans to doubt the integrity of the election and the validity of the vote totals reported on television on election night. During the debate, he again told the 73 million Americans watching that the election will be rigged, that millions of fraudulent ballots will be cast, that ballots sent through the mail can’t be trusted, and that he will not abide by the outcome of this crooked election or participate afterward in a peaceful transfer of power.
He’s telling us exactly what he’s doing. He’s not running for re-election. He’s running against the election and democracy.
(My September 3, 2020 essay on this site titled “Would you rather live in a white country or a democratic country?” explains why President Trump is likely to get away with this.)
