This may sound like its in the realm of conspiracy theories and its probably unlikely and just built on my anxiety and likely comes to nothing but here we go.
I suggested before the election to friends of mine and on other forums, possibly even here, that if Trump lost that he would do whatever it took to stay in office. He is a fascist and has no great love or respect for the institution of Democracy. He seems to crave power and attention, and is probably motivated to stay in office to hold off the number of legal challenges coming his way once he steps down. Not to mention to find ways to cover his massive debt.
He has long been talking about how he feels about Mail In Voting and how it is prone to Fraud (despite availing of Mail in Voting himself in Florida). This has gone into overdrive since Biden began to eat into his leads in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Its very clear to most that the counting pattern in those states lined up with pre election predictions. Trump would take a big lead as Day of Election votes were counted first and Mail in and Absentee votes were counted later in these states as the Republican Party in those states prevented any votes being counted before election day. Meanwhile in states like Florida and Ohio Biden took early leads as mail in/early voting was counted ahead of time and when the day of election votes were counted Trump caught up and overtook Biden.All perfectly normal, despite Trumps protestations.
My presumption was he would do pretty much what he is doing but I wondered if he had the support of the Republican institution. Would they hitch their wagon to him when its clear he had lost? And it is clear that he has lost fair and square at this point. What has me worried is how many Republican members of congress and cabinet members, as well as specific press members (mainly Fox but not all of Fox to be fair to the network) have echoed his bat ā ā ā ā crazy claims that there is widespread voter fraud. They have tried to be clever about it, repeating the refrain that all legal votes must be counted, and all illegal votes must be excluded.
That sounds perfectly reasonable at surface level, who would argue that illegal votes should be counted, or legal ones not be counted? The issue is that we know it is disingenuous and that it implies that there must be this massive swath of illegal votes which all reasonable people understand is completely untrue. Its equivalent to the "All Lives Matter" retort to "Black Lives Matter". Of course all lives matter, but the majority of people saying All Lives Matter don't mean it. They want to say White Lives are important, or that they feel threatened by the idea of equality, and they know they can't say this out loud so they fall back to an "acceptable" catch phrase. "Don't count illegal votes" means exclude as many votes as it takes to make Donald Trump president.
When it comes to voter fraud I'm sure there are small numbers of illegal or ineligible votes. Signatures that maybe don't match perfectly, or someone who voted in the wrong state when they moved, or who voted by mail and was worried their vote wouldn't be delivered in the time and so they voted again in person, or maybe some small number of people who voted by mail and then died before the election. When 150M votes are cast there are bound to be errors, but they have systems in place to catch these unintentional errors, and its unlikely that they would go only in one direction, though any error in mail in votes would largely be related to Biden votes.
The idea that there are enough out there to overturn not just one state but several (for Trump to win he would need to find enough votes to overturn at least 38 Electoral College Votes, PA and GA only give him 36, PA, AZ and WI get him 41 so most likely he needs to overturn 3 separate states) is ridiculous. Biden leads WI, MI and PA by larger margins than Trump won them by in 2016. GA and AZ are his best bets as those are both close at 12 and 15k but those two alone are not enough. And historically there has never been any evidence of wide spread voter fraud. Trump himself started an investigation in the 2016 election and quietly sidelined it when it turned up little to no evidence.
So logically there is no chance for anything but a Biden Presidency right? Well I'm worried. Trump has whipped his base up into a Frenzy and they appear to believe his assertion that wide spread fraud has taken place. As I mentioned many prominent and less prominent Republicans in various positions have come out in support of removing illegal ballots. I fear that if Trump doesn't back down soon then this is going to get messy and possibly violent. I hope that I am wrong and in a few months we can laugh at my paranoia.
I have no great fear of Donald Trump, no one should, he is just one feeble old man, he can only do so much alone, but if he is being enabled by those in positions of authority then we should worry. Comments like those from Mike Pompeo yesterday have me worried. The stream of Repiblicans calling for "illegal" votes to be excluded gives me pause. The actions to replace key members of the security services with people presumably loyal to Trump scares me.
I don't know exactly what actions Trump is going to take next, nor do I know how they may be countered. Perhaps his end game with all these legal cases is to throw up enough sand to confuse his opponents and delay so he can instruct Republican led states that voted for Biden to install faithless electors. Maybe he will pursue military action. Maybe he is hoping to provoke Biden voters into protesting so he can send in the national guard and provoke violence. Honestly I don't know, but it is very clear to me that right now Trump is attempting a coup. Whether it is a successful coup or a failed coup remains to be seen, but if he is allowed to continue down the path he is headed unchecked we may wake up some time in the near future and find that Trump is Present beyond January 20th 2020, and maybe at some point in the next few years he finds a way to run again for another four years, and maybe to run unopposed. Maybe he won't be President, maybe he will find a new title Emperor Trump? Chancellor Trump? King Donald the First?
I realise this may all sound far fetched but he has already laid the seeds for some of these. He has already talked about running for a third term "because of how I was treated". It may sound like a joke but I don't think hes ever truly joking when he speaks. He wants to remain in power and I think he will do whatever it takes and if Republicans enable him he might just find a way to do it. I hope I am wrong. I hope this looks very foolish on January 20th 2021.