How Donald Trump is ‘sowing seeds of doubt’ ahead of potential election loss
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Donald Trump refused to accept the result of the 2020 election by claiming there was widespread election fraud. Now, there are fears he could deny losing again if the 2024 presidential contest doesn't go his way.
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In brief…
- Donald Trump has dropped behind in the polls after Kamala Harris reinvigorated the Democrat campaign by replacing Joe Biden.
- Trump has claimed her replacement of Biden was “unconstitutional” and that he was ousted in a “coup”
- This is “sowing seeds of doubt” in the minds of his supporters and suggests he could refuse to accept defeat in the upcoming elections, The News Agents say.
What’s the story?
With Kamala Harris now edging ahead in the polls after replacing Joe Biden, the possibility of back-to-back election defeats for Donald Trump is on the cards come November.
That may be good news for the Democrats. But if you remember 2020, when Trump refused to accept the election result and helped incite an insurrection, then it could also be a worrying prospect.
And indeed, it could be the case that the Republican is already gearing up for a loss that he won’t accept, subtly sowing “seeds of doubt” about the legitimacy of Harris’ leadership by claiming her replacing Biden was “unconstitutional”.
"The trouble with Trump is we try and make sense of things that make no sense."
— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) August 15, 2024
Donald Trump had some peculiar observations about Kamala Harris's Time magazine cover... @maitlis | @jonsopel pic.twitter.com/BfTIBTocai
What has Trump said?
Trump has accused the current vice president of taking part in an illicit ousting of Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Speaking to X owner Elon Musk in a livestream on the social media platform, Trump said: “This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way.’”
He added that it “seems to me, actually, unconstitutional. Perhaps it’s not.”
The News Agent’s take
According to The News Agents’ Jon Sope, you can see what Donald Trump is doing now compared to what he did in 2020.
And that is “sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of his supporters that it's a free and fair election”.
In 2020, Trump did not accept the defeat, claiming there was widespread election fraud sparked by postal voting. There was no evidence to back this claim.
Now, Jon is worried Trump will not accept the 2024 result on the falsely alleged basis that it is “unconstitutional”.
“It's just undermining confidence in the system, and that is deeply corrosive”, he says.
Jon adds that the Trump campaign is employing thousands of people to monitor who is going to vote and how they're voting.
“I think that Donald Trump is thinking; ‘if I lose again, I'm going to mount a much more effective attempt to overturn the result of the election than I did last time, which was a bit chaotic’.”
And this system, Lewis Goodall says, could be weaker than it was four years ago.
He argues: “It has become a litmus test of conservatism and your attachment to the Republican Party and to MAGA as to whether you subscribe to ‘the big lie’ back then or you did not.
“So you can make an argument now that actually the American political system is potentially more frail than it was three or four years ago.
“One thing you can absolutely bet your bottom dollar on, one way or the other, Trump will not accept the outcome of the election, so American politics just has to be prepared for it.”
Listen to the full discussion on today's episode of The News Agents
