by Christopher Roach
There must have been a note out. Because the same propaganda was published in several major newspapers almost at the same time.
The Washington Post Office he said, “Top Republicans Led by Trump Refuse to Accept 2024 Election Results.” The New York Times similarly chanted“Leading Republicans have been reluctant to say categorically that they will accept the results of the presidential election if Donald Trump loses.” Rolling Stone scolded former presidential candidate: “Tim Scott accepts Trump’s election denialism and refuses to accept the results.”
While elections usually mean that both sides agree to procedures in advance so that each side can have confidence in the results, actual confidence in the results depends on what actually happens. If you have good rules, but rules are often broken, why would anyone accept their results?
The recently introduced requirement to consent to the election results before the match is an absurd demand something like a religious test. Even in the best of times no one can be sure of the election results. Elections consist of hundreds of millions of votes and tens of thousands of rules and regulations, are held in 50 states and thousands of counties, and require the efforts of thousands of officials and volunteers to implement and interpret those rules.
Trump’s critics are asking him to have faith and declare support for the unknown outcome of an election that did not take place. In fact, the rules are constantly changing and will remain so almost until the last minute as a result of judicial and legislative maneuvers, as was the case with experience of the last elections. Additionally, every election has recount procedures in place and is subject to legal challenges.
The upcoming election is a time when the machinations of prosecutors, local party officials, national intelligence agencies and the current administration are unknown, but we know that we live in an era of extreme partisanship and that the people who run most institutions, regardless of party, are irrevocably hostile to Trump. Nevertheless, they demand that Trump ignore the fact that some top officials in New York, Georgia and the federal government are determined to prevent him from becoming president.
Under these circumstances, Trump and his supporters’ anticipatory skepticism about the 2024 elections is justified. A reasonable person will wait to see what happens. Critics suggest that Trump will only cry foul when he loses, and that’s probably true, but there’s nothing wrong with crying foul when the other side doesn’t win fair and square.
For example, Republicans’ skepticism about the 2020 election was justified. Even if Biden somehow won the most votes, the way he did it was unconventional and probably illegal. Things happened that we had previously only witnessed in Third World countries: weeks of vote counting, millions of unverifiable mail-in ballots, rule changes later declared unlawful and unconstitutionalmedia denial or courts investigate irregularities, violence coordinated by intelligence agencies to halt all investigations allowed during the counting of electoral votes and to continue efforts to pressure Trump to resign, even as the case remained extremely questionable.
All this should be contrasted with the course of the 2016 elections. Trump won. This election was more normal and included enough verifiable and morally certain victories to declare the result on election night. The election rules were the same as always. It’s true that the result defied the polls and was unexpected – especially by Hillary Clinton, the media and her other supporters – but nothing procedurally unusual happened on Election Day or thereafter to cast the result into doubt.
However, the post-election strangeness began immediately, in 2016. Hillary he didn’t agree and only addressed her supporters the next day. Then, a few weeks before the election, a story broke that turned into a storm – about the alleged critical impact of “Russian collusion“
It turned out to be complete nonsense, taken from false documentation financed by the Clinton campaign and promoted by partisan intelligence agencies. But it was also an alibi for Hillary’s defeat – a vague suggestion that the machines had been hijacked, and that was the case with Trump illegitimate presidentregardless of the formal election result.
Russian collusion happened Trojan horse through which intelligence agencies forced the resignation and subsequent impeachment of Trump’s preferred national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as well as his first attorney general and immigration hawk, Jeff Sessions.
Corrupt FBI chief James Comey used the same bullshit story to lie to and spy on Trump, and Comey’s eventual firing led to the appointment of the semi-senile Robert Mueller and his partisan associates to harass Trump as special counsel. Mueller’s charade continued for two years, obstructing and distracting Trump during the first two years of his presidency, even though internal reports from the special counsel’s office showed that the prosecution team knew the original allegations of Russian collusion were baseless.
What Biden and his supporters are looking for in “acceptance of the outcome” talks is pre-commitment. It’s something that sellers do. You said you had to have less than $100; If I offer you a price under $100, you tell me you will buy. But Biden and company aren’t saying anything compelling to gain bipartisan approval of the electoral process. They just want commitment, so if they win – legally or otherwise – they can apply their promises to silence their critics.
This approach is reminiscent of attempts to block Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries. All Republicans believed that Trump would ultimately lose to the establishment’s choice, but could create chaos out of spite. So they demanded that he sign a commitment to support a possible candidate. Everyone else did it – Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Lindsey Graham – and used it as a cudgel against Trump. Trump grimaced and grumbled, but eventually he signed the pledge, too.
Trump then, rather improbably, won the Republican primary. And now the pledge had become an albatross for his enemies who wanted to imprison him. At this point, Jeb, Graham and others of these supposedly moral and honorable people, allegedly offended by Trump’s lack of morality and decency, went back to your promise and worked overtly and covertly to undermine Trump. What a bunch of rats!
There is no reason for Trump or anyone else to support the 2024 election results, especially not this far in advance. There is less reason to trust the process or the people conducting it than there was in highly trusted America in the past. Some of the most respected institutions, such as the FBI and the courts, have become unsustainable and perilous in their maniacal desire to stop Trump. Nothing about a diverse, highly partisan, and increasingly corrupt society like ours makes “trust” something we should feel about choices, or makes skepticism something to be ashamed of. It’s just common sense.
The elements of social consensus are decreasing every day. A fair election in 2024 requiring bipartisan consent seems unlikely. Trump nation, already burned, is ready to reject anything less than victory, especially in delicate of weeks of positive polling results. And the anti-Trump factions are so committed to maintaining power that they will change the rules to maintain it and intimidate those who commit the crime of noticing.
Our task is to win. And whether we win or lose, our job is to notice what’s happening and shout it from the rooftops.
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Christopher Roach is an adjunct professor at the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, Washington Legal Foundation, Marine Corps Gazette and Orlando Sentinel. The views presented are solely his own.
“Voting Cups” photo by Józef Szlabotnik. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
