With the election just four weeks away, the number of ways in which this ends even remotely well is dwindling quickly.
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As Helene has shown us (and Milton is about to), hurricanes unleash their full potential when the conditions for massive destruction are just right, i.e., when they are well organized, are able to gather strength over warm, open water, and then hit populated areas at the worst time and place.
Hurricanes are among the most devastating forces of nature. Fortunately, they are also the one natural disaster we can see coming from a long way away, which gives people in their path time to prepare or evacuate. And, as we all know from those National Hurricane Center models with the different colored lines, there is always a slim chance that they will change course and possibly turn to sea or make landfall in lightly inhabited areas.
At the same time as these hurricanes are causing death and destruction, another storm is brewing. This one is man-made, there is no place to evacuate from it, and there are now only a few scenarios left in which it will not hit the country with full force.
Welcome to Hurricane Don, which will make landfall on Election Day in four weeks and likely create havoc for a long time afterwards.
While the names of the worst hurricanes are usually retired, that isn’t the case here.
Four years ago, it already did massive damage to the country.
This time, it will be much worse.
Here is why.
In 2020, when Donald Trump lost the presidential election handily, he reacted by attempting a coup, creating the Big Lie, undermining faith in US democracy, and siccing his supporters on Congress.
Back then, Hurricane Don was poorly organized.
Sure, Trump could rely on Fox News to push his lies (which cost them $787 million), but his main supporters were a bunch of weirdos and has-beens like Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. In addition, the conspiracy theories they used to “prove” “election fraud” and explain away his loss were half-baked at best.
One court after another ruled against his various challenges, and, in spite of the best efforts of all those “patriots” who wanted to hang Mike Pence on January 6, Congress certified Joe Biden’s victory and he was sworn in two weeks later.
In other words, Hurricane Don did a lot of damage but, ultimately, ended on a whimper.
Times have changed.
The 2024 version will be much more destructive.
But what if, this time, he loses by the slimmest of margins and, in order to become president, he only has to overturn the results in one of three states that he lost by less than 5,000 votes?
A while back, we said that the only good scenario in this year’s election would be a decisive Trump loss. Unfortunately, it does not look as though this is going to happen.
Instead, it will be much more of a nailbiter.
That leaves us with two possible outcomes.
The first one is that Trump wins, which would undoubtedly be very bad news for the country in many different ways. We’ll save that for another day.
Instead, we want to focus on the other scenario: Trump loses a fairly close election.
In that case, it is inconceivable that he concedes. In fact, it is completely ridiculous to imagine him picking up a phone and saying: “Kamala, this was a good fight but you won fair and square; so good luck, and let me know if I can help in any way.”
It would be more likely that Trump turns into a unicorn and rides off into the sky on a rainbow.
Instead, the former president will do catastrophic damage to the United States in a bid to seize power.
As opposed to 2020, the conditions are much more favorable for him to plunge the country into turmoil.
Like a hurricane that has been churning above warm water, the 2024 version packs much more of a punch.
Trump’s allies are no longer primarily a bunch of kooks. They now include virtually the entire party, as well as Elon Musk, the number one spreader of misinformation and now a full-fledged MAGA member, and all those Musk-adjacent right-wing influencers.
That alone changes the entire dynamic of the Big Lie 2.0.
Whatever ridiculous claims Trump makes, whatever wacko conspiracies he comes up with, they will be amplified and seen by tens of millions of people within minutes.
And all those GOP officials are not his only allies. The Supreme Court has already shown that it will do his bidding. The right-wing majority has also gotten bolder in recent years, so what’s to stop the court from simply throwing the election Trump’s way?
Next, the former president has gotten more deranged, and his lies have gotten more brazen.
We have seen a lot of this recently. From Haitian migrants eating pets to lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, many of the things Trump says now have no basis in reality.
And these are not small lies like, “People come to me and say: ‘Sir, you are the greatest human being ever, and you also look like a model.’”
Rather, they are nasty, harmful lies that do real damage to real people… whether that’s immigrants or citizens having to pick up the pieces of their lives after a catastrophe but who, because of the crazy stuff Trump says, are losing all faith in a government that is trying to help them.
And it works.
What Trump has learned over the past decade, but especially after the 2020 election, is that a vast majority of Republicans will believe just about anything he says.
We know this because more than two-thirds of them are convinced (without evidence) that the election was stolen, and that Biden is an illegitimate president.
It doesn’t matter to Trump’s supporters that none of what he says makes sense (or that a simple Google search could prove him wrong).
The key is that they want to believe him.
They yearn for the fantasy world he creates. It’s comforting to them… certainly much more than reality.
Then there is the closeness of the race.
In 2020, Trump had to try to overturn the results in multiple states, which is not only a steep uphill climb but, without any evidence, made him look ridiculous.
But what if, this time, he loses by the slimmest of margins and, in order to become president, he only has to overturn the results in one of three states that he lost by less than 5,000 votes?
It would never stop, and just about all Republicans would feel compelled to help him. And those who don’t would just be drowned out.
And all those GOP officials are not his only allies. The Supreme Court has already shown that it will do his bidding. The right-wing majority has also gotten bolder in recent years, so what’s to stop the court from simply throwing the election Trump’s way?
Finally, the stakes for the former president are much higher this time around.
Last time, he wanted to stay in power for the sake of staying in power.
This time, his personal freedom is on the line.
Unless he returns to the White House, Trump won’t be able to stall his coup case forever. Sure, there will be appeals, but there is a good chance he will go to prison and very well might die there (although it seems likely that Kamala Harris would pardon him for the good of the country).
So, yes, a storm is brewing on the horizon.
There is no hiding from it. There are no sandbags you can put in its way to limit the damage. If it makes landfall, it’s going to cause epic damage to the country.
The only way to ward it off is to vote and retire Hurricane Don for good.
