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When it comes to projection, Donald Trump is in a class of his own. He proved that once again Saturday evening, when he took to his social media site to push the Big Lie and threatened those trying to undermine the outcome of the upcoming election with severe punishment.
“Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials,” Trump wrote. “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
That sounds like an awesome idea… and we wish that would have been done in 2020, starting with the former president himself.
Certainly, attempting a coup would qualify as “unscrupulous behavior,” right?
Sadly, Trump and a bunch of his hangers-on have largely escaped accountability for trying to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden… thanks in large part to a foot-dragging Department of Justice and the millions of dollars (not his, those of his donors) in legal fees that the former president has spent on his own defense and that of others, like his fake electors, who helped him.
As per usual, the only people who have paid the price for Trump’s lies are the regular Americans whom the former president duped into storming the Capitol on his behalf.
Not that they didn’t deserve their prison sentences, but they would have never been there in the first place without Trump lying to them.
Of course, the former president is not actually referring to himself in this post… even though the shoe certainly fits.
And, while we jest about his blatant projection, this is no laughing matter.
Because Trump is trying to do two things here.
The first is to intimidate those working to get Kamala Harris elected.
One of the GOP’s favorite tactics is to scare Democratic activists and potential Democratic voters into staying on the sidelines.
We have seen this in Florida already and now in Texas.
These are two states Republicans can’t afford to lose… and they are working ruthlessly to make sure they don’t.
Trump’s post is trying to accomplish the same across the nation… it’s simply an effort to bully those opposed to him.
The second purpose of a post like this is just as bad… and more dangerous. By continuously suggesting that he will be cheated, without ever having presented a shred of evidence that this happened in 2020 or is happening now, he is laying the groundwork for the Big Lie 2.0, which very well may lead to more unrest than “just” an insurrection.
Trump and his allies have been doing this for months.
By making these baseless accusations, Trump is playing with fire… all to save face in case he loses once again.
When he does, and if he again tries to subvert the will of the American people, let’s hope he is punished accordingly.
Or, as the former president puts it, “Those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”
One can only hope.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often funny analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
