Donald Trump didn’t simply refuse to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses in November. He admitted to one of his plans to overturn the election results.
“Well, we're going to have to see what happens," Trump said when first asked if he would “commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the November election.” He continued, "You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.” But it’s when the reporter, Brian Karem of Playboy magazine, pressed again, that Trump really laid it out.
“Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
Get rid of the ballots. As in, throw out the votes. There won’t be a transfer. That’s the plan. Win or lose, Trump plans to find a way to stay. In the past, we’ve been lectured about whether to take Trump literally or seriously. In this case, the answer is both, but either one would be a terrifying move to authoritarian dictatorship.
Getting rid of the ballots isn’t the only component of Trump’s plan to steal the election. The Trump campaign is also looking into using state legislatures to overturn results by selecting electors who will support Trump despite the voters choosing Biden. And of course Trump has already conducted test runs of state violence against protesters.
Once again, like the villain in a bad movie, Trump is pausing in the middle of his nefarious plan to explain the nefarious plan. Even though he’s not telling us anything we couldn’t have guessed he was thinking, the fact that he’s saying it is significant—a true emergency for democracy, already.
“Even if meant to distract, these are powerful words to come from a president,” Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer told The New York Times. “He’s clearly accelerating his effort to set up a challenge to an outcome that is unfavorable to him.”
That means the fight back needs to accelerate as well. The absolute first line of defense is for Joe Biden to win big. Huge. Way, way past the margin of cheating. The second line of defense is a robust legal effort, of the kind the Biden campaign has already set up, to protect the election results not just from normal voter suppression but from all of the Trump campaign’s more, uh, creative(ly illegal) attempts to steal the election. State election officials who don’t want to enable the theft of an election need to be ready to protect their ballots and their counting process.
Added to that, the media needs to get very serious about what’s going on. As Trump has ratcheted up the election-stealing talk, there’s been a rash of tweeted complaints from national political reporters about how Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris aren’t doing enough interviews with them, and how Biden is sometimes late for events. Reporters need to grapple with this reality: no more petty both-sidesing complaints about access and timing. Instead, a serious and literal focus on what Trump is signaling—and sometimes flat-out telling us—about his plans.
As for the rest of us, alongside working to deliver that huge, beyond-the-margin-of-cheating election victory, we need to be ready to be in the streets. There needs to be a massive response ready in the fight for democracy.
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