Will Donald Trump cause another Jan. 6? (NBC)
What if a presidential candidate is asked this straightforward question: "Will you accept the results if the vote count shows you lost?" The answer should be a simple "yes." But Donald Trump, now in his third presidential campaign, still can't seem to give that simple answer. In a piece at The New Republic, Hafiz Rashid writes that this says a lot about Trump as a person -- and none of it is good. What does it tell us about the presumptive Republican Party nominee?
(1) He's a sore loser;
(2) He puts his own grievances, which might have no basis in fact, over the good of the country;
(3) He doesn't trust American institutions, including the electoral system, which has no history of producing fraudulent results -- certainly not in the past 60-plus years. (The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon produced signs of possible vote fraud that tended to favor Kennedy in Illinois. An investigation produced evidence of voting irregularities, but they were determined not to be significant enough to change the outcome -- and Kennedy was declared the winner.)
(4) Trump thinks that he, and he alone, can determine whether a nationwide election was "honest," by his standards -- whatever they are;
(5) Trump's comments suggest that an election can only be "honest" if he wins;
(6) Trump has hinted that he is willing to put the country through another Jan. 6-style nightmare if he does not like the way the 2024 election turns out?
Under the headline "Trump Explains Exactly What He’d Do if He Loses the Next Election; Donald Trump is revealing the truth about who he is," Rashid writes:
Donald Trump still can’t give a straight answer on whether he’d accept the results if he loses the election.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-SentinelWednesday -- on a day off from his hush-money trial in New York --the former president said he’d only accept a loss in November’s presidential election “if everything’s honest.”
How would Trump, one of the candidates, make that determination. He suggests that he alone would make it, and he only would be happy with a result where he wins. Is this more evidence that Trump is a malignant narcissist, perhaps with a touch of histrionic personality disorder? Our best guess is "yes." Rashid writes:
“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump said. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country. But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be—a lot of changes have been made over the last few years—but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results.”
Does that sound convincing to you? It sounds like B.S. to me. Here is how Rashid views Trump's equivocations:
That’s a big caveat, leaving him plenty of wiggle room to claim “dishonesty!” if Joe Biden gets more votes. Trump has never said that he’d accept election results where he didn’t win. In 2016, he complained of a “rigged election” in August, which he would repeat often on the campaign trail, and then just weeks before November’s election, he again claimed he’d accept the results “if I win.”
In 2020, Trump didn’t concede in his loss to Biden and fought the results every step of the way, from his lawyers attempting fake elector schemes to arguably inciting an insurrection at the Capitol building on the day the country’s election results were certified. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his election loss spawned what is known as the Big Lie: that he was the legitimate winner in 2020 and the election was stolen from him. Many of his faithful supporters still believe it in earnest.
Trump’s historical and recent comments do not bode well for November. He has hinted at another insurrection attempt if he loses, and he still hasn’t faced consequences for his last attempt, thanks to the Supreme Court. The far right has signaled its willingness to react with violence, including even some politicians. Whether Trump wins or loses, the scenarios don’t look good.
