Trump's Plan Isn't Merely Cheating. It's a Hijacking.

Tout les 'Toobz were abuzz on Sunday with this scooplet from Axios about the nice shiny gaslight that the administration* is polishing up for your Election Night viewing pleasure.

Many prognosticators say that on election night, Trump will likely appear ahead in Pennsylvania — though the state's final outcome could change substantially as mail-in ballots are counted over the following days. Trump's team is preparing to claim baselessly that if that process changes the outcome in Pennsylvania from the picture on election night, then Democrats would have "stolen" the election. Trump's advisers have been laying the groundwork for this strategy for weeks, but this is the first account of Trump explicitly discussing his election night intentions.

On ABC on Sunday, speaking to an obviously distracted George Stephanopoulos, White House adviser and noted family-planning consultant Jason Miller made it clear that the president*'s campaign long ago abandoned any pretense of winning this election on the merits.

“If you speak with many smart Democrats, they believe that Trump will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electoral [votes] — somewhere in that range, and then they’re gonna try to steal it back after the election.

Stephanopolous, perhaps lost in the music of the spheres, let this astonishing revelation pass unremarked.

Campaigns never make it quite this plain. Every campaign believes in winning by any means, fair or acceptably foul. But this is so far out of bounds that it's out in Lot C grilling burgers for the tailgate. The president*'s campaign is stating, flatly, that, given the right set of circumstances, it intends to pretend to have won re-election because only votes cast on Election Day are legitimate votes.

The temperature is rising in the streets. Stephanie Keith Getty Images

The president*'s campaign is saying right out loud what it plans to do. There is brownshirt thuggery in the streets and a remarkable number of local police seem to be on board with vigilante electioneering. On the more polite side of things, the infrastructure of partisan finagling in the courts is in place. (The idea that there even is a hearing in a federal court on Monday that may result in over 100,000 legitimate votes in Houston being thrown out is a towering outrage, especially now that the Texas Supreme Court, which never has been a fraternal organization for democratic socialists, has for the third time declared that it wants no part of this decision.) This part of the operation, of course, was born when Chief Justice John Roberts declared the Day of Jubilee. Since that day in 2013, over 1,000 polling places have been closed in the states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After four years of installing Federalist Society bots at all levels of the federal judiciary, the architecture of a mockery is all in place. It is no wonder the president*'s campaign can announce so plainly that it intends to bumrush the entire process. This isn't "cheating." It's more violent than that. It's a hijacking.

This isn't "cheating." It's more violent than that. It's a hijacking.

This reality puts a massive responsibility on the shoulders of the legitimate political media. (Fox News, we can assume, will be happy to go along with the program.) They have been warned. The precedents from 2000 are not encouraging, god knows. But that year, at least, a lot of the ratfcking took place offstage. For example, the infamous Florida purge list didn't come to widespread public notice until it already had purged. Some of what went on—the "Brooks Brothers riot," to name one famous episode—was very nearly an improv. This time, the president*'s campaign is sharing the entire playbook in advance, and every bit of it should be factored into the coverage of the election. One side of this election doesn't care for democratic self-government, and is committed to sabotaging it from the streets to the courtrooms. That's the only story that matters.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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