Trump's Attacks on Voting and Democracy

The explicit, openly-stated position of the President of the United States is now that a full vote count in the Florida elections *cannot* render a legitimate result.Thus, he says, Rs must be declared winners. This is not the conduct of an actor in a democracy.

In retrospect, Trump previewed everything we're seeing now in the run-up to the 2016 election. Trump repeatedly declared that the outcome would only be legitimate *if he won.* This put a new spin on longtime GOP "voter fraud" lies. From my book: amazon.com/Uncivil-War-De…

Today, Trump claimed the vote in Florida has been "infected." Trump uses this word constantly, to describe alleged undermining of our country by undocumented immigrants. As a GOP pollster told me, GOP voters are open to such claims because of race...

GOP lawmakers are now validating Trump's lies about vote fraud in Florida. This gross misconduct weakens faith in our system. But there's a long history here...

But this authoritarian style goes far beyond just lying about voter fraud. We're seeing it on one front after another right now. It *escalated* as Democrats closed in on winning the House, which means imposing accountability on Trump's corruption and lawlessness.

Let's run through the pattern. Trump used the military as a prop to dramatize the central message at the core of the Trump/GOP propaganda campaign in the election's final days... 

Trump installed a loyalist to constrain the Mueller investigation. He did this without Senate confirmation, for the obvious purpose of shielding his choice from questions about his intentions towards Mueller. How many Rs have raised a peep about this?

In FL, GOP governor ordered law enforcement to investigate Dem vote counters in an election in which *he* is the candidate. In GA, GOP gov candidate oversaw his own election and engaged in conduct @rickhasen described as among worst he's ever seen...

White House circulated an apparently doctored video designed to create a fake rationale for punishing a reporter for asking Trump tough questions. *Trump himself* confirmed there may be more to come.

This quasi-totalitarian contempt for the truth and constant casting of the media as the "enemy" add up to conduct towards the independent press' institutional role that in important respects is something new...

The crowning absurdity of all this is that pundits are dithering around wondering whether *Democrats* will go "too far" in using their legitimate authority to act as a check on this lawless, out of control president.