How far would Trump and his supporters go to try and flip the outcome?
As Election Day approaches, anxiety is naturally rising over whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will win.
But there’s reason to be anxious about another prospect, too: just what Trump and his supporters will do if Harris wins narrowly.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that the only way he could lose is if Democrats cheat. It seems clear he will try to deem any Harris victory illegitimate. Many expect he will reprise in some form his shocking behavior after the 2020 election, when he tried to overturn Biden’s win — and that his supporters may try in some way to help him.
There are a number of new safeguards in place this time around making any such election-stealing effort by Trump less likely to succeed, as Barton Gellman wrote in Time last week. A 2022 law reformed the vote-certification process, which may make it more difficult for Trump to procedurally overturn any results. Trump is no longer the incumbent president and can’t use the powers of the executive branch. And authorities are more thoroughly preparing to preempt a January 6-esque mob action.
Yet though it may be procedurally more difficult for Trump to challenge the outcome this year, the risk is that procedure and legality will end up mattering less this time around — that, instead, Trump will bring us into a world where force and partisanship and the naked drive for power could well triumph over any remaining norms.
Even an attempt at this could bring the country to a more dangerous and chaotic place — but it’s also possible, particularly in the event of a close race and a narrow Harris win, that it could succeed in restoring Trump to the White House, as Politico’s Kyle Cheney has written.
For one, the Republican Party has become more MAGA-fied since 2020, and has largely made its peace with defending the indefensible: Trump’s election denialism.
The 2020 GOP was deeply conflicted about Trump’s election-stealing scheme; almost all key GOP officials with positions giving them responsibility over the results — governors, statewide election officials, state legislatures, and Vice President Mike Pence — declined to help carry it out.
Since then, many critics have been purged from the party, while others have made their peace with Trump. Additionally, Trump’s team, along with a supporting web of Republican activists, has had four years to prepare to challenge the results again. Last time around, their effort was shambolic and improvised; this time, they likely understand far better where the pressure points are.
For instance, if Republicans hold the House, Speaker Mike Johnson could try to interfere with certifying the results – a fear intensified among Democrats by Trump’s recent public statement that he and Johnson have “a little secret.”
But perhaps the most ominous threat is that, this time around, there’s a widespread expectation in the MAGA world that Trump is sure to win (even though the polls clearly point to a very close race that could go either way).
