When Donald Trump looks like he’s gearing up to meddle in an election, still-raw history suggests he should be believed.
He showed yet again Monday he’s obsessing about the midterm elections — two days after a Democratic upset in a reliably Republican state Senate district in Texas offered another ominous sign for the GOP in November.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said. “We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won, that show I didn’t win.”
Trump’s warning was one of his most overt efforts yet to create a narrative of suspicion around November’s elections in case the Republican Party does poorly because of his tanking poll numbers. This is a familiar tactic. Trump laid groundwork for his false claims the election was stolen in 2020 months before the first votes were cast in his defeat to Joe Biden.
The problem is that while the Courts can still rule on the legality of a President’s actions, that takes time. And Republicans have set up a system where a President can keep taking illegal actions, with impunity. The only check on this is impeachment. So if “your guy” is in office, you can just simply not impeach and then he can do all sorts of shit.
So, the Constitution doesn’t really constrain him, at least over the short term. The elections will happen on schedule, since States administer them. But there is nothing preventing him from mobilizing troops to “monitor” polling places for people voting “illegally”, using the same app they use to determine if a person has legal authority to be here. And his troops will be ordered to believe the app over that person’s documentation. States will file immediate injunctions and judges will rule quickly, but not quickly enough.
He won’t be able to do this everywhere, just like he is not able to storm every city with ICE all at once. But his fixation on voter data means that his AI bros think they can tell him where to go for the maximum effect on the House races.
I read that he directly stated he just needs “about 15 places”. That’s no accident. I bet Elon told him that if he ratfucks just a few thousand votes in 15 districts, he can stem off the impending Blue wave.
I feel like even if he does get impeached, he might simply…ignore it. Not for long, not with literally everyone else salivating at the thought of being king instead of him, but he could theoretically ignore it, the enforcement mechanisms to remove him forcibly from power (like the military or the DOJ) are pretty clearly compromised.
A lot will depend on the new President / former VP. One would think they would be eager to start their new gig. But what if the VP is complicit? What if he says “Yeah, I know you all impeached him, but I need him for stuff. He gets to keep his security clearance and will be my special advisor” Who’s gonna stop that?
Presumably, none of this happens unless Democrats retake at least the House. And if the office of the VP is ever vacant, the position can only get filled through a vote in both houses. So, Democrats will likely invoke the “McConnell Rule” to never bring it for a vote. Which means that no Republican will vote to impeach President Vance, when that will lead to President Jeffries.