Trump lost, but he won’t go quietly
WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump, history will recall, went down as he rose, tweeting wild dishonest conspiracy theories.
“Tens of thousands of votes were illegally received after 8 P.M. on Tuesday, Election Day, totally and easily changing the results,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning, an apparent lie he has repeated endlessly this week, while absolutely no evidence it may be even partly true has been produced. “People were screaming STOP THE COUNT...” he protested in another tweet.
“I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” he tweeted later.
Reader, he did not. By 11:27 a.m. Saturday, the Associated Press, the agency the Star relies on to call the results, declared that Democrat Joe Biden had won the state of Pennsylvania, and was the next president of the United States of America.
Trump came into the presidency baselessly claiming the 2016 election was a fraud, and four years later, he will leave the same way. But for millions of “illegal” ballots, he tweeted in November 2016, “I also won the popular vote.” At the White House early Wednesday, he said the counting of legally cast ballots was a “fraud on the American public.”
Trump issued a statement through his campaign minutes after the call came. “The simple fact is this election is far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor,” the statement attributed to him read, promising to pursue court challenges to the vote counts beginning Monday. “What is Biden hiding? I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”
You knew Trump was never going to go gracefully — this isn’t a president who would stand up and say, “Looks like I lost fair and square, I wish the new president the best.” Every other losing presidential candidate in memory has given that kind of concession speech. “You will be our president,” George H.W. Bush said in a letter to his successor, Bill Clinton. “Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you,” he wrote, defining the grace that is often called “presidential.”
But Trump has never done gracious. Or presidential.
This week, as it became clear that he might lose, his lawyers filed lawsuits to stop counting ballots, his supporters gathered around counting locations to chant, “Stop the count!” And Trump tweeted, as he does, declaring victory and alleging theft in ways that didn’t just violate presidential norms, but also violated Twitter’s misinformation standards. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,” he said without evidence at a White House news conference on Thursday, in a performance major news outlets stopped broadcasting because of the outright fabrications the president was proclaiming, and that CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale said was the most dishonest speech he’d ever seen Trump give.
Trump will attempt to overturn results through the courts. Most analysts say his specific legal allegations appear minor and insubstantial, some have been thrown out of court already. Expected recounts in some states are extremely unlikely to turn anything around. But he’ll fight, in the courts and in public opinion, and he’ll let his rhetoric make wild conspiratorial claims that undermine U.S. democracy even as the specifics don’t back it up. That is what Trump does. What he’s always done.
This is the guy who mocked a disabled reporter, who habitually called women “nasty,” who insisted the phone call that got him impeached was “perfect.” The guy who wanted to buy Greenland.
From “Lock her up” to “Obamagate,” and from, “Russia, if you’re listening ...” to “the Biden crime family,” he has been happy to shatter norms as he stirred up baseless allegations of wrongdoing.
And from his “beautiful wall,” to “Liberate Michigan!” to defunding anarchist “Democrat-run cities,” he has always sought to amplify conflict and sow division. Those arriving at the border fleeing persecution and seeking asylum were “drug dealers, criminals and rapists.” Protesters for racial justice were committing “treason.” Black and brown members of Congress should “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
He didn’t create the angry divisions in the American public, but he certainly played them up, and hardened them into rock more solid than that of Mount Rushmore, where he not-so-subtly suggested his face ought to be carved. Those divisions were prominent in this election campaign, even sparking deadly confrontations in the street in Wisconsin and Oregon.
This election result was not the decisive repudiation of Trump and all he stood for that many of his opponents — and an apparent supermajority of Canadians — wanted.
But it amounted to a repudiation nonetheless, for a man who was the history’s greatest practitioner of describing himself as the history’s greatest. He is the first sitting U.S. president to lose a reelection bid since 1992. He lost the popular vote in both the elections in which he ran. He seems to have lost the Republican stronghold of Georgia. Joe Biden appears to have received more votes for president than any other U.S. presidential candidate in history. Trump’s catchphrase in 2016 was “winning,” and after four years, he lost. A majority of American voters have reintroduced him to another of his own catchphrases: “You’re fired.”
He has some legitimate successes he could point to, and many more policy accomplishments that only his supporters would agree moved the country in the right direction. He had a lot of areas where not much happened even as he claimed to have solved problems.
But his legacy might be measured as much by his conduct and its effect on how government operates and Americans view it. Through his authoritarian bent — from pardoning allies and demanding “my people” in the Justice Department persecute his opponents, to deploying troops against peaceful protesters. Through his catering to dictators, sometimes publicly, while badmouthing allies. Through his complete disregard for the rules that prevent corruption. Through his habitual dishonesty, which extended to defying medical advice on the deadliest pandemic in the U.S. in a century.
He behaved as if, once he became president, the entire government was about him, about serving him. And as if a president could make things true just by saying them over and over.
Saying coronavirus was going away didn’t make it so — the U.S. registered a record high number of new cases on Wednesday. And saying he’d won the election didn’t make it so. He lost.
Still, something like 48 per cent of American voters cast ballots for Trump. Those who support him, believe him. More than that, they believe in him, in a way the Democratic political strategist and author Spencer Critchley told me is almost religious — they are loyal to him, Critchley says, like to a medieval king chosen by God. I have spoken to many of those supporters, and their affinity for him is cultural. They wave away the apparent negatives, saying most come from the nefarious imagination of the media and the Washington establishment. They are deeply cynical about politics, which is part of why they like Trump: he’s shamelessly open about what they think everyone else is doing, and entertains them in the process, insulting the people they dislike, saying the impolite things they believe, or want to believe. All that and cutting taxes and appointing anti-abortion judges, too.
Biden has spoken this week about the need to “to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us, to lower the temperature, to see each other again, to listen to one another, to hear each other again, and respect and care for one another, to unite, to heal, to come together as a nation.” That sounds nice. Good luck. Many of Trump’s supporters, who now dominate the Republican party, trust him wholeheartedly and are intensely mistrustful of other politicians. Trump, who will remain president until the inauguration in January, is claiming Biden stole the election from him. A huge number of Americans will believe that’s what happened.
Indeed, in front of the Convention Center in Philadelphia on Thursday and Friday, that’s what his supporters said they believed was happening. “Do not let the Democrats corrupt your democracy,” a woman shouted into a megaphone Thursday night.
Democracy depends on the faith of the citizens in the fairness of the process. That faith is shattered, which may be Trump’s most lasting legacy.
Trump is unlikely to go quietly. He’s more likely to continue his campaign for another four years, whether to run again in 2024, or just to bask in the allegiance of his followers. To continue whipping up division and conflict, and distrust in the legitimacy of the entire American government.
Most former presidents allow themselves to fade into statesmanlike background players once out of office. It’s the gracious thing to do. Presidential. But that was never Trump’s style in office. And it’s a stretch to expect he’ll adopt it after being voted out.
The Trump presidency is over. But the Trump era in U.S. politics will continue for some time.