Brian Klaas in WaPo with an important 'What If' question...
I’ve studied genuinely rigged elections across the globe. The tactics, context and strategies vary enormously from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. But one trait they have in common is this: The winner doesn’t claim they were rigged.
Not so with Trump. In 2016, when he narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote by a historic margin, he claimed that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally. That is a lie.
But it raised an obvious question: If Trump claimed that an election he won was rigged, what will he do with an election he loses?
With any president, an attempt to delegitimize elections that your side loses can be destabilizing. But with Trump, it’s dangerous. For years, Trump has pumped out a Twitter stream of endless victimhood complexes, bogus accusations against a mythical “deep state” lurking in the shadows and the mainstreaming of lunatic conspiracy theories.
Those messages are aimed at a group of people that is also disproportionately armed.
What will happen if Trump loses and then takes to Twitter to say he actually won? It’s not hard to see how deadly that could become, particularly given that Fox News personalities are already absurdly throwing around the word “coup” to describe lawful investigations and oversight of the president’s conduct.
Republicans who care about the republic must act now: They need to call out the president when he spreads lies and stokes fears about voter fraud that are rooted only in conservative mythology. Otherwise, we can pretend to be shocked, but nobody should be surprised if Trump tries to discredit the 2020 election — no matter the consequences — if he loses.