8 hours

It’s going to be a long day.

What will Trump do if he loses? Nobody knows. My prediction? It will be some form of bad.

The son he punched to the floor in front of the son’s classmates when he was at university tells us that if the loss is big enough Puncher Trump won’t fight it. Big of him. Not yuge, but big.

For months, the Republican nominee encouraged his supporters to mistrust Tuesday night’s results, suggesting the election could be rigged, possibly as part of an intricate scheme involving African-American voters in Philadelphia, Latinos in Nevada, a cabal of international bankers, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the cast of Saturday Night Live, the FBI, and a dozen women pretending to be victims of his sexual crimes — all working in tandem to execute Crooked Hillary’s plan to end U.S. sovereignty.

Then, at the final presidential debate, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace gave Trump an opportunity to save that red meat for the base and pose as a reasonable politician. But for once, the GOP nominee didn’t take the bait. Instead of assuring Wallace and America that he would concede the election if he lost, Trump promised to keep the nation “in suspense.”

So, on Tuesday morning, MSNBC’s Willie Geist gave Donald Trump Jr. an opportunity to repent for his father’s sin.

“Can you say here right now, if Hillary Clinton is a clear-cut winner tonight in the Electoral College, your father will concede the election in a speech tonight?” Geist asked.

“Of course,” Donald Trump Jr. insisted. “All we’ve wanted is a fair fight.”

Nonsense. They’ve wanted far more than that, and gotten it. They wanted to stir up rage and hatred at all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons, and they’ve got their wish.

But Trump Jr. proceeded to explain why his father might be justified in saying the 2016 election was an unfair fight. Specifically, Trump Jr. cited conservative provocateur James O’Keefe’s latest discredited videos, which purport to show Democrats scheming to bus voters across state lines (GOP voter-suppression efforts, inadequate measures to accommodate participation among the disabled, and the fact that we hold elections on a workday did not make his list).

“You know, we just want a fair system,” he said. “Some stuff is going on. I don’t know if it’s enough to move elections. But we’ve seen states, you know, a few thousand votes can make a difference.”

“If he loses, he will concede tonight?” Geist asked, again.

“If he loses and it’s legit and fair and there’s not obvious stuff out there,” Trump Jr. replied, “without question, yes.”

Trump worked hard to get his fans to intimidate voters. He’s not the one who gets to wonder if the election is legit and fair.

While the GOP standard-bearer has spoken a bit less about voter fraud recently, his closing argument centers on Clinton’s corruption and the rigged system that enables it. And it’s difficult to see how that argument leaves room for anything but the most perfunctory endorsement of the election’s legitimacy.

“The FBI, the director, was obviously under tremendous pressure,” Trump toldsupporters Monday. “She still deleted them after getting a subpoena from Congress. I mean, that’s a crime! What happened? That’s a crime! You don’t even need the new stuff. She shouldn’t be allowed to run.”

Says the liar, thief, cheat, pussy-grabber, bully, fraud.

Ultimately, should he lose, it may not matter what Trump says. The damage is done, regardless. For a year and half, he’s inundated his supporters with apocalyptic rhetoric about how his loss would both threaten every right they hold dear and show that those rights can no longer be secured through democratic means — because his defeat would prove that their “democracy” is a sham.

And more.

 

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