Saturday, February 9, 2019

What did Donald Trump do today?

He declared himself the (legitimate) winner of the 2020 election.

Trump's Saturday morning Twitter rant included this statement: that by asking his acting attorney general to testify at a hearing yesterday, "The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!"

No one on the House Judiciary Committee is running for president in 2020, but Trump may mean one of two things by that statement. 

One is that he believes he is simply too popular not to be re-elected. Trump's entitled to his opinion, but in terms of what actual voters are saying, this is, to put it mildly, absurd. Recent polls show 57% of Americans are already determined not to vote for him, and his approval rating is 15% underwater at 40%—which puts him at 11th out of the last twelve presidencies at this point in his term.

The other possibility is that Trump, who openly invited Russian interference on his behalf into the 2016 election—and got it in spades—is simply trying to undermine the idea that elections can be legitimate. This is a tactic he used during the 2016 election: he declared the election was "rigged" months before it took place, when polls showed him losing, and then promised to abide by the result of the election if and only if he won.

Why should I care?

  • Accusing others of things you have done is called projection, and it is not a sign of good mental health.
  • Neither is an inability to accept that people may not all love you.
  • In a democracy, the results of elections aren't legitimate if and only if the "right" candidate wins.