Trump’s Wars

Trump’s mistake in suggesting the postponement of the upcoming election demonstrates his authoritarian and narcissistic personality, as well as the zero knowledge he has of his country’s Constitution.

His biographers accuse him of suffering from delusional, self-destructive and confrontational tendencies in “Fire and Fury,” “Fear,” “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and “Trump Revealed.” They characterize Donald Trump’s personality as explosive and confrontational, which explains his temper tantrums in response to anything that gets in his way. That is how his presidency began (by calling Mexicans rapists and murderers), and that is how he seems intent on ending it. He does not understand politics, he only understands propaganda as an element or tool for change, as a means of reaching his goals, or the unlawful consolidation of power in one of the most successful examples of democracy in the world.

The democratic imbalance that this suggests, expressed in the form of a chaotic and reckless public policy, has a provocative, though not new, feature in its final stage. Last Tuesday, Trump tweeted, “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA.” And he ended with the question: “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” According to The Washington Post, this statement contains, in itself, all the elements of a fascist tactic.

Trump’s statement comes at a time when the polls are not in his favor with Joe Biden leading by about 10 points nationally. Biden is also leading in the so-called purple states, which are vital to winning the needed majority of the electoral vote: Arizona (3.7), Wisconsin (5.0), Michigan (7.8), Pennsylvania (6.0), Ohio (1.5), Florida (6.2), and even Texas, a Republican state since the 1980s, where they are virtually tied, are examples of these kinds of swing states. The statement is also further evidence of how a narcissistic personality and the fear of losing an election invade Trump’s intimate universe. Hence his ongoing and delirious war against the world that surrounds him, which he neither understands nor accepts as he sees fit. The list includes China, Iran, Barack Obama, the Democrats and the mainstream media, which criticize him with every misstep. Being the angry egomaniac he is, he does this in near-suicidal fashion with a kind of clumsiness that is right up the alley of Biden and the Democrats. The terrible mishandling of the pandemic and the systemic racism that has once again stirred the pot, unseen since the infamous Rodney King police beating in the 1980s, has brought to light the incompetence of an upstart president along with the distaste for democracy that runs through his DNA. Trump’s authoritarian response to the murder of another African American man, George Floyd, in May was the straw that broke the camel’s back, dragging his popularity down to such a degree that this could very easily be the beginning of the end of his presidency.

Trump’s mistake in suggesting that we postpone the upcoming election demonstrates his authoritarian and narcissistic personality and the zero knowledge he has of his country’s Constitution, which, I dare to say he has not read – or not in full. Thus, authoritarianism and the lack of any technical knowledge about his profession came together in one dreadful moment. Trump is unaware that the date of the presidential election (the first Tuesday of the first full week in November, every four years) can only be determined or changed by Congress. The fourth clause of Article II of the U.S. Constitution states: “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.” In addition to the much criticized slip-up, Trump has rejected mail-in voting and, along with Senate Republicans, has refused to provide the support that the U.S. postal system needs.

Moreover, they do so because they suspect with good reason that they are a moment away from losing the election, which includes, for the first time in decades, the possible loss of the Senate. Mail-in voting is a right to which citizens are historically entitled, and this vote is more important than ever given the circumstances imposed by the pandemic. The warning that there would be fraud is yet another Trump masquerade. It attempts to intimidate citizens and influence the procedures that states conduct to implement mail-in voting. This is another of Trump’s wars which has very little chance of succeeding, given the reaction and resistance that we have seen.