CRIME’S UP

Why We Have to Defeat Election Terrorist Trump Tomorrow

He’s been undermining our system for years. But the power is now in our hands.

Opinion

Donald Trump is an election terrorist.

From the first moment Trump appeared on the political scene, he has been attacking our system. No one in American history has ever done more to undermine our democratic institutions or the faith of the American people in elections.

Once again, on the verge of the 2026 midterm elections, Trump is at work, harnessing the full force of his corrupt administration, battering norms, spreading lies, and showing not just disregard for the Constitution of the United States but active contempt for it.

Beyond all these abuses, of course, his actions are not the abstract actions of a corrupt pol, or relevant purely in the context of what they mean regarding our system of government or our history or the rule of law in this country.

Each of the bombs he places at the foundation of our democracy is also a direct attack on you and me and our families and neighbors. It is an effort to take away our most fundamental right, the right to choose our own government. It is an effort to not just “steal the vote” but to steal our votes, our rights, to silence our voices.

The record is so extensive as to be almost numbing. It is hard to step back from any individual moment to see its full scope.

Opinion

BILLIONAIRES BEWARE

Good News: America’s Most Important Voters Hate Trump

David Rothkopf

He began by calling out to a foreign enemy and asking for their intervention in the 2016 election. That intervention took place. It was a violation of our laws. And Trump not only sought it and lied about it, but he then utilized the power of the office the Russians helped him to win to obstruct justice and protect himself and those close to him from being held accountable for any crimes that took place.

At the same time, during his very first campaign, he began spreading the lie that American elections were unfair, rigged, corrupt. None of it was true. But he wanted to protect his fragile ego in the event he lost, and he wanted to lay the predicate for possible challenges to outcomes he might be unhappy with in the future.

His calumnies about the flaws in our elections, the conspiracy theories he cooked up and spread about the plots against him and those he supported, have continued unabated for the past ten years. Every election is under suspicion. Every election he loses is the result of manifold crimes on the part of his opponents. He never loses. The only way he or those close to him can be kept from power is through skullduggery.

Play Video

It is the refrain of corrupt politicians, authoritarians, and dictators from the moment the will of the people entered political power structures. It is a poison he has injected into our system that will torment us and weaken us long after he is gone. It is stochastic terrorism. It is a gift to our enemies and a blow to our standing in the world. Even were he not to have done so much else to attack our elections, his repetition of his lies and his encouragement of his zombie chorus of supporters to repeat them would’ve been among the gravest crimes any American leader had ever attempted to commit.

But, of course, we have seen manifold other crimes. We saw him illegally withhold payments to Ukraine in order to force them to provide dirt that might damage a political opponent. That led to his first impeachment. We saw him unleash a series of efforts to steal the 2020 election. We saw him try to browbeat Georgia officials into finding votes. We saw an orchestrated set of unfounded legal challenges against legitimate results. We saw his supporters seeking to field illegal slates of electors on his behalf. We saw him try to intimidate his own vice president into ignoring the law and the legitimate result of elections. And when all that failed—publicly, humiliatingly—we saw him lead an insurrection with the explicit objective of interrupting the legal process of certifying election results.

In the wake of that assault on our Congress and our nation, his lies continued. He supported a view that became a kind of sacred lie within the MAGA church that the 2020 election was stolen. To this day, no official who wishes to serve in his administration or win his favor can acknowledge what countless courts and our own eyes demonstrate to have been the truth. He lost to Joe Biden. Clearly. Convincingly.

He was impeached again for his assault on the Capitol. But that did not stop him for four years lifting up those who assaulted police officers and threatened sitting members of Congress as heroes. Later, when he was reelected, he pardoned them and even appointed some to his government. The 2024 election cycle also saw not only the repetition of his lies about 2020, but efforts to use the money of his supporters in ways that to this day raise questions about the election’s outcome—such as the public campaigns funded by Elon Musk to reward voters who supported Trump.

Since returning to the presidency, Trump has used our legal system to attack his enemies. He has systematically silenced those who investigated his election abuses. In Georgia. In the office of the Special Counsel. And he has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented campaign of interference in the 2026 elections.

There have been threats of military intervention. There have been unfounded assertions that non-citizens were voting. There have been efforts by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to intimidate state officials. There has been a campaign among MAGA officials to gerrymander, to undermine voting rights.

Not since the days of Jim Crow have we seen anything like it. But in many ways, this campaign has been more pernicious. Yes, it has attacked once again voters of color. But it has also sought to disenfranchise all opponents of the president wherever possible.

Court after court has rejected Trump’s efforts to meddle in the elections. Court after court has repeated the undeniable fact that the federal government has no role in the administration of elections, that the Constitution clearly makes it the responsibility of the states.

Nonetheless, he continues. In the case of Alaska, he is using all the powers at his disposal to try to discredit a likely Democratic victory. He is asserting that putting another candidate on the ballot with the same name as the Republican incumbent is somehow illegal. He says so even though Alaska’s highest court (the highest court with true jurisdiction over the matter) ruled months ago that it was not. He says so even though the practice has been often used by Republicans in the past. He says so even though he is supporting candidates in this year’s elections who we know do not live in the states where they claim residence. He says so even though one candidate he actively supports, in South Carolina, changed her name as an obvious ploy to win the support of voters who might have once supported her brother who left the seat vacant when he died several months ago.

It is a moronic, malevolent effort. Yet somehow it has gained traction due to the president’s power (with a little assist from the gullibility of the fatuous, credulous, lazy press). Trump now has persuaded the Republican governor of Alaska to join with the U.S. attorney general in conducting “investigations” of what happened—even though the matter, which was long ago resolved, is not illegal.

But calling election results into question serves his purposes. He has no positive campaign message to offer. So to stir up doubts in the final days of the campaign gives him something to talk about on the campaign trail other than the posteriors of Republican men he seems to be attracted to.

Furthermore, if Democrats win a majority in the Senate, this case will give him grounds to drag out seating the winner in the courts. Who knows, perhaps he can even get the matter heard in the Supreme Court, which has long ago, thanks to Trump, lost credibility as an objective arbiter and is capable of producing decisions twisted to serve the ideological and political biases of its six right-wing activist justices. He will probably lose. But launching the attacks benefits him and the GOP, at least in the president’s mind.

And he might not lose. It would be unjust. But stranger things have happened.

After all, the Supreme Court granted the president immunity far beyond anything ever hinted at by the framers or by the letter of the Constitution or by legal precedent. That said, Trump should prepare himself for consequences despite all that.

Because what we know today with absolute certainty is that we are undoubtedly closer to the end of Trump’s presidency than we have ever been. His power is waning almost as rapidly as are his already limited and unreliable faculties. And as that power wanes—and perhaps after he leaves office—the fact that many of his efforts to disrupt and pervert the outcomes of our elections will be scrutinized more closely again.

And of course, the Supreme Court only gave him immunity with regard to official duties, and per the Constitution, the president has no official duties with regard to elections and voting.

Furthermore, since overseeing elections is, in fact, the province of the states, the illegal intervention of the federal government into those processes may create causes of action in state courts where the president and the thugocrats in his administration are not protected by the Supreme Court or pardon power. And there may still be a day on which this demented terrorist campaign against the bedrock foundations of our democracy leads to its leaders, especially Trump, being held to account.

That said, we cannot know that for sure. And so the only certain antidote for the toxins Trump has sought to pump into our system is that the will of the people is expressed with such volume and clarity that it drowns out his lies and overwhelms his multipronged campaign to suppress our will. We have an opportunity to make significant strides in that respect on Tuesday. Indeed, given the gravity of the threat our president poses to us all, I trust American voters will not see it so much as an opportunity but rather as a duty.

We face a powerful enemy. He wields potent tools. But it is still possible—and I believe likely—that in the end we can prevail and we can rebuff this foe just like all the others we have faced and defeated in the past.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

David RothkopfChief Global Affairs Columnist

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.