Commentary
The three stages of subversion
The tycoon and his underlings have been repeating for months that they are so far ahead that only fraud on a vast scale could explain a defeat. Hardcore Trump supporters agree with Tucker Carlson's admonition to “never accept false defeat” this time.
In 2020, Trump lost the popular vote by seven million votes, and lost the Electoral College as well, despite his attempts to overturn the result. But amid the deep uncertainty on the eve of the election, the only truly reliable prediction is that no matter what happens, most likely on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday (morning in Italy), as the votes are still being counted, Donald Trump will claim that he won, and he will do so even more forcefully if the projections are not looking favorable to him at the time.
To be sure, a real Trump victory remains a possibility; but the most likely scenario is that we will have to wait perhaps up to a few days before knowing the actual outcome of the vote, especially in the key states where the result might be on a razor’s edge. It is precisely in this scenario that an attempt by Trump to subvert the outcome with a “stolen election” strategy could plausibly happen again.
Not only did Trump's party never admit defeat in 2020 – even though the results were confirmed by every audit and reaffirmed by the courts in 64 out of 65 lawsuits filed – but they have prepared the ground for a repeat of the false accusations that the other side stole the election.
The stage has been set by Trump constantly assuring his supporters that he was on track for an overwhelming victory. The tycoon and his underlings have been repeating for months that they are so far ahead that only fraud on a vast scale could explain a defeat.
In recent weeks, the party has stepped up its insinuations and nonsensical accusations of foreigners being imported to vote illegally, and has pushed fake news stories about ballot stuffing by the Democrats and voting machines hacked by the “Deep State” (or, optionally, China). The torrent of disinformation has not been slowed down by the complete lack of evidence for such claims, and has been amplified among the infosphere of right-wing podcasts, most of all by Elon Musk on X to his vast audience of 200 million followers – a devastating attack on the fragile hold of verifiable facts (and immune from lawsuits such as the defamation one that cost Fox News over $700 million in damages four years ago).
As 70 million citizens have already voted between mail voting and early in-person voting, the first phase of “Plan B” is already in place. On Thursday, Trump spread rumors about a supposed 2,600 fake ballots in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. On Friday, a deep fake video was shared online supposedly showing a “Haitian immigrant” about to destroy pro-Trump ballots. Although this was immediately linked to a Russian troll farm, such “dezinformatsiya” is notoriously immune to correction or official denial, perfectly adapted to activate “confirmation bias” among those who were already believers and sow suspicion and general confusion.
Hardcore Trump supporters agree with Tucker Carlson's admonition to “never accept false defeat” this time. Those words hide an implicit threat, and they have been fomenting suspicion and organizing countermeasures for months in the name of countering the supposed threat of election theft. Trump has often called for “flooding” polling stations with volunteer observers to prevent supposed fraud. These preparations evoke the specter of 2020, when angry mobs besieged vote counting centers under the slogan “Stop the steal!”
As a preventative measure, the centers have been fortified this year. In Maricopa County, Arizona, seat of the state capital, Phoenix, which has been at the center of election denialist conspiracies, the vote counting center will be guarded by drones and rooftop snipers. Bulletproof glass has been installed in Detroit and magnetometers have been set up in Philadelphia – all scenes that would have been dismissed as fantasy just a decade ago. And if there was any need to further highlight the fact that the federal system is perilously close to disintegration, in the “red states” (Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida) the local authorities (under GOP control) are refusing to allow observers from the federal Department of Justice to monitor the election.
This atmosphere is conducive to phase two of the plan. If the race ends up on a razor’s edge in one or more of the key swing states, as is entirely likely, lawsuits would be immediately filed by Trump’s team based on alleged irregularities. The primary purpose would be to freeze the count if it’s not going Trump’s way, increase the confusion and ratchet up the political pressure: same as the Florida scenario in the year 2000, when Al Gore, who had won the popular vote, lost the election in a “backroom” decision by the Supreme Court after a tug-of-war over 538 irregular votes in Florida.
Anticipating such a scenario, both parties have had teams of lawyers in place for months, and GOP lawyers have already filed more than 100 “preemptive” complaints. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, for example, their requests to restrict the counting of ballots from voters residing abroad were rejected, and on Friday the Supreme Court dismissed their petition to disqualify mail-in ballots on which the date had been mistakenly omitted.
But that’s not all: in the third phase of the plan, Trump's party will also be exerting pressure on state election boards. In 2020, Trump had personally called heads of election boards in a number of states, pressuring them to “find” the votes he needed to overturn Biden’s victory. At that point, the refusal by a number of officials – Republican but principled – made the difference and the pressure campaign failed. However, many of these officials have since been removed by the party and replaced with more “loyal” figures. And as a result, some election boards have introduced new rules that would allow election officials in small districts to unilaterally “suspend” certification in order to conduct “investigations” into supposed fraud.
After the results are certified by the states, there is the step of final ratification by Congress, and this is where the fourth phase of the plan could unfold. Four years ago, Trump’s plan was to send in “alternative” electors who favored Trump selected by GOP-dominated state legislatures in the swing states Trump had lost. The plan failed because Congress rejected these fake electors and Vice President Mike Pence ratified the real result.
This year, the vice president presiding over the Jan. 6 election certification session in Congress will be Kamala Harris herself; but it is also true that the delegation of MAGA congressmen could be much larger than in 2020, and it might be able to force a vote to reject ratification. And the date can only recall the shocking assault on the Capitol perpetrated by a mob of Trump supporters four years ago.
Over all these scenarios looms the specter of the Supreme Court, which, as the highest judicial authority, could have a decisive role in resolving a constitutional crisis and awarding the presidency if it is in dispute. And this time, the Court features an overwhelming majority of justices who have been openly in favor of Donald Trump.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/usa-le-tre-fasi-delleversione on 2024-11-03