APB: Trump’s 2020 Alarm Bells

The all-consuming goal of Donald Trump’s life is to win. We have seen the lengths to which he will go to avoid losing, whether the loss involves real estate, a lawsuit, or an election. Despite his lifelong record of cheating and lying, Trump has always been first to accuse others of the same, often in order to win something. During the 2016 campaign, you’ll recall, he sought to preempt what seemed like a defeat by maintaining that Hillary could only win by cheating. Then Trump won by cheating. To deflect challenges to the legitimacy of his election, he argued that the 3-million vote loss was due only to illegal votes, a whopping lie. Now, polls show Trump’s flagging popularity and he faces numerous investigations that cast further doubt on his legitimacy as a winner.
True to form, Trump and his minions are already portraying a Democratic victory in 2020 as fraudulent. The White House is casting the Democrats as radical-left Trump haters out to (in Trump’s words) “win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win.” Sarah Sanders followed up with: “They [the Democrats] continue to be a group totally taken by a small radical leftist fringe of their party and they’re completely controlled by it, they know that’s not enough to beat this President so they’re going to look for other ways to do that” (www.cnn.com/2019/03/06/politics/donald-trump-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html).
These words are as alarming as they are absurd. We should take heed, since Trump is not likely to exit the stage gracefully in January 2021. There are plenty of far-right crazies out there who, convinced he is God’s chosen leader, will follow him if he should challenge the results.