Think Trump won't cancel the election? Don't kid yourself. | Opinion

Think Trump won't cancel the election? Don't kid yourself. | Opinion You could stack the 'Nah, Trump would never do anything like that' responses from the past year alone one on top of the other and have a sturdy ladder to the stratosphere.

Show Caption Hide Caption Why is Trump's interest in Greenland a potential threat to NATO? Why is President Donald Trump's interest in Greenland a potential threat to NATO?

So President Donald Trump has again floated the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, telling Reuters on Jan. 14 that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election."

The broad response to that dictator-ish comment from a president with a known affinity for dictators was, and I’m paraphrasing: “Aw, shucks, Trump’s just being Trump, that’s not possible and there’s no way he’s crazy enough to try that!”

My response to those responses is: “Are you all new here?”

You think Trump wouldn't try to cancel elections? Hah!

America is where it’s at right now – with a city under siege by the federal government, with NATO allies worrying we’re about to invade Greenland, with everything around us getting the name “Trump” attached to it – because people doubted Trump would actually do something insane, illegal, indecent or unpopular.

You could stack the “Nah, he’d never do anything like that” responses from the past year alone, one on top of the other, and have a sturdy ladder to the stratosphere.

There is nothing rational about Trump, and expecting normalcy is nuts

On Jan. 16, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut was asked about Trump’s ongoing threats to take over Greenland either by payment or military force.

“There’s a lot of eye-rolling in the United States Senate on both sides of the aisle about this bizarre threat to invade Greenland,” Blumenthal said, adding, “There's just no way that I can see it happening if the president is the least bit rational.”

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My dude, have you been inhabiting a secluded cave on Connecticut’s Bear Mountain, communing only with squirrels for the past decade? Donald Trump still won’t admit he lost the 2020 presidential election, and you think there’s a chance he’s “the least bit rational.”

The man is a 79-year-old slurry of ego and greed who wouldn’t know impulse control if it bit him on the swollen cankles.

The “Oh, no, he would NEVER do such a thing” crowd must have grown up with charred fingers from constantly touching red-hot stove burners, thinking, “This time it FOR SURE won’t be hot!”

Trump, if he wants, will absolutely try to cancel the 2026 elections

C’mon, folks. If Trump wants to try to cancel the 2026 elections, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to try to do it, because charging through guardrails is kind of his thing. And our guardrails don't seem to be that durable.

The president fired up the king-like idea Jan. 6, when he told a group of House Republicans that the Democrats are awful garbage humans who have “the worst policy,” griping about “how we have to even run against these people.”

Trump said, “I won’t say cancel the election, ‘They should cancel the election,’ because the fake news would say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”

It’s funny how when you say a bunch of stuff a dictator would say, people tend to wonder if perhaps you want to be a dictator.

Look at all the insane things Trump has already done

Rather than pass off Trump's election-canceling idea as nonsense, let’s reflect on other things we collectively thought he’d never actually do.

I, personally, did not expect he would incite a violent uprising in an attempt to overturn a free-and-fair election, then continue to never concede the election, then not be held accountable for the aforementioned violent uprising, then manage to get reelected despite the violent uprising, then pardon all the mopes who were involved in the violent uprising. But every bit of that happened, marking the precise point in American history when everything stopped making sense.

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When Trump started babbling about a White House ballroom while ignoring rising food prices, few thought he would tear down the entire East Wing without any prior approval, then quickly double the estimated cost of said unnecessary ballroom to $400 million. RIP the East Wing.

A Venezuela invasion, a used Nobel Peace Prize and no Epstein files

I didn’t think Trump would attack Venezuela without congressional approval, remove the president, effectively take over the nation’s oil then sell a bunch of that oil and, according to CNN, stash the $500 million in a bank account in Qatar, a country that – and I also didn’t think this would happen – recently gifted Trump a “flying palace” jet that is now being retrofitted to act as Air Force One

Few would have guessed that Trump would take someone's used Nobel Peace Prize and proudly accept it as his own, but Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is now Nobel Peace Prize-less, and Trump has the most unearned participation trophy in history.

I’m sure a lot of Republicans and MAGA supporters eager to see the Jeffrey Epstein files didn't expect Trump and Co. to effortlessly blow past a Dec. 19 deadline set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump himself signed into law. Most didn't believe Trump, in an effort to distract attention from the Epstein files, would invade a large Midwestern city like Minneapolis with unruly and untrained ICE agents, then threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Few envisioned he would saber-rattle so loudly that our NATO allies would have to conduct military exercises in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion of Greenland.

Trump is slapping his name on anything that doesn't keep moving

I didn’t think Trump’s name would actually be added to the Kennedy Center, much less placed ahead of John F. Kennedy’s name. I didn’t think they’d rename the U.S. Institute of Peace the “Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace.” I didn’t think Trump’s mug would wind up on passes to National Parks or on million dollar Trump Gold Cards that give people expedited visas.

The road to our current hell is paved with claims that Trump would never do something precedent-defying, crooked or flatly stupid. If anything, the message of this already catastrophic second term should be: If he says it and it sounds preposterous, assume it’s going to happen.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.