Rachel Maddow underscores the crucial implications of the 2024 elections for Donald Trump. A defeat could potentially lead to his incarceration, while a victory might pave the way for an extended presidency, jeopardizing democracy.
Reflecting on the events surrounding the 2020 election provides a roadmap. Post-Trump’s loss, the surge in unrest was evident. Notably, he began inflaming his base with unfounded allegations of election fraud long before voting commenced, leading to instances of voter intimidation.
Following his 2020 election loss, Trump doubled down on his baseless claims of election theft, faced 63 legal defeats, pressurized officials from swing states to reverse the outcomes, and eventually incited a rebellion against the nation.
Maddow said:
These are the stakes, and again whatever you think about that as a legal strategy for Trump, that is how he is thinking about the election. That is how he is going to be talking to his supporters and aides and campaign about the election. The election means one of two things if this is the way he is going to approach it. Either he loses the election and goes to prison, or he wins the election. He doesn’t go to prison. And is that for life he gets to be president? Will we keep having new elections? If every election is an opportunity for him to go to prison, do you think he allows us to have elections?
If winning the election is his plan to stay out of prison, what happens if and when he does not win it? Does that kind of election end with a graceful concession to a fair and square re-elected President Biden? I mean, if Trump and his supporters see the stakes as losing and going to prison or winning and being president and probably president for life, how should we expect that he and the Republican Party and Republican officials in swing states are going to handle the conduct of that election that Trump may very well lose? And because we are prone to forget, we have to say out loud that we would be remiss.
We would be willfully naive to ask that question as if our politics exists in a vacuum. Somewhere outside the rest of our news. As if the politics pages are totally different than the crime pages, right? As if we are not in a moment where far-right politics is coinciding with far-right violence, with regular shows of force from paramilitary extreme-right groups, and with acts of violence by people who are explicitly and admittedly motivated by far-right eliminationist political ideas. We are prone to forget, but we do not have to forget.
Considering the potential consequences Trump faces, a heightened sense of urgency, more desperate strategies, and unlawful maneuvers can be anticipated. Maddow accentuates the idea that current upheavals are closely tied to extreme-right ideologies, emphasizing the need to remember the tumultuous events of 2020.
