Chris Wallace may work for Fox News, but he just conducted the most revealing and harrowing interview Donald Trump has yet faced as president. Please watch it.
On the facts, it was a spanking from start to finish. When Trump claimed that America has among the world’s lowest death rates from Covid-19, Wallace answered “That’s not true, sir.” The data shows that our death rate is among the highest in the world, as a share of population.
When Trump claimed that Joe Biden wants to “defund the police” Wallace again challenged him, pointing out that Biden has explicitly rejected the idea.
When Trump said America has the most confirmed cases of Covid-19 because we test more, Wallace noted that testing is up 37 percent, while confirmed cases are up 194 percent. “It isn’t just that testing is up,” Wallace noted. “It’s that the virus has spread.”
It went on like that for 40 minutes, a new and more potent kind of fact-checking, face-to-face and live.
But the most extraordinary moment came when Wallace asked whether the president was prepared to accept defeat if he lost the election, as public polls warn.
“You don’t know until you see,” Trump said. “It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do.”
Stop and let that sink in. An American president is warning us that he might not accept the verdict of voters. And by repeating his claim, against all evidence, that mail-in voting opens the door to massive fraud, he seems to be preparing his base to stick with him, democracy or not.
“One fear is that he just won’t leave,” says Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-7th. “If he handcuffs himself to the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom that’s a logistical problem not a Constitutional one. The more legitimate fear is that he’s setting up an argument that his supporters should not accept the legitimacy of the election, and that takes us into uncharted waters.
“Our country has been blessed with elections that the losing side always concedes are legitimate. That allows us to maintain civil peace even if half the people are upset about the outcome. And Trump may be preparing to deny us that if he loses.”
That scenario would present the ultimate test for the battered and diminished Republican Party. If GOP governors and state legislators stick with Trump, they could try to block Biden’s certification as president, as happened once before, in 1876, when the impasse was finally resolved with the darkest bargain in American history. Democrats agreed to yield on the condition that the new Republican president, Rutherford Hayes, withdraw federal troops from the former Confederate states, allowing white supremacists to rule with brutality and violence across the South for nearly a century.
Trump’s dangerous attitude is in keeping with Republican efforts to erect barriers to voting. The infamous 2018 election in Georgia was overseen by Brian Kemp, then secretary of state who was also the GOP candidate for governor. He beat Stacey Abrams by a hair after purging 8 percent of the voting rolls. In Florida, voters agreed to allow felons to vote, but the GOP legislature added a requirement that all fines must be paid first, knowing many poor ex-cons would not be able to clear the hurdle. If you believe elections are sacred, as we were taught as children, this type of move is beyond obscene, and a chilling warning about what could happen in 2020.
Congress needs to hold hearings to explore these scenarios before November, as Malinowski suggests. But a landslide in November would do the trick. We have seen Trump’s colors. If the margin is close, he will cause all the mischief he can. What we need in November is not just a win, but a crushing blow to Trump and all he stands for. It’s the surest way to safeguard our democracy.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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July 21, 2020 at 08:07PM
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