It's always difficult to say with reasonable certainty which Trump-induced crisis he is distracting from by creating another crisis, such as his comment to Fox News' Chris Wallace last Sunday that he might reject the election's results: "I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election."
That unpresidential bit of lunacy seemed a species of what we might call generic distraction. Polls showed Joe Biden thumping Trump throughout most of the nation and, most ominously for the incumbent, in battleground states. That, along with Trump's increasingly wretched economy and his steady-handed, stay-the-course negligent homicide of tens of thousands of Americans had all conspired in his mind to spark the perfect moment for an utterly unsubstantiated "rigged-election" accusation. No particular catastrophe among the three seemed to stand out.
But this morning?
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
That lunatic distraction came just minutes after the Commerce Department reported that the G.D.P. had fallen at a staggering annualized rate of 32.9 percent during the second quarter — the "second worst" in recorded history, observes the NY Times. (And the Labor Department announced this morning that another 1.43 million new unemployment claims were filed last week.)
"Kids can go to school, but we can't vote?" responded the Lincoln Project to Trump on Twitter. Then there are the little matters of a federal statute requiring a presidential vote on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November and the U.S. Constitution's amended provision that a president's four-year tenure begin on 20 January — leaving even an illegal postponement in an insurmountable time-crunch (short of a coup, which won't happen).
What is just as expected as another of Trump's outrageous distractions? "So far, no major Republican figures [are] criticizing the president [for his tweet]," reports the Times. "Republican state chairmen said they have not seen it" and "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ignored questions about it."
And so it goes. For another three months.
I just read something that said that Trump and Pence have to go at noon on January 20. If no new president is elected, the job goes to the speaker of the house. So he could end up making Nancy Pelosi the next president without her even running for the job. And from what I have witnessed, the media has been doing fine paying attention to his tweet and talking about the shitty economic news. Personally, I'm glad the media is covering his tweet. It sends the message that the country is paying attention to any fuckery he's trying to get up to.
Posted by: Anne J | July 30, 2020 at 12:34 PM
My two cents (a nightmare scenario):
If there is going to be electoral mischief, it will occur in GOP-controlled swing states. Said states do not certify their votes (voting by mail is RIGGED!!!!1!), thereby denying both candidates an Electoral College majority. A roll of the dice follows, in the form of a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where "the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote" and Trump wins, 26 to 24.
Posted by: Lucidamente | July 30, 2020 at 01:07 PM
universal mail in voting is the exact sane thing as absentee voting. damn, that man is fucking stupid.
Posted by: Merl Allen | July 31, 2020 at 03:48 PM