I said a couple of weeks ago that if President Biden decided to withdraw from the race it would be awesome if he would do it on the night Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination. That didn't come to pass last night during the final night of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee but the political media still spent the whole day speculating that it was about to happen, which no doubt irritated Trump almost as much since he always wants to be the center of attention — even when his opponents are doing his job for him.
It's obviously helpful to Trump that the Democrats are fighting each other over the fate of their presidential candidate just three months from the election. Still, the drama around Biden potentially withdrawing from the race has stepped on Trump's martyr storyline even as he's ostentatiously sporting a bizarrely large bandage on his right ear and cynically playing the sympathy card. But he made up for it with a smarmy opening to his acceptance speech in which he gave a mournful minute-by-minute recitation of the assassination attempt. At one point he indulged in some truly embarrassing schmaltz by kissing the helmet of the fireman who was killed at that rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. It all just seemed .... weird. One suspects he's been talking about this nonstop since it happened and is still understandably obsessed.
You can pinpoint the exact moment America knew his brain was jello pic.twitter.com/AmRC3d2B9Y
— I Smoked #DropOutDon (@BlackKnight10k) July 19, 2024
That part of the speech was reportedly written by Trump and I think it was evident. He's been dying to share the dramatic story of his allegedly brave reaction to the terrifying experience and this was his chance to take as long as he wanted to do it. (Brushing it off and saying "Honey I forgot to duck," as Reagan did, isn't exactly his style). Unfortunately, he also had to talk about other stuff. It was a major political event after all. And despite the billing of the speech as a call for unity, the rest of it was a flat rendition of his usual rally speech although he did curtail the profanity, eschewed the crude impressions of his political opponents and managed not to insult too many Republicans seeing as it was the RNC and all.
If social media is any indication, the speech seemed to shock many observers who have forgotten that Trump lies constantly and is incoherent and ignorant even when he's at his best. And he was certainely not at his best. Despite the long-winded delivery of all his greatest hits going back to 2016, he's definitely lost a step.
MSNBC's Chris Hayes astutely described what we all saw last night:
"This is not a colossus, this is not the big bad wolf, this is not a vigorous and incredibly deft political communicator. This is an old man in decline who's been doing the same schtick for a very long time and it's really wearing thin."
The substance, to the extent there was any, was delusional and frightening. From bragging that when he was president he "could end wars with a phone call" to the endless lies about his accomplishments while in office, he assiduously avoided speaking specifically about 98% of his agenda as laid out in Project 2025 and his own Agenda 47. But he did say one thing that caught my attention and should catch the attention of every American. After admonishing Joe Biden for saying he's a threat to democracy earlier in the speech, Trump said in passing, "we had that horrible, horrible result that we'll never let happen again, the election result, we're never gonna let that happen again."
Trump says he is “never gonna let” Americans vote against him again like they did in 2020 pic.twitter.com/cjDjUnSmmM
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 19, 2024
One might think that was just another example of Trump's cognitive decline. But that was actually a very straightforward comment and one that is backed up by ample evidence. The Republicans who are backing Trump (virtually all of them) have a fully developed plan to ensure that if the Democrats win in November, they will contest the results regardless of any evidence of fraud. When Trump says "we're never going to let that happen again" he means we're never going to let the Democrats win again.
And he's not talking about getting out the vote. Trump has been quoted repeatedly telling his troops "we don't need votes":
We got more votes than anybody’s ever had. We need to watch the vote. We need to guard the vote. We need to stop the steal. We don’t need votes. We have to stop — focus, don’t worry about votes. We’ve got all the votes. I was in Florida yesterday — every house has a Trump sign. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. We have to guard the vote.
The New York Times took a long look at the Republican plan this week and it's not good news.
Trump’s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious — and legally dubious — attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power.
At the heart of the strategy is a drive to convince voters that the election is about to be stolen, even without evidence.
The article quotes numerous GOP officials who say that fair elections are impossible under the current laws so they have set out to challenge and change them in the swing states that are decisive in our bizarre electoral college system. Most concerning is their plan to give local elections officials the power to hold up certification of the vote.
Certification was never a matter of contention before 2020, having always been seen as a largely ceremonial non-partisan part of the process. But Republicans and their allies have decided this is a useful tactic to disqualify results that don't go their way. In some states, like Georgia, they've even empowered right-wing activists who are now members of the election boards to "investigate" voters to determine if the votes are legal. In Nevada, a similar law has already caused chaos in primary elections which are still in limbo due to board members contesting the results. These cases are wending their way into the courts, delaying the certifications.
At the RNC this week, Chris LaCivita, Trump's campaign manager, made it clear that they don't plan to accept any loss or concede the race even after the votes are counted:
Cool that they’re just telegraphing their intentions straight into the DC press https://t.co/6nwcHUYSRo
— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) July 18, 2024
Donald Trump Jr. says it more plainly even than that:
MIKE ALLEN: If Trump loses, it'll be why?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2024
DON JR: I'd say cheating pic.twitter.com/kM30hmf8XC
This is the assault on democracy that the Biden campaign is talking about. It's not just rhetorical. They are literally assaulting the democratic process by changing laws at the local and state levels that will make it possible for them to contest the certification of the election results all the way up until January 6, 2025, and, apparently, beyond.
Trump is beatable, as demonstrated by that bizarre performance at the RNC. He is not a well man. It's clear that he and his team know this, which is why they are pulling out all the stops to contest the results of an election that hasn't even happened yet. These are not the actions of a confident campaign. But keep in mind that this now goes way beyond Trump and his massive ego. He's shown the Republicans the weaknesses in the system and they're going to exploit them. As he said, "we're never going to let that happen again." This is a problem that will exist long after 2024 — whether Trump gets back into the White House or not.
