Trump’s fatal obsession
Byron York
TRUMP’S FATAL OBSESSION. Fox News anchor Bret Baier covered a lot of ground in his must-watch interview with former President Donald Trump on Monday. The classified documents case. China. Russia and the war in Ukraine. All made news. But perhaps the most revelatory moment came when Trump returned to a topic he has discussed many, many times: the 2020 presidential election.
Trump made a decision, likely when he was still president, that he would not concede defeat in the event that he lost the 2020 contest. If he won, no problem. If he lost, he would claim that he was cheated out of a rightful victory. And that is what he has done.
Why? Some of it is just Trump’s personal makeup. He has sold himself as a winner throughout his career. Admitting a huge, consequential loss would not be in character. But perhaps a bigger reason is the way losers are treated in American politics. When a presidential candidate loses in a general election, his party is pretty much done with him. He can try to come back, but it won’t work. (The exception: Richard Nixon, who lost in 1960 and came back to win in 1968.)
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Before Trump, in the last 100 years, there have been just three presidents who were defeated in their bid for a second term: George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Herbert Hoover. Are any of them remembered as winners today? That’s precisely the status Trump would never accept. So his position is that he won the 2020 election.
In the Fox interview, Baier asked a question, not about 2020, but about Trump’s appeal to 2024 voters “who really liked many of your policies, but they can’t handle the scandals or the controversies or the name-calling or the vitriol.” Specifically, Baier mentioned a key voting group — “the female independent voter in the suburbs who struggled with family financing because of inflation, she is now against Biden, disapproves of Biden, but wasn’t with you in 2020 and, so far, is a ‘hard no’ for you in 2024. … What do you say to that female independent suburban voter who feels that way to win her back?”
It wasn’t a hard question. Trump could have answered by talking about all the great things he will do if elected again in 2024. But he didn’t do that. Instead, Trump said: “First of all, I won 2020 by a lot, OK? Let’s get that straight. I won in 2020.”
Baier immediately responded, “You know that’s not what the votes show.” And then, it was off to the races:
TRUMP: And if you look at all of the tape, you look at everything that you want to look at, you take a look at [True the Vote] where they have people stuffing the ballot boxes on tapes or —
BAIER: Mr. President, that’s all been looked into.
TRUMP: But wait a minute, let’s go to recent — FBI, Twitter, let’s go to recent, the 51 agents, all corrupt stuff, Bret.
BAIER: I understand about the Hunter Biden, that’s fair things.
TRUMP: But that’s cheating an election.
BAIER: But you lost the 2020 election.
TRUMP: Bret, you take a look at all of these stuffed ballots, you take a look at all of the things, including things like the 51 intelligence agents —
BAIER: There were recounts in all the swing states, and there was not significant, widespread fraud.
TRUMP: We’re trying to get recounts, real recounts.
BAIER: There were investigations of widespread corruption. There was not a sense of that. There were lawsuits, more than 50 of them by your lawyers, some in front of judges, judges that you appointed, that came up with no evidence.
TRUMP: Look at Wisconsin. Wisconsin practically admitted it was rigged. Other states are doing the same right now, and it’s continuing.
BAIER: There have been reviews of every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states. And they found fewer than 475 cases.
TRUMP: You know why? Because they didn’t look at the right things, Bret. They were counting — they were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballot. The ballots were fake ballots you had — this is a very rigged election.
BAIER: I asked — this is how you’re going to tell that independent suburban woman voter to vote for you?
Trump was all over the place, trying to cite any factor in the 2020 race that might support his contention that the whole thing was rigged. He cited “the tape,” meaning video from the group True the Vote’s research featured in Dinesh D’Souza’s film 2000 Mules. He cited the FBI, Twitter, and the “51 agents,” meaning Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden story in the final weeks of the campaign, plus the 51 former intelligence officials who, in an effort to help candidate Joe Biden, falsely suggested that the Hunter Biden story was Russian disinformation. He cited various allegations of “stuffed ballots” and his contention that none of the audits and recounts done after the election detected the massive fraud that he believes took place. And he concluded with a simple statement: “This is a very rigged election.”
But remember the original question: How is Trump going to win the support of those independent suburban women on whom his election might depend in 2024? Does anyone believe that going on about True the Vote or “fake ballots” will appeal to those voters? Bill Clinton used to say that elections are always about the future. That’s true. A candidate focused on 2020 will not be successful in 2024.
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