Hindsight is 2026
After lying about elections nonstop for more than a decade, you’ll never guess what Trump did next. Spoiler alert: He lied. As I mentioned yesterday, the plot of his ongoing series, Gov Island, USA, is always the same. So last night’s script was hardly a cliffhanger, though this episode was particularly lackluster. His primetime address, the latest attempt to make Americans mistrust election results, didn’t even feature particularly compelling lies, earning him a lot of headlines like this: In primetime speech, Trump doesn’t provide evidence for illegal voting. And the obsessive focus on an election that happened six years ago is hardly a winning political message heading into the midterms. Trump rehashing old electoral grievances when persuadable voters are hyper-concerned about affordability would be almost as crazy as having a Secretary of Defense ignoring an ongoing war to talk about testing troops for Low-T. As David Frum explains in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump Dooms His Own Party. His “message makes psychic sense for Trump. He’s probably going to lose at least one congressional chamber in November, perhaps two, and he desperately needs an explanation as to why it’s not his fault. But the message makes no sense for the Republicans who are actually on the ballot in 2026.”
+ So, you might be wondering, what was the point? Well, this isn’t just one pathetic lunatic embarrassingly spewing more rambling lies about an election he lost. It’s an entire political party lining up behind him, bending the knee, kissing the ass, and selling their souls—along with the soul of democracy. And as the NYT (Gift Article) reminds us, Trump and his conspiracy-peddling accomplices have the Full Weight of Government to Bolster False Their Election Claims. “The president’s ability to bring a whole-of-government approach to shape how Americans view their elections — and potentially who gets to vote — has alarmed public officials and election experts across the country.” The DHS Secretary is already making the rounds, pledging to aggressively pursue voter fraud cases. And the goal here, of course, is not to relitigate 2020. It’s to pre-litigate 2026. It’s not about hindsight. It’s about foreshadowing. Joyce Vance: “What is important is understanding what he’s trying to do: He’s searching for a way to legitimize interference in an election he knows his party is going to lose in November.”
+ Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee (and a particularly sharp dresser) on what these easily provable lies are really all about. “It’s about setting the stage for Donald Trump to reject the results of the upcoming elections.”
