Donald Trump is now the 47th president of the United States, and whether Democrat or Republican, we should all be scared. Trump represents an existential threat to values at the core of our country. These include freedom of speech, rule of law, and most importantly, democracy itself.
Trump’s openly anti-democratic actions and statements should disqualify him from the ballot of any American who cares about the right to vote and the right to have the results of our votes respected. Trump-appointed officials have stated that the 2020 election was the most secure election in American history. Ruling on a voter fraud case brought by Trump’s team, District Court Judge James T. Russell wrote that Trump’s allies “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted or legal votes were not counted at all, due to voter fraud.” More than 60 of Trump’s fraud cases have been determined to be completely without merit. Trump has never proved fraud in 2020. The fact that Trump and JD Vance continue to push the lie that he won in 2020 is anti-democratic enough, but we should also consider Trump’s actions leading up to the 2020 election.
Weeks after the 2020 election, members of the electoral college met to certify which candidate had won their state, and send the results to Washington, to certify the results of the election. In several states that Biden had won, groups of republicans mobilized by Trump and his team attempted to impersonate legally legitimate electors, and sent signed documents to Washington claiming Trump had won those states. This was along with continuous pressure from Trump and his team put on Mike Pence, who they believed could reject states’ legitimate electors and pick Trump’s false electors, allowing Trump to win the 2020 election against the democratic will of the American people. Pence himself, a hardline conservative who served four years as Trump’s vice president, has said so.
“I think it’s important that the American people know what happened in the days before January 6,” Pence said. “President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes. I had no authority to do that.”
This plot was revealed as part of a federal indictment that charged Trump and his co-conspirators with attempting to defraud the U.S. and depriving voters of their right to a free and fair election. The indictment showed Trump and his team discussing this plan as early as November, and repeatedly and aggressively pressuring Pence to go along with it.
Considering the false electors scheme, one doesn’t even need to talk about Jan. 6 to see Trump’s clear anti-democratic efforts in 2020, where Trump told an angry mob of his supporters “We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen.” Trump said, “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore,” before saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” leading to a direct and violent attempt to stop the certification of the election results.
The false electors plot was a direct effort to subvert the results of a democratic election, to deny Americans one of their most fundamental rights, the right to choose our president. Where Pence defied Trump and refused to entertain the plot, JD Vance has said he would go along with it.
On Fox News just weeks before yesterday’s election, Trump was asked about foreign election interference, and said “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big—and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.” At a recent Pennsylvania rally, he said that he wouldn’t mind if a would-be assassin would have to shoot through journalists to get to him. Speaking on Veterans Day he said he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” On his Truth Social platform, Trump, in reference to 2020, posted saying “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” I could go on.
Any American who cares about freedom of speech or about democracy should be terrified about what the next four years under Trump will look like, and for what he will do when it comes time for him to leave office.
