Former President Donald J. Trump is convinced (at least in public) that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen. In fact, it is the single, consistent idea that has animated the forty-fifth president for the last three years.
I would dare argue that overcoming the humiliation of being a loser (something that Mr. Trump cannot stand) is the compelling force behind why the billionaire is subjecting himself to what is already proving to be a brutal election campaign.
Trump’s obsession, the rage that fuels his incandescent personality today, played out viscerally during his legal challenges to the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election three years ago.
The Wrath of Trump
The wrath over his loss to “Sleepy” Joe Biden drove Trump to take unnecessary legal risks, such as appearing to advocate for violence (which I do not believe he was doing) on January 6. It compelled Trump to embrace a desperate—gonzo, really—legal theory that said the vice-president could effectively refuse to recognize the results of the election in 2020 (this was the basis of the January 6 protest, by the way).
That notion is what made Trump place certain phone calls to Republican election officials, in contested states, like Georgia, where the forty-fifth president was recorded by those officials as apparently demanding that they just “find” him 11,780 votes to swing their state in favor of the Trump Campaign that year.
The grand jury investigation into Trump’s alleged election interference in Georgia is still underway. Most legal experts believe that the two investigations that pose the gravest legal threat to the former president are the mishandling of classified documents case (which Trump has already been indicted for) along with the Atlanta-based grand jury investigation into Trump’s supposedly threatening call in 2020 to Georgia election officials.
The belief is that Trump placed the call as part of a larger campaign to pressure the stressed election system to effectively overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election and return Trump to the White House.
As the Georgia grand jury investigation into claims that Trump tried to rig the Georgia election in his favor by placing undue pressure on Georgia Republican officials overseeing the election there, a new, unsubstantiated allegation related to election rigging has been disseminated to the press.
This time, from the other state that delivered a shocking defeat to the Republicans in 2020, the once-stalwart Red State-turned-battleground-state of Arizona.
According to new allegations reported in the press, former President Trump placed pressuring calls to Arizona election officials similar to the kind of call he was recorded having made to Georgia election officials.
In fact, it’s reported that Trump went one step further in Arizona than he did in Georgia: Trump deployed his vice-president, Mike Pence, to Arizona in order to more fully pressure recalcitrant election officials.
The report indicates that the former vice-president did, in fact, go to Arizona and meet with election officials. But, Pence made a conscious effort to avoid making any claims or actions that could have been construed as pressuring Arizona election officials during that rough period of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Copying-and-Pasting Illegality
A spokesman for Doug Ducey, who was the Republican governor of Arizona during the 2020 Election, insists that what Trump did in Arizona was a “copy-and-paste” of what Trump had done in the Georgia situation.
Former Governor Ducey has yet to comment on the matter directly, leaving it to his spokesman.
Since no recording exists of Trump’s attempts to pressure Arizona election officials during the darkest days of Trump’s election challenge, the report is unsubstantiated.
But it does mirror the fact pattern involved in the Georgia case.
In fact, at the time of the election crisis, Trump was complaining in public about the intransigence of Ducey in Trump’s challenge to the election.
What’s more, in November 2020, Ducey was recorded as ignoring a phone call in which his ringtone played the presidential jingle of “Hail to Chief,” a tune that Ducey likely chose to let him know that the president was calling.
We will never know what that phone call was about, since Ducey ignored the call. If it was, in fact, Trump, the forty-fifth president should thank his blessings that Ducey did not take the call.
Because, if he chose to record that call, it likely would have been yet another damaging legal problem for Trump to contend with today. Nevertheless, there is now a clear pattern of election interference by the former president not only in Georgia, but also in Arizona.
It is likely that the Atlanta grand jury investigation into allegations that Trump attempted to illegally interfere with the 2020 Presidential Election will result in yet another spate of serious indictments for the former president.
There is little doubt that the Democrats and their allies in the Administrative State are swamping the former president with an endless cavalcade of, if you’ll pardon the expression, trumped up charges.
Trump as a Tragic Shakespearian Character
Yet, there can be no doubt that the former president also exposed himself to many of these charges with his irresponsible actions, notably in relation to his challenge of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Because of his irresponsible behavior and incandescent rage over the matter, Trump got sloppy. He provided his enemies with ammunition to use against him that they otherwise would have lacked.
And, like some tragic Shakespearian character, Trump is likely going to be brought down by his own iniquities.
Trump’s downfall would be a curious event to watch, if not for the fact that he is likely to be the next GOP candidate for president.
Given that 2024 is the last year American voters have to save their dying republic from an oligarchic tyranny that President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party seek to impose upon us, Trump’s downfall could lead to the nightmare that those of us in the GOP have struggling to avoid: the end of America’s democracy.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
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