Taking a break from his obsessive descriptions of the Reflecting Pool repairs and the ballroom construction, President Trump has demanded that incumbent Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan be declared the winner of the Alaska Senate race. According to the Washington Post, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other ‘slug’ that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over – He easily wins. There is no other fair solution!”
Interestingly enough, there actually is another fair solution: Counting the votes and declaring a winner based on the vote totals. This approach to elections might strike Trump and his authoritarian friends as somewhat eccentric, quaint, and old-fashioned, but, whether he likes it or not, it is the way that elections are generally carried out.
And there’s an additional fact that may shock Trump even more: Even in countries that have actual monarchs, those monarchs do not, as a rule, get to declare the winners of parliamentary elections by executive fiat and regardless of the vote totals.
Here’s another fun fact: Voters typically expect their vote to be counted for the candidate for whom they voted.
Now, I know that all of these notions are probably difficult for Trump to understand and, worse, could be very inconvenient for him. But that’s how things are.
After Tuesday, you’d think that he would go a little softer on the whole I-am-king thing, and for a few hours he actually seemed to. But Trump is Trump, and he and his Administration have no interest in modulating their authoritarian impulses. In fact, there are reports that agents of evil Stephen Miller and Russell Vought have been drawing up plans to rule by “decree.”
As we’ve all known, the cancer runs deep in this Administration. And Republicans in Congress have been loath to restrain Trump’s anti-democratic proclivities. Now, in the face of defeat and recognition of the extent to which Trump’s hold seems to be weakening, will they step up? I wouldn’t count on it.
But now there’s a new sheriff in town. No, I’m not referring to the newly-elected Democrats in Congress–or, only to them. I’m talking about the American people. They just spoke pretty clearly, so if I were Miller, Vought, the Trump family, and the other miscreants in the Administration, I would be making plans for a fast getaway.