Republished with permission of Matt Fuller Congressional Reporter, The Huffington Post and
Ryan J. Reilly Senior Justice Reporter, The Huffington Post and The Huffington Post in which the article first appeared.
WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump is not about to accept the outcome of this election.
Casting doubt on the very essence of our democratic system, Trump made his boldest the-election-is-rigged claim Wednesday night during the third and finalpresidential debate, refusing to commit to accepting the outcome of the race and claiming that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t even be allowed to a run ― claims that Clinton called “horrifying.”
“I will look at it at the time,” Trump said when asked whether he would accept the results. When debate moderator Chris Wallace pressed him on the issue, he said, “I’ll keep you in suspense.”
“If you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people who are registered to vote” who shouldn’t be registered, Trump said. He added that not only was there widespread corruption, but that Clinton “should not be allowed to run.”
“It is crooked,” he said. “She is guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run, and just in that respect, I say it is rigged.”
Trump was referring to Clinton’s email scandal, a subject he often hits. But Wednesday night was Trump’s most direct refusal to accept the results of the Nov. 8 election.
It was, as Clinton summed it up, “horrifying.”
“Every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, it is rigged against him,” Clinton said. “The FBI conducted a yearlong investigation into my emails that concluded there was no case.”
Clinton brought up that when the FBI said there was no case, Trump said the FBI was rigged. When he lost the Iowa caucus, he said that was rigged. When he lost the Wisconsin primary, he said that was rigged, too. When he got sued over fraud for Trump University, the court system was rigged. “There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row, and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged,” Clinton said.
“I should’ve gotten it,” Trump responded.
Clinton continued that this was how Trump thinks. “And it’s funny, but it’s also really troubling,” Clinton said. “That is not the way our democracy works. We’ve been around for 240 years, we’ve had free and fair elections, we’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them, and that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.”
“Let’s be clear about what he is saying, and what that means. He is denigrating, he is talking down our democracy, and I, for one, am appalled that somebody who is the nominee for one of our two major parties would take that position,” she said.
Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud played into a long-running myth that has been played up by Republican officials and the conservative media in recent years.
Still, as moderator Chris Wallace noted Wednesday night, Trump’s vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said the campaign would accept whatever outcome came. And Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said on CNN after the debate that they would accept the outcome.
But that wasn’t Trump’s position.
In recent weeks, Trump has taken to proclaiming that the election is rigged. What that means is unclear, probably on purpose.
At times, Trump has seemed to mean just that the media has colluded against him. On Wednesday night, he said the media was “so dishonest and so corrupt.” At other moments, “rigged” seems to mean our election is susceptible to wide-spread voter fraud.
While the first claim is difficult to prove either way ― what does collusion in this context even mean? ― the latter claim is demonstrably false. These elections are governed by states and local governments. Both parties have election watchers to point out and contest irregularities. Voting machines are tested in public with witnesses from both parties watching. There are backstops in place to check election results long after polls have closed.
To “rig” an election, it would take cooperation from multiple local officials, of both parties, in multiple counties, to affect just one state. And it would only take one whistleblower to blow up the plan.
In 14 years of elections, with more than 1 billion ballots cast, an investigation into voter fraud found just 31 cases of in-person fraud.
Still, Trump now raising questions about Clinton’s right to run for president is his most direct assault over the “rigged” election to date, and represents his most aggressive stance yet.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar,rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
The silence of the lambs: Why sheepish GOP leaders have been conspicuously quiet since Donald Trump’s debate debacle
Before Monday's debate, top Republicans were starting to vocally support Donald Trump, but since then? Crickets
Mitch McConnell; Paul Ryan (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon/J. Scott Applewhite/Photo montage by Salon)
Early last week, if you squinted hard enough it was possible to see the Republican Party beginning to unite behind presidential nominee Donald Trump. It was not overwhelming support. Nor was it the full-throated endorsement a partisan might want for the party’s nominee. It was more tepid, trending toward lukewarm.
Still, it was possible to read in the narrowing polling gap between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the possibility that Republicans who had spent months declaring themselves #NeverTrump were now coming home to the GOP. Prominent elected officials like Sen. Marco Rubio, who just a few months nearly broke down in tears over Trump’s success, and radio talk-show host Mark Levin, among others, decided the mogul was the lesser of two evils after all and gave him their grudging endorsements.
For crying out loud, even Ted Cruz endorsed Trump, after the latter had derided Cruz’s wife’s attractiveness and suggested the Texas senator’s father might have been an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. The endorsement was likely a craven career move by Cruz more than it was a sign of newfound warmth towards his party’s nominee. But considering his antics on the stage of the Republican National Convention two months ago, this might as well have been the Camp David accords.
Then came Monday night, and a Trump performance that ranked as likely the worst ever turned in by a major party nominee in a presidential debate. All of a sudden, you could not find anyone besides Rush Limbaugh and congressional back benchers like Marsha Blackburn to defend the GOP’s standard bearer.
For example, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has been missing in action since Monday. Ahead of the debate he tried his hardest to put a positive face on the pile of rotted orange peels in a suit that his party had nominated by suggesting that 14 season finales of Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” had prepared him for the debate. Priebus’ Twitter feed, which he has regularly used to slam Clinton, has been almost entirely silent.
GOP congressional leaders have said as little as possible. House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose relationship with Trump has been tenuous, tried to have it both ways. Hecalled the nominee’s performance “a unique Donald Trump response to the status quo” — but also suggested he should actually, you know, prepare for the next debate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell said Trump did “just fine,” which is what a Southerner says when he means the exact opposite.
McConnell’s caucus wasn’t much more forthcoming. Sen. John McCain, who has almost never met a reporter he wouldn’t chat up, would only say the debate was “interesting.” Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed Ryan by telling Trump to practice more. Rubio tried the time-honored dodge of telling reporters that he had missed the debate because he had been on a plane at the time but would catch the “highlights” later. As the British might say, pull the other one.
About the only well-known Republican to defend Trump, besides Limbaugh, was Cruz. The Texas senator, who seems to have gotten over his alleged hatred of the nominee, lavished praise on him while speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt. But considering how low Cruz’s approval ratings are in Texas, this seems like a transparently desperate move.
If debates are an opportunity to excite your base, then Trump seems to have completely whiffed with the first one. But more than that, it seems that his terrible night may have repelled already-skittish allies who were just starting to finally come around to his candidacy. Now they are distancing themselves as fast as possible, and not worrying about how awkward they might look while doing so.
Meanwhile, newspapers that had not endorsed a Democrat for president in decades or even over a century are endorsing Clinton while calling Trump’s myriad character flaws “disqualifying.” Anonymous leaks from the campaign on Wednesday painted a picture of its staff second-guessing itself and the boss while suggesting that Trump’s kids are unhappy enough to push their father to fire his top lieutenants and start over. And it doesn’t look as if there is anyone in the Republican Party who can step in and smooth things over.
This does not happen with campaigns that are confident of impending victory.
With six weeks to go until the election, it seems likely that the Republican elite will now completely hunker down, smile politely while keeping Trump at arm’s length (so that he doesn’t drag down with him members locked in tight re-election battles) and hope that the GOP can hold onto its Senate majority. Then assuming he goes down to a resounding defeat, the Republican elite can maybe reclaim the party from the virulent Trumpism that has infected it.
It is not much of a plan. But at this point, even a sudden discipline and yen for practice is probably not going to help Trump give even a moderately competent performance in a debate with Clinton. Even if he could suddenly turn into the second coming of Stephen Douglas, this is unlikely to make a difference with the voters. The GOP, after a brief moment of hope, is trying to get clear of the explosion to minimize the damage. We will see if it is a successful effort.
Will the debates finally kill off Trump 2016? The Donald is walking into a disaster
When Trump finally goes face to face with Clinton, that should drive the final nails into his political coffin
Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/Molly Riley)
It’s perhaps the most highly anticipated presidential match-up in the history of televised debates, and Donald Trump has chosen not to engage in the usual process of holding mock debates or studying briefing books. In other words, Trump isn’t prepping to debate Hillary Clinton, with the exception of having lunch with his closest advisers and radio talker Laura Ingraham to discuss the process. The Republican candidate who has somehow managed to bullshit his way through 15 months of campaigning in the same way a slacker in grade-school bullshits his way through an oral exam has chosen to stick with the same debate strategy that served him well during the primaries. That should invites significant peril when Trump finally encounters a one-on-one debate setting with Clinton next month.
“I believe you can prep too much for those things,” Trump explained last week. “It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony — like you’re trying to be someone you’re not.” There is, admittedly, some wisdom to avoiding over-preparation. But undecided voters, as well as the news media, expect a degree of formality in general election presidential debates, as opposed to the zany Gong Show format that emerged in the Republican primary debates, complete with jarring sound effects and stage sets that utilized every available piece of clear acrylic paneling ever fabricated. It’s the difference between a Triple-A baseball game in some third-tier heartland city and a World Series game in Yankee Stadium.
Trump is readying himself for another game show, and such an approach will likely hammer the final nail in his political coffin.
“I know who I am, and it got me here,” Trump continued. “I don’t want to present a false front. I mean, it’s possible we’ll do a mock debate, but I don’t see a real need.” Realistically, a mock debate doesn’t even seem possible for Trump. How do you pretend to bullshit, while preparing to bullshit for real?
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is doing exactly the right kind of homework. According toThe New York Times, Clinton is consulting with Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter on “The Art of the Deal,” in order to tap into Trump’s deepest insecurities, namely “his intelligence, his net worth and his image as a successful businessman.” The idea, we can assume, is to bait Trump into saying something obnoxious or damning, while also seizing the initiative against Trump, who will surely pull no punches.
“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” Schwartz told the Times. But the wild card here is, of course, the reality that Trump’s loyalists would prefer that he not suddenly appear on television behaving like a new, more “presidential” candidate. They crave the bullshit. Crave it.
Trump knows what the expectations are from his people. He’s too insecure to abandon his greatest hits, which also happens to be why he’s never really pivoted away from his existing persona for longer than a few hours. Indeed, many of his white male fanboys watch his speeches and attend his rallies specifically to hear Trump blurt his sitcom-ish catchphrases about building the wall or about “Crooked” Hillary or about how he has “the best words.” It’s like going to a Springsteen show and expecting to hear “Born to Run.” It’s what he does and it’s what his people expect. Plus, it’s easy for him to pull it off. On the other hand, it’s much harder for Trump to study, to read binders filled with wonk and to repeat those details in 10 words or less. Too much effort. Too much memorization.
Furthermore, Trump and his team (such as it is) are banking on the idea that there are still poachable undecided voters who will see the televised debate version of his Twitter-trolling shtick for the first time and fall in love with it long enough to carry him to November. If there are undiscovered Trumpers out there, they’re either keeping it to themselves or they simply haven’t been paying attention enough to know what he’s all about. Yes, that’s entirely possible, even knowing the obscene volume of uninterrupted airtime Trump enjoys on cable news. Some voters simply don’t bother with presidential elections until the debates. Maybe that will work for him, Trump and his staffers have to be thinking.
Unfortunately, the people who wait until the debates to decide whom to vote for also tend to be hyper-serious about their choices once they finally engage with the process. Most undecided voters expect decorum and presidential behavior on television, as do the moderators, who will absolutely not include Trump-friendly doormats like radio host Hugh Hewitt or Fox News’ Bret Baier.
At the same time, we know for a fact that Hillary Clinton is a good debater. Delivering a stump speech isn’t her strong suit, but bear in mind, however, that she almost always topped Barack Obama during the 2008 primary debates, and also did well against Bernie Sanders this year. Clinton also knows how to bear down and get tough when necessary. How can she not? She’s been swatting down feral political opponents for 30 years. Especially during foreign-policy exchanges, Trump will likely deal in sweeping bromides about how Clinton is the leader of ISIS and how we’ll make NATO countries pay for our support, etc, while she will appear at ease discussing foreign policy in a way that isn’t too wonky, yet will be wonky enough to underscore that she’s the only expert (and the the only potential president) on the stage. Trump will try to interject debunked accusations about Benghazi, or demand that she apologize to the families of those killed in that attack. Unless he couches it in an unexpected rhetorical flourish that fires up his base, that will likely be a losing strategy.
But given how often Clinton has fielded such attacks, including her masterful handling of an 11-hour grilling in Congress, it’s unlikely she’ll be shaken. And it’s exactly that kind of performance that will draw in more undecided voters than Trump’s predictably unorthodox improvisation. This is all to say that the less Trump prepares for the upcoming debates, the better off the world will be.
Will the debates finally kill off Trump 2016? The Donald is walking into a disaster
When Trump finally goes face to face with Clinton, that should drive the final nails into his political coffin
Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/Molly Riley)
It’s perhaps the most highly anticipated presidential match-up in the history of televised debates, and Donald Trump has chosen not to engage in the usual process of holding mock debates or studying briefing books. In other words, Trump isn’t prepping to debate Hillary Clinton, with the exception of having lunch with his closest advisers and radio talker Laura Ingraham to discuss the process. The Republican candidate who has somehow managed to bullshit his way through 15 months of campaigning in the same way a slacker in grade-school bullshits his way through an oral exam has chosen to stick with the same debate strategy that served him well during the primaries. That should invites significant peril when Trump finally encounters a one-on-one debate setting with Clinton next month.
“I believe you can prep too much for those things,” Trump explained last week. “It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony — like you’re trying to be someone you’re not.” There is, admittedly, some wisdom to avoiding over-preparation. But undecided voters, as well as the news media, expect a degree of formality in general election presidential debates, as opposed to the zany Gong Show format that emerged in the Republican primary debates, complete with jarring sound effects and stage sets that utilized every available piece of clear acrylic paneling ever fabricated. It’s the difference between a Triple-A baseball game in some third-tier heartland city and a World Series game in Yankee Stadium.
Trump is readying himself for another game show, and such an approach will likely hammer the final nail in his political coffin.
“I know who I am, and it got me here,” Trump continued. “I don’t want to present a false front. I mean, it’s possible we’ll do a mock debate, but I don’t see a real need.” Realistically, a mock debate doesn’t even seem possible for Trump. How do you pretend to bullshit, while preparing to bullshit for real?
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is doing exactly the right kind of homework. According toThe New York Times, Clinton is consulting with Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter on “The Art of the Deal,” in order to tap into Trump’s deepest insecurities, namely “his intelligence, his net worth and his image as a successful businessman.” The idea, we can assume, is to bait Trump into saying something obnoxious or damning, while also seizing the initiative against Trump, who will surely pull no punches.
“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” Schwartz told the Times. But the wild card here is, of course, the reality that Trump’s loyalists would prefer that he not suddenly appear on television behaving like a new, more “presidential” candidate. They crave the bullshit. Crave it.
Trump knows what the expectations are from his people. He’s too insecure to abandon his greatest hits, which also happens to be why he’s never really pivoted away from his existing persona for longer than a few hours. Indeed, many of his white male fanboys watch his speeches and attend his rallies specifically to hear Trump blurt his sitcom-ish catchphrases about building the wall or about “Crooked” Hillary or about how he has “the best words.” It’s like going to a Springsteen show and expecting to hear “Born to Run.” It’s what he does and it’s what his people expect. Plus, it’s easy for him to pull it off. On the other hand, it’s much harder for Trump to study, to read binders filled with wonk and to repeat those details in 10 words or less. Too much effort. Too much memorization.
Furthermore, Trump and his team (such as it is) are banking on the idea that there are still poachable undecided voters who will see the televised debate version of his Twitter-trolling shtick for the first time and fall in love with it long enough to carry him to November. If there are undiscovered Trumpers out there, they’re either keeping it to themselves or they simply haven’t been paying attention enough to know what he’s all about. Yes, that’s entirely possible, even knowing the obscene volume of uninterrupted airtime Trump enjoys on cable news. Some voters simply don’t bother with presidential elections until the debates. Maybe that will work for him, Trump and his staffers have to be thinking.
Unfortunately, the people who wait until the debates to decide whom to vote for also tend to be hyper-serious about their choices once they finally engage with the process. Most undecided voters expect decorum and presidential behavior on television, as do the moderators, who will absolutely not include Trump-friendly doormats like radio host Hugh Hewitt or Fox News’ Bret Baier.
At the same time, we know for a fact that Hillary Clinton is a good debater. Delivering a stump speech isn’t her strong suit, but bear in mind, however, that she almost always topped Barack Obama during the 2008 primary debates, and also did well against Bernie Sanders this year. Clinton also knows how to bear down and get tough when necessary. How can she not? She’s been swatting down feral political opponents for 30 years. Especially during foreign-policy exchanges, Trump will likely deal in sweeping bromides about how Clinton is the leader of ISIS and how we’ll make NATO countries pay for our support, etc, while she will appear at ease discussing foreign policy in a way that isn’t too wonky, yet will be wonky enough to underscore that she’s the only expert (and the the only potential president) on the stage. Trump will try to interject debunked accusations about Benghazi, or demand that she apologize to the families of those killed in that attack. Unless he couches it in an unexpected rhetorical flourish that fires up his base, that will likely be a losing strategy.
But given how often Clinton has fielded such attacks, including her masterful handling of an 11-hour grilling in Congress, it’s unlikely she’ll be shaken. And it’s exactly that kind of performance that will draw in more undecided voters than Trump’s predictably unorthodox improvisation. This is all to say that the less Trump prepares for the upcoming debates, the better off the world will be.
