During this past weekend’s episode of the Saturday Six Pack, I talked at some length with Scott Hagerstrom, the Michigan director of the Trump Pence 2016 campaign, about both the possibility of polling place discord on November 8th, as a result of Trump supporters attempting to suppress the vote in “certain areas”, and the likelihood that Trump’s followers, having been told repeatedly by their candidate that the election is “rigged”, may not accept a Clinton win. Hagerstrom dismissed my concern, stating that, over the past 200 years, we’ve never had an issue in this country with the “peaceful transition of power,” and there was no reason to fear that wouldn’t be the case this time as well. In response, I shared the following excerpt with him from the Boston Globe’s coverage of a Trump rally this past Thursday in Cincinnati, where, by the way, the accompanying photos were taken.
…At a time when trust in government is at a low point, Trump is actively stoking fears that a core tenet of American democracy is also in peril: that you can trust what happens at the ballot box.
His supporters here said they plan to go to their local precincts to look for illegal immigrants who may attempt to vote. They are worried that Democrats will load up buses of minorities and take them to vote several times in different areas of the city. They’ve heard rumors that boxes of Clinton votes are already waiting somewhere.
And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem.
“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take… I would do whatever I can for my country”…
[Video of the entire Cincinnati rally, for those of you who appreciate context, can be found here.]
You could argue, of course, that these people interviewed by the Boston Globe, and others in the media, aren’t representative of Trump supporters. You could say, as my guest did on the radio Saturday night, that it’s highly unlikely that any Trump supporters, despite what you might read in “attack” pieces like the one referenced above, would actually take up arms against the administration of President Clinton, should she win the race. And let’s say that’s true. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Dan Bowman was just “blowing off some steam” when he said that Hillary Clinton, if she wins, should be shot. And let’s say the Governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin, was just kidding around earlier this summer when he told his fellow conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. that blood might have to be shed if we’re to prevent Hillary Clinton from snuffing out the “candle” of liberty. And let’s also say that every single one of the 21,000 people who attended this recent rally in Cincinnati knew, when Trump said that the election was going to be “fixed” on behalf of his opponent, that it was nothing more than a dramatic flourish from the reality television personality well known for his use of hyperbole. Let’s say that every single person in attendance that night knew better than to take him at his word when he said that his “crooked” opponent, who he also, by the way, said should be “in jail,” is stealing the election so that she can put into motion her “plot (to destroy) U.S. sovereignty.” Let’s just assume, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that everything is going to be just fine, and all of these people chanting “hang the bitch” just reenter society on November 9, as though nothing had ever happened. It would take us a while to get over it as a society, but, I imagine, in time, we could work through the issues and heal the damage to some extent.
Imagine, however, if just one in a thousand Trump supporters actually believed the toxic nonsense being fed to them. What if, on November 9, when it’s officially announced that Hillary Clinton will be the 45th President of the United States, .1% really think that Hillary had stolen the presidency in order to open our borders to Mexican rapists and set in motion a plan to “destroy” the United States?
In this election, according to the substantial polling data aggregated by FiveThirtyEight.com, 42.7% of those casting a ballot will likely vote for Trump. Based on voter turnout numbers in the 2012 election, where 129.1 million Americans voted, that would mean that roughly 55,125,750 will be casting their votes for Trump. If we assume that just one in a thousand believes the conspiracy theories being put forward by the campaign, that would mean there are approximately 55,125 people out there who really, genuinely believe that this election is being stolen, and our country is being hijacked. And, for what it’s worth, I think, given recent polling, that’s an extremely conservative number. A month or so, for instance, a poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP), which showed that “69% of Trump voters think that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will be because it was rigged, to only 16% who think it would be because she got more votes than Trump.” The PPP report went on to state, “More specifically 40% of Trump voters think that ACORN (which hasn’t existed in years) will steal the election for Clinton.” This, they concluded, demonstrated “the long staying power of GOP conspiracy theories.”
Sure, these beliefs, even if they’re widely held, may not directly lead to armed rebellion or an assassination attempt, but how can we be expected to function as a nation when we’ve got this fundamental distrust of American institutions eating away at the very foundation of our civil society? And is it really too much to ask that our candidates for the office of president not engage in such talk, encouraging the spread of conspiracy theories, making offhand comments about imprisoning their rivals, completely disregarding the facts, and playing upon the unfounded fears of voters? When asked about this, my guest on Saturday’s show essentially said that we should just get used to it. This, he implied, is our new normal. Citing television shows like Married with Children, he made the argument that we now live in a coarser world, where people are less restrained when it comes to expressing their views in what might once have been considered objectionable ways. Hagerstrom then went on to say that Trump, when you look at him objectively, is really no different from Reagan, who was also talking without a filter during his era, pushing the boundaries of acceptability. Trump, he seemed to be suggesting, was essentially carrying the same pro-freedom, small government message, but tailored to the electorate of today, with their considerably shorter attention spans and heightened appreciation for bombast and showmanship… This, Hagerstrom said, is our future, like it or not.
It may be too late to make a difference, but some who are responsible for the rise of Trump, are beginning to pull back. As we discussed a few days ago, many elected Republicans took the opportunity last week, when audio of Trump admitting to sexual assault surfaced, to distance themselves from the candidate and retract their endorsements. More importantly, though, it would appear as though members of the press, sensing the clear and present danger posed by Trump, have decided to lock arms and take him on en masse, hoping to derail this runaway hate train of a campaign that they’re in large part responsible for having set in motion. [It’s estimated that the media has given Trump approximately $2 billion in free coverage.]
Sure, he was great for business for a while, as his increasingly provocative quotes sold papers, and drew tremendous ratings, but it would appear as though, with the election just about three weeks away now, there’s been a real, concerted effort on the part of just about everyone in the media to ensure that he doesn’t take the White House… If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s probably his tacit approval of Putin’s assassination of journalists that may have been the final straw, but maybe it was his threat to change libel laws if he becomes president, so that he can sue those who oppose him into bankruptcy. Regardless, the ranks are closing around him, and he’s beginning to feel the pressure.
The question is, will it be too little, too late? And, perhaps just as importantly, will the media backlash that we’re seeing right now just reinforce Trump’s message to his followers that there is a “rigged” system working against them? In past years, I think it might have actually hurt a candidate if, like Trump, they didn’t get a single major newspaper endorsement. Now, though, at least with Trump, I think it’s more a badge of honor — definitive proof that Hillary and the Jewish media are working against him and the “real” Americans who comprise his base.
For what it’s worth, Obama also feels as though the media is deserving of much of the blame for what we’re seeing play out right now. On Thursday, as Trump was addressing the crowd in Cincinnati, the President was calling for a return to fact-based news coverage in Pennsylvania… The following comes from Yahoo News.
President Barack Obama on Thursday decried America’s “wild, wild west” media environment for allowing conspiracy theorists a broad platform and destroying a common basis for debate.
Recalling past days when three television channels delivered fact-based news that most people trusted, Obama said democracy require citizens to be able to sift through lies and distortions.
“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to,” Obama said at an innovation conference in Pittsburgh.
“There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world,” Obama added…
So, let’s add that to the list of things we need to do come November 9, once we put down the armed revolt, and hold our Republican legislators accountable for having allowed Trump to rise to power, OK? Let’s start teaching media literacy in our schools, and let’s hold our journalists to a higher standard. If we don’t, you can be sure this exact same thing will happen again. Only, next time, we might not be able to dodge the bullet… No, it’ll likely be full-on Camacho time.
In retrospect, we should have seen this madness coming. The handwriting was on the wall back in 2008, when Republicans, having lost the White House to our nation’s first black president, decided to push the issue of race in order to undermine his effectiveness and put themselves in a position of political advantage. In their attempt to delegitimize the Obama presidency, by casting our newly elected Commander-in-Chief as “a non-American,” they did irreparable harm to the fabric that holds this nation together. By allowing the laughable speculation to continue that our President was, in fact, a Kenyan-born illegal alien, they planted a seed whose roots have continued to grow, pushing deeper into the American consciousness, and creating damage that will take decades, if not centuries, to undo. As it served their political ends, however, the leadership of the GOP went along with it. They turned a blind eye to the false “news” being broadcast by Fox News, and cheered as conservative billionaires, like the Koch brothers, began to undermine the democratic process through the use of front entities, like Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. If they didn’t outright say that Obama was a foreign agent who had taken over our country, they certainly didn’t go out of their way to squash those conspiracy theories when they arose. No, they kept right on with it until the monster they created eventually turned on them. The ones that weren’t far right enough were eventually voted out of office. And those who remain, like Paul Ryan, are just biding their time until they’re taken out by the “unshackled” beast they brought to life with the Tea Party, and its corporate agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and global warming denial marketed as “freedom.”
We are all to blame. Every one of us who sat back since the turn of the century, allowing those with power to dismantle our public schools, poison our water, thwart environmental protections, and move us toward a world where corporate money is considered free speech. No, this isn’t just on the “infotainment” media and the lying GOP. This is on all of us who just stopped engaging and retreated into our own lives, hoping for it to all pass as we “Netflixed and chilled.” This is what happens when you stop aggressively fighting back.
As for how all of this ends, I’m not sure. I fear the worst. I’m afraid that threats of violence may keep people from the polls on November 8. I’m afraid that we may not have heard the last of the Russian hackers who have shown again and again that they’ll do anything to deliver Donald Trump to the White House. I’m afraid that Trump may not concede if he loses. I’m afraid that, even if she wins the White House, that conservatives will continue to deny Democratic attempts to move forward with a new Supreme Court justice. And I’m afraid that, if the country remains as divided as it is, we may miss our opportunity to act on global climate change, hastening the end of our species. At the same time, however, I see reasons for optimism. While the GOP base has grown whiter, older and less educated, America is becoming more diverse. We’re no longer a country with a white, Christian majority, and, based on what we’re seeing playout at Trump rallies, I think that’s probably a good thing. As much as I love the religious, white conservatives in my life, I’ve come to accept that we’d probably all be better served if, from here on out, we’re led by people who are less in the mold of Pat Robertson, and more like Neil deGrasse Tyson… We’ve had enough white fear. Let’s give black science a shot.
As for what Trump will do next, I doubt, given his multiple Vietnam deferments, he’ll be out in front, leading any kind of revolution. I suspect, as other have suggested, he’ll likely go a different route, parlaying this newfound political fame of his into a media business of some kind. Given that the man running his campaign is Steve Bannon, who runs the white nationalist leaning Breitbart News, it makes sense. Trump has captured the imaginations of at least 30% of the American electorate, and he’s not about to just walk away from them if there’s an opportunity to make a buck. History has shown us that. And Bannon is just the guy to help him monetize Trump’s following. So, the same way we had the Trump multi-level vitamin company, Trump Steaks and Trump University, we’ll now have Trump News, constantly broadcasting half-truths and conspiracy theories in hopes of both boosting advertising revenue, while, at the same time, delegitimizing the Clinton White House.
GOP consultant Steve Schmidt, who worked on George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 and headed John McCain’s campaign in 2008, had the following to say about the future of the Republican Party, and I think it points to the niche post-election Trump will fill.
“I think the Republican Party has an outstanding chance of fracturing,” Schmidt said in a recent interview. “There will be the alt-right party; then there will be a center-right conservative party that has an opportunity to reach out, repair damage, and rebuild the brand over time.”
And Donald Trump will become the de facto leader of that Alt Right “Make America Great Again” party, stepping in where Storefront left off, and taking the movement further into the mainstream.
As long as we’re quoting Schmidt, did you happen to see him on Meet the Press last week? If not, here’s what he said.
…When we look at where this race is today, the Presidential race is effectively over. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the 45th President of the United States. Chuck Schumer will be the Majority Leader of the United States Senate… And the only question that’s still up in the air is how close the Democrats will come to retaking the House Majority. What this exposes, though, is much deeper and it goes to the Republican Party as an institution. This, this candidacy, the magnitude of its disgrace to the country is almost impossible, I think, to articulate. But it has exposed the intellectual rot in the Republican Party. It has exposed at a massive level the hypocrisy, the modern day money changers in the temple like Jerry Falwell Jr. And so, this party, to go forward and to represent a conservative vision for America, has great soul searching to do. And what we’ve seen and the danger for all of these candidates is over the course of the last year, these, these candidates who have repeatedly put their party ahead of their country, denying what is so obviously clear to anybody who’s watching about his complete and total manifest unfitness for this office…
The whole thing just leaves me feeling ill… I know it shouldn’t surprise me that someone like Trump would be willing to put his personal brand, and the potential to amass even more wealth, before the welfare of this country, but it does. FiveThirtyEight, as of right now, is showing Clinton with an 88.4% chance of winning, and yet Trump, unwilling to accept defeat, is suggesting to his followers that the only way Clinton could possibly beat him would be to cheat. According to the most recent polling data, she’s well ahead in Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. And states that weren’t thought to be in play a few weeks ago, like Georgia and Arizona, now are. As the RNC is cutting support to the Trump campaign, shifting money instead to down ticket races in hopes of retaining Congress, the Democrats are even starting to invest in Texas, thinking that they might have an outside shot at the established Republican stronghold. But, in spite of this, come the night of November 8, when the election results start rolling in, I’m sure we’ll hear from the Trump camp that it was rigged against them. Maybe it’s his inability to accept defeat that won’t allow him to just walk away. Maybe it’s that bluster that got him to where he is in life. How else could someone who has gone bankrupt six times still claim to have the most “tremendous” business mind of all time? It’s so incredibly ballsy, and so uniquely American. And, it would seem, there’s no incentive for him to stop, as the path to even greater financial reward is waiting once all of this is over.
Speaking of which, it’s no longer just a theory. It was reported this morning that Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has begun the process of lining up funding to launch the Trump television network.
So, what does November 9 look like? If it’s any comfort, I doubt there will be armed uprisings. I suspect, however, that there will be several tense conversations between old high school friends and relatives, who truly feel as though Clinton rigged the election. And I think it’s up to us, assuming our candidate wins, to extend an olive branch. It might not be accepted. It might even be slapped away at first. But I think it’s incumbent on us to keep trying. That’s the only way we’re going to make it through this. I just don’t see how we can ever move forward the way things are now. We need one another. There needs to be something better. If you have thoughts on how we get there, I’d love to hear them… As for me, I’m working on an idea of my own right now. It’s not fully formed yet, but I’m thinking that we should start simple. Maybe it’s a series of non-partisan neighborhood parties, just to get people talking again. They could be simple. Just small tents set up with free food on November 9. Just something positive for a change. Something set up completely outside the political system. These, as I’m seeing them, wouldn’t “Clinton Gloating Stations.” There wouldn’t be political pamphlets. We wouldn’t be looking to change anyone’s minds. It would just be an opportunity to connect with one another as human beings. It would just be a place to say, “We just made it through one of the most grueling, divisive campaigns in American history, let’s just take a deep breath, enjoy a beautiful, sunny day, and share a box of cookies.”
And, here, with the final word, to remind us once again what we’re up against, is the most recent Twitter post from Donald Trump.
[note: This post was originally titled “The November 9 War.” I changed it, though, as I’m trying to stay optimistic for the sake of my kids.]
