The previous president’s desperation may drive his actions even after the ultimate votes are solid.
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“Trump, enraged and rattled, is reverting to his feral methods,” Peter Wehner wrote in The Atlantic at present. Amongst these is Trump’s insistence on refusing actuality: This weekend, the previous president pushed a weird conspiracy idea that the huge crowds at current rallies for Kamala Harris had been faked by AI.
Apparently affected by a extreme case of crowd envy, Trump seized on right-wing social-media hypothesis and claimed that “NOBODY” had actually proven up at Harris’s rallies. Regardless of in depth photographic proof that 1000’s of supporters had turned out at an airport in Detroit, Trump insisted that the crowds “DIDN’T EXIST.” Actually, he declared, “there was no one there,” and cited as proof “the reflection of the mirror like end on the Vice Presidential Airplane,” which didn’t replicate photographs of the group that was in any other case in plain sight.
Trump’s claims had been pathetically straightforward to debunk. His rally-crowd lie is yet one more of his denials of the reality in entrance of him. However it was additionally a warning of a unique kind: The previous president is brazenly laying the groundwork for difficult the legitimacy of the November election.
After claiming that Harris had “CHEATED on the airport,” Trump telegraphed his different message: “That is the way in which the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – They usually’re even worse on the Poll Field.” Trump has been workshopping his claims that Harris’s candidacy is illegitimate; he has already instructed that the substitute of Joe Biden with Harris was one way or the other “unconstitutional.” (It wasn’t, as a result of the Structure is silent on celebration nominations.) In his weekend rant, Trump instructed that Harris “needs to be disqualified as a result of the creation of a pretend picture is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anybody who does that may cheat at ANYTHING!”
Within the 2020 race, Trump used the lie that the election had been stolen to incite a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol; now he and his allies have the added benefit of an infrastructure for sowing chaos the following time round. One in every of Trump’s marketing campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, has already made it clear that Trump could battle the result of the election lengthy after November 5. “It’s not over till he places his hand on the Bible and takes the oath,” LaCivita stated in a current interview with Politico on the Republican Nationwide Conference. “It’s not over on Election Day, it’s over on Inauguration Day.” An investigation by Rolling Stone final month discovered that almost 70 pro-Trump election deniers function election officers in key battleground counties.
In Georgia, Trump supporters on the state election board have adopted guidelines requiring “affordable inquiry” earlier than election outcomes are licensed, a transfer that would give GOP county-election-board members the power to reject the 2024 election’s end result. And as The Guardian reviews, the lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell “has spent the previous couple of years build up a community of activists targeted on native boards of elections.” On the nationwide stage, the Republican Nationwide Committee says that it hopes to mobilize 100,000 volunteers, together with 1000’s of ballot watchers, to deal with “Democrat makes an attempt to bypass the foundations.” In the meantime, one RNC senior counsel for election integrity, Christina Bobb, was criminally indicted earlier this yr for her function in making an attempt to overturn the 2020 election (she pleaded not responsible).
Then there may be the temper of the MAGA base. Trump’s lies concerning the 2020 election have change into a litmus check within the GOP, and a current Pew Analysis Middle ballot discovered that though 77 % of Democratic voters imagine that the election shall be carried out “pretty and precisely,” lower than half of Republican voters place confidence in the system. Regardless of Harris’s current surge, the vast majority of Trump supporters are assured that he shall be victorious. (A current YouGov ballot discovered that almost eight in 10 Trump supporters suppose he would win if pitted in opposition to Harris.) Trump absolutely intends to stoke his supporters’ disbelief and anger on the chance that he may lose. As Wehner warned just lately: “In case you have buddies who’re Trump worshippers, a phrase of counsel: They’re heading to a really darkish place psychologically … They felt this race was received; now it’s slipping away. Anticipate even better self-delusion and extra poisonous rants.”
A defeated Trump may very well be much more harmful this yr than he was in 2020, as a result of the private stakes for him are larger than ever: Trump is already a convicted felon, but when he wins, he could make lots of the remaining legal circumstances in opposition to him go away. If he loses, he faces not solely private humiliation but additionally a possible authorized nightmare. This makes Trump a determined man—and that desperation may drive his actions even after the ultimate votes are solid.
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Extra From The Atlantic
Night Learn
Who Needs a ‘Man in Finance’?
By Christine Emba
This yr’s “Music of the Summer season” is very contested; artists corresponding to Kendrick Lamar, Charli XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter have been duking it out on the prime of the charts. However an surprising hit has emerged from TikTok. You might have heard it your self:
“I’m searching for a person in finance. Belief fund. Six-five. Blue eyes.” Repeat, till the person himself seems—or the ghost of Andrea Dworkin rises as much as roll her eyes.
Megan Boni, a video creator also called Woman on Sofa, shared the pattern in April with a prescient caption: “Did I simply write the tune of the summer season?” Her 19-second clip has gone on to gather almost 60 million views and encourage a whole lot of parodies and remixes—together with by music-industry superstars corresponding to Diplo and David Guetta …
In interviews, Boni has stated that she made the tune to poke enjoyable at daters with excessive requirements for potential companions. However whether or not or not it’s truly tongue in cheek, “Man in Finance” has taken off for an excellent purpose. Its lyrics encapsulate two of the most important tendencies on the core of contemporary heterosexual courting: the passing of the girlboss period and the surprising return of classic gender norms.
Tradition Break
Learn. A new poem by Brad Walrond.
“we didn’t select one another / on that underground Wednesday night time / Harlem dance ground. / We had been chosen.”
Watch. Good One, in theaters, is a deceptively easy, and unusually exact, coming-of-age movie.
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