The Terrified President Shows His Hand — at Least a Few of His Cards

The terrified and paranoid President graced the nation Thursday night with a televised psychotic episode that he hyped for days as being a veritable “bombshell” of new info on the election he lost in 2020 [INSERT YAWN HERE].

By the way, Donald Trump lost that election by 7 million votes.

The speech turned out to be more like a popcorn fart than a bombshell, but that should not mean that we ignore it. Indeed, the scantily-covered prime-time address from the innards of the White House might be one of the more consequential of his wretched tenure.

Far be it from me to waste my time pawing through its details, which you have probably learned of by now. I will simply say it was a steaming crock of bullshit. But one that clearly exhibited what Trump wants his endgame to be.

In short, he wants no endgame. The speech dramatically demonstrated that he is willing to do anything it takes to retain power.

He’s crazy, but he’s not that stupid. He knows his approval ratings are in the arctic zone and are not about to magically rise in the 109 days until the midterms. He knows very well that he is destined to lose at least one chamber of Congress, if not both. And just losing the House alone guarantees that he will be impeached for a third time. He most probably would not be convicted thanks to the subversive party that he commands. But still.

He also pretended that he was pressuring his own Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, the biggest proposed voter suppression measure in our history; yet he knows very well there aren’t enough votes to pass it and there never will be.

No. Trump’s speech — which supposedly outlined, falsely, a grand conspiracy by China and the Deep State to steal the 2020 election — offered nothing new except some novel ways to twist the disinformation that has surrounded this event for the last six years. He painted a picture of a weak and vulnerable US election system that will lead to disaster if SAVE isn’t passed. He even claimed that some 280,000 non-citizens voted.

Unfortunately for Trump, the right-wing Heritage Foundation, after a sweeping study, concluded that, between 2002 and 2022, there were about 100 votes cast overall by noneligible noncitizens.

OK, then, so what was this speech and why was it so important?

In short, it was a declaration of war against free and fair midterms.

It was central to his escalating campaign to fully discredit the outcome before the votes are even cast; and, most importantly, he was laying down the predicate for some sort of armed federal intervention during the election or in its aftermath.

No accident that prior to the speech, Trump hosted a closed-door White House meeting with the most extreme, the most loony, of election deniers, some of whom were required to sign NDAs.

To be clear: For those who think a Democratic victory in the midterms will begin to close out the Trump Era, think again.

As a pretty good poker player and a former math major I am adamant about figuring out my odds during each hand. Right now, looking at the state of play, I would estimate an 85 percent chance that there will be a major, probably violent, confrontation sometime before, during or after the voting. And that’s a conservative estimate.

Am I over-reacting? Am I an irrepressible Cassandra, a serial doom-caster? Probably yes. But not in this case.

Let’s examine, then, the probable scenarios that lead me to this conclusion. First, the war in Iran is boiling over and yet was not mentioned in Trump’s address. Inflation is not going down, nor are prices, and voters know it. With certainty, a Republican Götterdämmerung looms over November.

Let’s play this out. The Democrats take the House with something like a 15-seat majority. The Republicans hang on to the Senate, maybe, by a seat or two. If they lose the Senate, then multiply everything below by two.

Trump becomes a lame duck, unable to pass any legislation. The Democrats announce, before the vote, that the flipped House will open investigations into Trump’s crypto corruption. Into Kash Patel’s corruption. Into the leadership of ICE and some of its more egregious bloodletting. Into the war in Iran. Into the Epstein files. And will draw up articles of impeachment against Trump and maybe, just maybe, against a couple of members of SCOTUS.

Here are Trump’s options, at least the ones I can think of offhand:

• He sends in ICE troops to as many polling places as possible, where they create their own crisis with unknowable consequences.
• He sends in US Marshals and/or armed Federal Agents from DHS to seize ballot boxes and tabulators under the pretext of reports of massive fraud.
• He gives the nod to local election officials, salted with MAGA activists, to withhold ballots and certification of vote totals in volatile swing districts where Republicans are losing.
• The day after the election he claims fraud and calls upon MAGA to stage big protests in front of a half dozen state capitols, in which the militia types join in the fun. Two, three, many January Sixes.
• He shoots the moon, declares a nationwide state of emergency, calls out the US Army, and indefinitely postpones the midterms.
• Or, finally, he sits back quietly, takes no action, accepts the defeat, tells the media “Oh well, you can’t win them all,” and vows bipartisan cooperation with the new Democratic Congress.

I understand fully these are all rather extreme scenarios. But you tell me, as improbable as these scenarios may seem, which one do you really think is the least probable?

I would say, the last one is, by a mile.

Ahh, you say, but the other options are illegal and will be stopped by the courts. Really? The courts have no army. And when it comes to the military, keep in mind that Pentagon Pete has already purged hundreds of command-level officers and replaced them with exactly whom? And to exactly what end?

Meanwhile, some Democrats also huddled last week to “prepare” for any disruption of the elections.

It’s a good idea. One that we the people should take upon ourselves, as the Democratic response will most probably be a “stern letter” from Leader Schumer. Like the courts, the Democrats have no army.

I think it’s about time we address the 800-lb. gorilla over there in the corner and ask ourselves how are we preparing ourselves to confront a total power grab by Trump and his fascist cabinet?

Many of the brighter Dems have warned, correctly, that nobody is coming to save us, and that includes the Democrats.

It’s we the citizenry that constitute a very formidable army — an army of voters, an army of protesters, and a potential army of resisters.

I think it’s about time we address the 800-lb. gorilla over there in the corner and ask ourselves how are we preparing ourselves to confront a total power grab by Trump and his fascist cabinet?

I am not proposing armed revolution. I am proposing organized, massive, and nonviolent civil disobedience.

If Trump makes a move to seize power illegally, it will be our responsibility, and ours alone, to render the country ungovernable and demand his resignation.

If ICE or DHS are dispatched to local polls, will we be prepared to lock arms in front of them or, perhaps, sit down to obstruct them?

What exactly are we preparing for? We need to figure it out because, if we are not prepared in advance, our response will be too late.

Would we face repression? You bet we would. Would we suffer casualties? Yes, including some fatalities (which we already are, at the hands of ICE).

What I heard last night from Donald J. Trump was a declaration of war against the beating heart of any democracy… free and fair elections.

It’s our republic to defend. Let’s hope we can keep it.

As a service to our readers, we curate noteworthy stories through partnerships with outside writers and thinkers. Marc Cooper is an award-winning writer, journalist, and professor. His columns appear in The Coop Scoop, from which this has been adapted with the author’s permission.