The Donald has cried ‘rigged’ before — when he’s losing
Democrats worry the Republican could refuse to concede if he fails
When Donald Trump lost Iowa to Ted Cruz, he claimed the caucuses were stolen from him.
When Donald Trump hit a rough patch in the Republican primary in April, he said the rules were rigged against him and labelled the process a “scam” perpetrated by party bosses. When he sank in the polls after the July conventions, he fretted that the November 8 election would be fixed: “I'm afraid the election's gonna be rigged, I have to be honest”.
Now, before today’s final debate, he's sounding the alarm again.
The brash Republican underdog is facing the roughest stretch of his campaign and slips in the polls amid accusations of unwanted sexual advances from numerous women. A new Fox poll yesterday had Democrat Hillary Clinton up by 6 per cent. Even though 67 per cent of respondents think she is lying about how she handled her emails, 61 per cent think Trump doesn’t have the temperament to be president.
“Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. The following day, he wrote that the election is “absolutely being rigged” by the media and “at many polling places — SAD,” in one of eight tweets since the weekend positing a “rigged” or "stolen" election.
Trump has demonstrated a knack for crying foul about a fixed election when he's facing a serious threat to his prospects. At each turn, his unsubstantiated claims have struck a chord with his passionate base of disaffected white voters no matter how the charges are answered by his fellow Republicans and rival Democrats.
In February, Cruz's campaign spokesman Rick Tyler dismissed the real-estate developer's claims of cheating as a “Trumpertantrum” and argued he was merely “angry with the people of Iowa” for picking somebody else.
More recently, Democrats have been similarly unsympathetic to Trump's complaints. “This is what losers do,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on Tuesday. “I'd advise Mr Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes,” President Barack Obama said yesterday.
Trump has offered up a diverse array of conspirators. During the primary, it was Republican leaders. In August, it was a “Clinton machine” hit job that brought about damaging headlines. Now, it's a multilayered plot orchestrated by the news media, the Clinton campaign, “large-scale voter fraud” helped by polling workers, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and global elites to deny him and his supporters the White House. “I've been saying this for a long time. The whole thing is one big fix,” Trump said.
Trump's warnings are having an impact. A Politico- Morning Consult survey released on Tuesday found
that 41 per cent of voters believe the election could be “stolen” from Trump due to rampant voter fraud — among Republicans, the number was 73 per cent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani amplified Trump's message on CNN. “They leave dead people on the rolls, and then they pay people to vote those dead people four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times,” he said, adding that “dead people generally vote for Democrats”.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said on CNN, “I can reassure Donald Trump, I am in charge of elections in Ohio and they're not going to be rigged.” Congressman Peter King of New York said the election isn't rigged: “Whoever wins, wins,” he said.
“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the Speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said.
Voter impersonation fraud is rare: One study by a Loyola Law School professor found 31 credible instances out of one billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014. Democrats worry Trump's claims lay the groundwork for a refusal to concede the election if he loses, and potentially delegitimise a hypothetical Clinton presidency in the minds of many Republicans.
When Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was asked on MSNBC if Trump will accept the results of the 2016 election, she hedged. “Absent evidence of wrongdoing, of irregularities and voter fraud, of course we'll accept it.”