“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS. What I said was that when there is ‘MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,’ as has been irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election, steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG. Only FOOLS would disagree with that and accept STOLEN ELECTIONS. MAGA!”

The original quote was this:

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Before I try to give my take on it, I want to state that a vast number of people who detest Trump will always interpret anything he says in the worst possible light. That’s a given; he will not be treated fairly. But that’s all the more reason that he needs to be crystal clear. I don’t mean he needs to be mealy-mouthed; one can be forceful and direct and even strident and still leave oneself less open to misinterpretation (knowing of course that no matter how clear you are you will be misinterpreted, especially if you are Trump).

The problem is that Trump often fails to do that, which leaves the door wide open for his enemies. For the statements of Trump’s under discussion here, even many of his friends and previous supporters interpreted his words to mean something very radical about going past the Constitution. I believe I understand his correction, which I’d paraphrase this way [phrases I’ve changed are bolded):

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? What is the proper remedy? Is there one? Because once A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude has occurred, it already has undone all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

I’m sure if Trump had said that it would have been heavily criticized as well, but I believe that at least it would have been clearer (that’s, of course, if I’m understanding his correction of what he meant).

But the horse has already left the barn. What the original statement sounded like gave his enemies a great gift. This is a longstanding problem with Trump – that his utterances or tweets are often phrased in a way that leaves him even more open to the worst interpretations by his enemies than they ordinarily would. He can say all he wants afterwards about what he really meant, but the damage is done and it turns a lot of moderates against him as well.

As for the notion that a corrupt election undoes the Constitution and the rest, I don’t think it actually does. The rules are still there, it’s the people in charge who are corrupt, and in the end rules are never anything without people of integrity to administer them. No rule can ever be written that protects us utterly. Just to take one example, all of Hitler’s tyrannical power was taken though constitutional means – including the legislature’s surrender of its own power to him. The German Constitution existed, but people hollowed it out. Maybe I’m making a point that’s pedantic and not especially meaningful – a tyranny accomplished by constitutional means abrogate the meaning and intent of the constitution, if not the constitution itself. But I think it’s important to understand the difference.

If you say that the US today doesn’t align with the Founders’ vision for its functioning, you’d be correct. But that happened long before Trump ran for president. It’s been getting worse, and polls indicate that many people know it.

I’ll close with this:

The post Trump’s explanation appeared first on The New Neo.

But I actually don’t blame Trump for this; at least not very much. He endorses people but it’s actually the voters in the primaries who make the final selection. A lot of Trump supporters may decide to vote for his choices because they trust him, but I don’t think he can be blamed for picking people he thinks have similar values or who might be people he trusts for some reason. After all, he doesn’t force anyone to choose them as the nominee. Voters do that themselves.

One of the things that happened in some states or districts was that Trump picks were the recipients of crossover Democrat votes in the primaries in an attempt to select the GOP candidates Democrats thought were least likely to win in the general. But that’s the problem with primaries, in particular when there’s no competition for a Democrat nominee (usually because of an incumbent) and Democrats therefore don’t mind taking part in the Republican primary instead. A person can switch parties for the primary; at least, I’m not aware of any state that forbids it, as long as the person changes his or her registration that year accordingly.

I think primaries are highly flawed instruments for choosing nominees anyway, perhaps even worse than the old smoke-filled rooms of my youth. The latter can result in nominees who are dull party apparatchiks taking their turn at bat. But the former can result in extremists who appeal to certain party voters but not to enough people in the state or district to actually get elected in the general. You have to know the territory, as it were, and a candidate who’s not a good fit for the area isn’t going to win. It’s not an easy task at all to choose a nominee, and even the pros are just guessing a lot of the time.

What arouses my ire at Trump are his attacks on DeSantis, which threaten to splinter the party in 2024. Of course, that splintering is somewhat of an old story – the GOP has long been separated into what in my youth was called the Rockefeller wing and the Goldwater wing (boy, am I showing my age), and later there was the RINO wing and the conservative wing.

But Trump versus DeSantis is one conservative against another, and it’s not based on policy disagreements, it’s based on personal rivalry and ambition. Trump sees DeSantis as a threat to Trump.

In the last two years or so, I’ve come to regard Trump as something of a tragic Shakespearean figure. His dimensions are, as he himself would say, huge. He has such great accomplishments and such great flaws. At the moment his flaws are overwhelming his accomplishments in many people’s eyes, and that even includes former supporters. His flaws always were overwhelming to a lot of other people, and the relentless attacks and defamation he’s endured have greatly augmented that effect.

One former supporter, Don Surber, writes this:

Dr. Oz showed how it went with Trump. That’s how poisonous he has become in purple America. We, his fans, see the good in him and the evil in his enemies. But the majority doesn’t and never will. It is a sale that cannot be made. There will be no second term from The Donald. It breaks my heart to see this. I wrote three books on the man. Looking for someone else — likely DeSantis — will cost me readers. As I said about the covid vaccine, you do you. But Trump failed. He cost America the red tsunami we need to rein in Democrats.

I agree with the first part of that paragraph. But I don’t believe that Trump “cost America the red tsunami.” Trump set the stage for successful politicians like DeSantis, people with fighting spirit who confront the press with vigor, aren’t afraid to be conservatives, but who are far more polished than Trump and nowhere near as offensive in demeanor (and yes, the left will attack DeSantis unmercifully too, but I think they’ll have more trouble making the demonizing stick with as many listeners). I think the red tsunami was defeated by Democrat lies and MSM propaganda finding their target audience, and the Gramscian march through our schools, entertainment, and churches, as well as the amplifying effect of social media.

The problem is far greater than Trump or anything Trump did.

I also think that Trump was persecuted and lied about, and attacked along with his family, so incessantly and terribly that even though he took it better than the vast majority of people ever could, it (as well as the manner of his 2020 loss) has driven him to lose some of his political judgment and to rage more than usual.

He’s getting into King Lear on the heath territory. He’s endured a great great deal. But King Lear is not a good look for a candidate.

What are the sorts of things he’s said that I’m talking about? Well, here’s what Trump said about DeSantis on Monday night right before Election Day – and remember that DeSantis was running for the Florida governorship this year [emphasis mine]:

“I don’t know if [DeSantis] is running [for president in 2024]. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly,” Trump said. “I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party.”

“Any of that stuff is not good — you have other people that possibly will run, I guess,” Trump added. “I don’t know if he runs. If he runs, he runs.”

Then Trump said that if DeSantis does decide to run, “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife.”

And speaking of what’s “not good for the party” – I submit that Trump’s attempts to threaten DeSantis are absolutely not good for the party.

Here’s what Trump’s previous press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had to say yesterday:

“I know there’s a temptation to starting talking about 2024 — no, no, no, no, no,” McEnany said on Wednesday’s edition of “Outnumbered.”

“2022 is not over. Every Republican energy needs to go to grinding the Biden agenda to a halt, and that could go straight through the state of Georgia.”

When pushed by Harris if that included her former boss, Donald Trump, McEnany was emphatic in saying, “I think he needs to put it on pause, absolutely.”

She also added that DeSantis should campaign for Walker in the Georgia runoff, but said nothing about Trump needing to do the same. McEnany is a smart cookie and she served her former boss very well, but this is her advice at this point.

Oh, and speaking of Georgia, Governor Kemp was up for re-election last Tuesday as well. Trump has plenty of reason to dislike Kemp intensely; he thwarted Trump’s accusations of fraud in Georgia in 2020. But here’s what Trump said about Kemp in late September, only about 6 weeks prior to Kemp’s gubernatorial contest with Stacey Abrams:

The former President’s criticism of Kemp now includes hyping Democrat Stacey Abrams as a preferable alternative to the GOP governor, whose crime against Trump was staying out of his attempt to overturn the Georgia 2020 election returns.

“Having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think,” Trump said Saturday at his rally in Perry, adding later, “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.”

Kemp won anyway – or maybe Trump’s remarks about Kemp even increased his margin, because they might have attracted people to Kemp who hate Trump. But I bet Trump’s remarks about Kemp and Abrams didn’t help Trump’s pick, Herschel Walker, or Republican turnout. No wonder McEnany seems to want Trump to stay away from Georgia during the leadup to the runoff.

Many people think Trump had sabotaged the two runoffs in Georgia in 2020 and was responsible for the Senate Democratic majority that resulted from that election. I think that’s giving Trump a bit too much credit/blame, but it’s certainly a possibility that he contributed to the GOP candidates’ defeat in those runoffs. Here’s what I’m talking about:

With control of the Senate at stake in the state’s two races, the president chose to spend weeks peddling baseless claims that Georgia’s electoral system was rigged, fueling an online movement to boycott Tuesday’s election. He demonized the state’s Republican leaders and fractured the local GOP. He ignored calls from his allies to rally in the state sooner. His support for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue mainly came in the form of the occasional tweet and two rallies, including one on Monday…

“Trump is the cause of this, lock, stock and barrel,” said one Republican strategist. “But when you’re relying on someone to win you a Senate race that also lost statewide eight weeks prior, you’re not in a position of strength.”…

When asked why Republicans didn’t prevail on Tuesday, a senior Senate Republican aide simply said: “Donald J. Trump.”…

Even at a Monday rally designed to drum up voting for Loeffler and Perdue, the president obsessed over his own political grievances, swiping at lawmakers from his own party, including Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp…

“He is the Dems’ best base animator,” said one GOP strategist involved in the Georgia races.

That’s certainly the truth – Trump is the Democrats’ best base animator – and they used that strategy to their advantage this election cycle. It was no mystery why they kept talking about Trump, Trump, Trump. They know their audience.

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