Here’s the scary thing that ensures this rhetoric will only escalate: By labeling his multiple indictments “election interference” (the very crime of which he is charged by both federal and state prosecutors), Trump has now made his “rigged election” claim for 2024 well over a year in advance. If and when he loses the general election, he won’t have to contrive allegations of voting by noncitizens (as he did in 2016 in order to argue he actually won the popular vote) or demonize voting by mail (as he did in 2020 before, during and after his Election Night victory declaration), or seize on fabricated anecdotes of fraudulent conduct by election officials (another 2020 hardy perennial). In the view from the MAGA fever swamps, it’s now impossible for Trump to have a fair shot at regaining the presidency. If he wins despite the massive “election interference” he faces, he is fully justified in unleashing the vengeance that is so prominent a part of his 2024 message. If he seems to lose … it’s clearly grounds for whatever extra-constitutional redress he and his supporters choose.
Agreed. And if they try to pull a J6 in 2025, they’re going to find out what the government does to insurrectionists when they don’t have an idiot in the whitehouse putting their thumb on the scale.
We hope. There are a frightening number of Trump supporters still in positions in our government that could end up backing a second insurrection. Look at all (literally all) of the Secret Service messages from on or about January-6. Oh wait, you can’t because every single agent erased their phones and the servers on which those messages were stored. An that was after they were told to retain those messages. How many people still in positions of power would, either discretely or overtly, support a second insurrection?