Trump’s unfounded confidence sets stage for election denial

By
Martyn Bradbury
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33
867

The unfounded confidence from MAGA that Trump has already won the election is a purposeful strategy to set the stage for election denial…

MAGA world’s hyper-confidence

Former President Trump’s surrogates, allies and foot soldiers appear supremely confident he’ll win next week, projecting an air of inevitability inconsistent with what polls portray as a coin flip, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.

    • “We’ve never had data that looks this good,” a longtime member of Trump’s inner circle told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump could win, potentially in a landslide. So could Vice President Harris. Yet the MAGA universe largely refuses to entertain the latter outcome — priming Trump’s base for mass distrust, disbelief and denial of a second straight election loss.

The big picture: Like most partisan media, the pro-Trump echo chamber self-selects news, polls and predictions that point to a decisive victory for the former president on Nov. 5.

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    • Conservative media routinely downplay Trump’s vulnerabilities — such as his racist rhetoric and his former chief of staff suggesting he’s a “fascist” — while amplifying Harris’ gaffes and bad polls.
    • Pro-Trump X accounts with huge followings have triumphantly declared at various points during the campaign — most recently after Trump’s McDonald’s photo op and his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast — that the election is “over.”
    • Some MAGA influencers exploit gullible followers by citing anonymous “DC insiders” or “White House officials” who allegedly say Harris’ internal polling has collapsed — racking up thousands of reposts.

Between the lines: All of this — paired with the already rampant MAGA belief that Democrats “rig” elections — is setting the stage for a wholesale rejection of a potential Harris victory by Trump supporters.

    • “[T]here is a real danger when media echo chambers falsely and knowingly tell half the country that their candidate is going to win,” conservative writer Matt Lewis warned Monday.

At Trump’s triumphant rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, guest speaker Tucker Carlson captured the sort of conspiratorial thinking fostered by this bubble of hyper-confidence.

    • “Ten days from now … It’s going to be pretty hard to look at us and say, ‘You know what? Kamala Harris, she got 85 million votes because she’s just so impressive,'” Carlson said mockingly.

Zoom in: Trump himself has falsely claimed that the only way he could lose the 2024 election is if Democrats “cheat,” ignoring polls that show a margin-of-error race in all seven battleground states.

    • “She’s actually imploding, if you take a look, because look, I’m not supposed to say it, but we are leading by so much,” Trump declared in Las Vegas last week.

Behind the scenes: Internal polls “have Trump doing well in all seven swing states. He’s up, but still within the margin of error. They are right to project confidence for that reason,” a source involved in the Trump campaign told Axios’ Alex Thompson.

    • “However, arrogance is how mistakes are made — such as the stupid f**king rally [on Sunday],” the source added, referring to the Madison Square Garden event.

What to watch: There are signs the Trump campaign truly believes the former president is dominating the race — or at least wants the public to believe that in the final days before the election.

…this hyper confidence for an election that is so close allows MAGA fanatics to claim the election has been stolen if Trump loses.

We could get this situation where there isn’t a clear winner during which Trump exploits the need to count the Specials and demands the entire election is moved to the Senate where he hopes to win using a tie breaking vote from the Republican Speaker…

Outcry over Trump’s hint at ‘little secret’ with House Republicans 

However, some observers and Democratic politicians believed the most telling remark of the night came from the Republican nominee himself after he introduced Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, on stage and alluded to a shared secret.

“We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the congressional elections at stake next week.

“We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret – we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”

Trump embellished the tease with no further clues. But commentators and some Democrats drew their own conclusions.

In its Playbook column, Politico described the aside as “potentially … sinister comments that could be a reference to the House settling a contested election”.

Dan Goldman, a Democratic representative from New York, was more explicit, telling CNN that Trump’s motivation for staging the rally – in a state he has no chance of winning – was boosting Republican candidates in an effort to ensure a Republican majority in Congress at a time when it will have the role of certifying the presidential election result.

“Why did Donald Trump come to New York nine days before the election? The state is going to go to Kamala Harris,” Goldman said.

“The answer is that the House really runs through New York. There are seven races that could go either way in the house, and that will likely determine the majority.

“On January 6, the certification of the electoral college will happen again, and as we know from 2021, whoever is in control of the House of Congress will have a lot of say on what happens on January 6. I suspect Donald Trump’s little secret plan with Mike Johnson is a backup plan for when he loses and he tries to go to the House of Representatives to throw out the electoral college.”

The situation under a Republican-controlled Congress would be a reverse of the certification process that followed the 2020 election, Goldman said. Then, Trump tried to deploy the then vice-president, Mike Pence – presiding over affairs in his constitutional role – to block the procedure at a time when the Senate and the House were controlled by the Democrats.

The gambit failed when Pence refused to play along, precipitating the attack on the US Capitol by a Trump-supporting mob, some of whom called for Pence to be hanged.

“If it’s the reverse, the Republicans have a lot more opportunity and a lot more possibilities for overturning this election,” Goldman said. “That I believe is what Donald Trump’s secret with Mike Johnson was.”

…Trump could steal the election while claiming it has been stolen from him!

We have less than. week as the American Midnight inches closer.

 

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33 COMMENTS

  1. Martyn – The election will, at this stage, come down to a few thousand voters in 7 states…Harris has not done enough to earn their votes…saying “Donald Trump is unstable and bad”, is not helping the people who need it.

    • Although Harris only gained support from the Obamas at the last minute (and is an egregious loquacious brain free zone), Trump is worse, will throw a tantrum if he loses and potentially cause serious instability. American election results are slow and there is plenty of material for the politics of discontent to feed on. I think the Dems are hyping up their Nazi Armageddon rhetoric and it won’t help either. So glad I don’t live there.

  4. The USA is a tinderbox. I expect that whoever loses, some elements will take to the streets to protest, and it could be ugly.

    Overall, if Harris genuinely wins, it is the nature of most Republicans that most will accept it and move on. However, if Trump wins, the Democrat ‘machine’ will almost certainly instigate riots, because they have a long track record of this. They will do this to tempt an incoming Trump presidency to deploy troops to quell the riots so they can justify claims that he’s a fascist.

    Where it could turn into war is if Harris wins and there is evidence of electoral shenanigans (again). That’s when the Trump base may go armed.

    • Have you missed all the framed rhetoric coming from MAGA? They’re the ones creating the tinderbox – just like the right wing here have created the division towards Maori.

      electoral shenanigans (again) – what are you on about AGAIN.

      FFS – some people are so far up their own arse.

      If Trump wins and MAGA starts pushing their weight around against US citizens – the US will burn. Democrat “machine” or not.
      If Harris wins and MAGA starts pushing their weight around against US citizens – MAGA will be stomped on like the cretinous bugs they are.

      • You have to laugh at Andrews opinion , if Trump wins its a fair election, if Trump loses it’s a rigged election and the Democrats will instigate riots?

        I’m not quite sure if Andrew is deliberately thick or it comes naturally because the last time everyone looked Trump was responsible for the riot and the insurrection at the last election and to paraphrase Trump, ” fight like hell”.

  5. The betting markets are calling a clear victory for Trump which given Harris’ slow implosion is hardly surprising. There’s one option that’s not mentioned, what if Trump sweeps the board and wins both the electoral college and the popular vote? The Dems will just have to STFU then but will they? If the betting markets are to believed it won’t happen but the delta between the popular vote is marginal so it could.

    The Dems really should have run a primary and chosen a candidate that everyone thought was totally useless just six months ago. Someone like Shapiro would have crushed Trump. Instead they went with the DEI hire and blew their own foot off in the process.

  6. “Where it could turn into war is if Harris wins and there is evidence of electoral shenanigans (again). That’s when the Trump base may go armed”

    I can’t believe that NZ citizens could fall so far down the rabbit hole as you have Andrew.
    Provide bullet proof evidence of electoral shenanigans? There was no evidence last time as proven by Trump appointed Judges. You are an embarrassment.

    • Not factually true. They never disproven in court. The courts just decided there was no jurisdiction. That became “false accusations” in the media narrative.
      Folks gotta stop reading the corrupt media headlines and thinking they’re informed.

      I mean, it was so obvious. The sudden swings had experienced and honest election observers left gaping. Experts were calling for Trump while Biden was saying hold on he’s confident – because of postal votes, There was a 4 year power struggle between the CIA-Swamp and the incompetent tool Trump. They had no intention of letting him win again and foil their plans for another 4 years.

  7. At the very least Trump earned his presidential nomination, as did Clinton and Obama before him. Biden’s creeping dementia and his son’s moral and financial scandals were hidden by the media in 2020 and an unpopular DEI hire forced upon Democrats this year. Talk about election rigging. That military-industrial (I’d add media and pharma) complex y’all so concerned about is plumbing the depths. Yep, even Michelle is going low. Sad.

  8. Elections have become a farce world-wide. Donald Trump can say that the US presidential election was “stolen” and the western media, including the New Zealand media, assure us that Trump’s claims are “false”. The same media then hastens to declare that the election in Georgia was “stolen” by the Georgian Dream party. No evidence is deemed necessary, and in fact it is impossible to conclusively show that an election conducted through a secret ballot has been stolen or otherwise perverted. Everything has to be taken on trust.
    Politicians steal elections in order to stay in power, and they falsely claim that elections have been stolen so that they can have a pretext for fomenting civil war. No one in politics wants to take the one simple and obvious step which would bring an end to this perversion of democracy. No one wants to restore the open ballot system which had been a fundamental feature of democracy for millennia, because the current secret ballot system allows politicians to steal elections or to make false allegations of stolen elections depending on the circumstances of the time and where their interests happen to lie. To that end they are willing to drag the world’s peoples into civil wars and wars between nations. It has become ridiculous, and it is no surprise that people are deserting western “democracy” in droves.

    • I gather it has something to do with Trumps sordid history but hey despite Trump appointed Judges claiming no election fraud many on this site blame the media for Trumps downfall. I have one question for all those Trump supporters, have you actually listened to Trump? He talks from the gutter, Harris doesn’t, no wonder the medias view on Harris is better than Trumps, remember his pussy grabbing remark, remember Harris’s?

      • Male locker room talk and sexual impropriety are common to most politicians. Think Clinton, Boris Johnson, Joe Biden or any of the British Labour 25, but patsy socialists don’t concern themselves with their improprieties. Harris is a DEI hire promoted beyond her competence by Willie Brown (there’s a great joke there for punsters) and Obama. And women are supposed to be grateful for that? Gee you must think we all have low morals.

  10. Does anyone on this site have enough prove positive of what they say is correct.
    You listen to Trump and most reasonable people would surely think this is unpleasant person with little redeeming features theh you listen to Harris and you thinks she is a practiced speaker and has a reasonable manne
    The delema for Americans when you come to vote is do you base your vote on the leader or the party and their policies ..
    I think it is going to be a close call and if it is there will be many lawyers buying flash cars as they prepare the upcoming court battles

  12. Dems have done the same old Anti-Trump of the last 9 years over addressing the causes that produced him. Harris’s last speech, Bob Reich on Fbook asked her to address the neoliberal economics that kill ordinary people but she didn’t. The donors.

    The donors who wouldn’t have accepted Bob’s pal Bernie in 2020. Great guys but the Gracchi of their Republic.

  13. Equally, the ” “it’s so close!” narrative is a nice fore-runner for a surprise Kamala win, with more of those unexplained bags of 90% democratic votes turning the tide “for democracy”.
    No one has gone back and explained the extraordinary U-turn of numbers last election. Because they do not bear up under examination.

    And lets not forget – the US wrote the book on declaiming elections. Anyone they don’t like wins? If it’s a large margin, it’s proof it is rigged, if it’s a narrow margin, it’s proof it is rigged. They’re not bitching about Moldova’s obvious gerrymandering.

  14. The Left and cranks are almost synonymous. Reading the comments. I’m not a phrenologist like socialist g. granddad.

  15. Hands up all those who aren’t quite sure that they’re on the right side of history.

    Thicker gloves. . . .

Comments are closed.