INDIANAPOLIS — On the face of it, Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump continues to say bizarre things at his rallies, but his intent is right there for all to see.
Trump said at The Believers’ Summit on July 26 in Florida: “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
Asked to clarify Trump’s intent, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement: “President Trump was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American.”
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday urged him to reframe that notion. Instead, he doubled down: “I said, ‘Vote for me; you’re not going to have to do it ever again.’ It’s true.”
“You meant you [they] won’t have to vote for you because you’ll have four years in office,” Ingraham pressed.
“I’m saying, ‘Go out; you must vote,’” Trump replied. “I said to the Christians in the room … ‘You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed. … We won’t even need your vote anymore because, frankly, we will have such love.’”
For those who see Trump as an aspiring autocrat, the concern is that if he returns to the White House next January, he will ignore the constitutional term limits that came with the 22nd Amendment.
Section 1 reads: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
Trump has often praised autocratic leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, both of whom rewrote their constitutions to extend their power. Xi is now “president for life.”
In 2018, President Trump reacted at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida, saying, “He’s now president for life. President for life. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
Such rhetoric sends chills down the spines of Americans who value democracy because Trump has acted like an aspiring autocrat repeatedly. He says routinely that elections have been “rigged” and “stolen” with virtually no evidence to back up those assertions. Jan. 6, 2021, is Exhibit A, when he sent a mob of supporters to the U.S. Capitol in an assault aimed at disrupting the decertification process. The attack wounded more than 140 cops and prompted over 1,000 federal criminal charges.
He has since called for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution and said on Fox News he would only be a “dictator ... on day one.” He has threatened to execute Gen. Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, and hold “televised military tribunals” for political opponents ranging from Liz Cheney to former Vice President Mike Pence.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “I think he’s obviously making a joke about how bad things had been under Joe Biden.”
A joke?
Trump is also saying at rallies something completely antithetical for a presidential nominee. He is repeatedly telling supporters he doesn’t need their votes. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes; I have so many votes,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” on July 25.
And in Detroit earlier this summer, Trump said, “Listen, we don’t need votes. Don’t worry about votes.”
What is going on here?
Those remarks appear to be part of a planned Trump campaign assault on the nation’s patchwork of local and state election certification. That could lurch America into a constitutional crisis between the November election and the January 2025 inauguration if several counties refuse to certify results, thus holding up entire states.
The goal here would be to discredit the election by blowing certification deadlines, thus throwing the stalled process to the U.S. House to decide what is called a “contingent election.” That has occurred three times, in 1801, 1825 and 1837.
“Certification is kind of a new Wild West of election work,” Stephanie Jackson Ali, the policy director for voting rights group New Georgia Project, told CNN. “If you can hold up certification, then it really brings into question, can the state certify as a whole?”
Republicans on Washoe County’s Board of Commissioners in Nevada refused to certify local election results, as did Republicans on a board of canvassers in Delta County, Michigan, CNN reported.
The Associated Press reported in June: “The past four years have been filled with battles over all sorts of election arcana, including one that had long been regarded as an administrative afterthought — little-known state and local boards certifying the results. With the presidential election looming in November, attorneys are gearing up for yet more fights over election certification, especially in the swing states where the victory margins are expected to be tight.”
We should never forget the images of the U.S. Capitol under assault in an attempted coup d’état in the face of clear popular vote and Electoral College results.
The sequel is being planned and staged right before our eyes and ears, right now.
Howey is a senior writer and columnist for State Affairs/Howey Politics Indiana. Follow him on X @hwypol.
