Birtherism in 2010. What will this billboard say in 2018?
The term “new birtherism” has been percolating for a few weeks now as Donald Trump has ratcheted up his “rigged election” theme in response to, well, everything that’s been happening. He’s been talking about this all year, but the endgame has only recently come into focus.
Danielle Allen, in the Washington Post, saw this coming back when Trump walked back the old birtherism. As she put it, in response to his statement proclaiming President Obama to have been born in the United States, “Trump’s birtherism isn’t dead. It just has a new target.”
More recently, there is Laura Clawson’s post here last week: The new birtherism? Donald Trump is setting the stage to delegitimize Hillary Clinton's presidency and Think Progress has a good post-debate take: The new birtherism: Trump says Hillary Clinton is ineligible to run for president
Following on, over the past two days, Trump has shown us where he is going with this. It won’t surprise you or anyone who has been paying attention, but it’s worth connecting the dots.
Let’s begin with the debate this week, where he put the “rigged election” theme into the starkest terms yet, stating that:
“[The Clinton Foundation] is a criminal enterprise.”
“She shouldn't be allowed to run. She's guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run, and just in that respect I say it's rigged because she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with e-mails and so many other things.”
“I think what the FBI did and what the Department of Justice did, including meeting with her husband, the Attorney General, in the back of an airplane on the tarmac in Arizona, I think it's disgraceful. I think it's a disgrace.”
These statements, coupled with his refusal to say he won’t dispute the election results (this is where we add 2 + 2), means that the springboard for Trump’s post-election grift will be a lawsuit challenging Hillary Clinton’s eligibility for the presidency. He may or may not challenge the actual vote (simply put, he can’t do it without the financial and logistical support of the GOP), but there’s little doubt that he will challenge the legitimacy of her presidency. That’s what he means when he says he won’t challenge the results “if I win.”
Yes, the lawsuit will be entirely without merit, but it doesn’t matter. Fox News will spend countless hours talking about it, repeating whatever claims it makes. Snopes has already begun to debunk this, but anyone who fought the Swift-boating of John Kerry knows how little that matters to people who are predisposed to not like Hillary, no matter how good you get at whacking those damn moles. Books will be written by the usual suspects — people who make their livings peddling this stuff — Jerome Corsi has probably already finished most of his.
Finally, there is Trump’s debate quip about accepting the results of the election, “I’ll keep you in suspense. Okay?” His improvised choice of that phrase, used to defuse repeated pressure from Chris Wallace to explain his refusal to support one of the most fundamental traditions of American democracy, can be seen as a tell. That is, it tells us that he already knows what he is going to do if he loses. Notice that he doesn’t say that he will be in suspense. No. He says, instead, that we will be in suspense.
So far, the closest he has come to walking it back was yesterday, as follows:
“Of course I would accept a clear election result, but I would also reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result.”
This feels no different than the aftermath of the many other extremist statements he has made. For most of the year, before this past month or so, the media (and the GOP) waited with bated breath for Trump to “pivot” — to walk all this stuff back — to no avail. Yesterday’s statement is probably just another example of this fake contrition. There’s little doubt he will find the result of the vote to be “questionable” — the only real doubt is whether or not he will actually sue, or just threaten to. I’m guessing that he will go ahead and try it, because somebody else will be paying for it.
After all, this is Trump’s core business model — he threatens people with lawsuits and/or forces them to sue him. It seems clear that he and the people currently running his campaign hope to use what’s left of his brand to start a new conspiracy-theory television channel. What better way to kick it off and get people to send money than to sue the U.S. Government?
I’m not sure what can be done to fight it, but I will say this: No president in U.S. history, ever, will have had more experience or been better prepared to deal with this kind of thing than Hillary Clinton. We should thank our lucky stars that she is the one running against Donald Trump.
Let’s give her the chance to show us how it’s done. Vote November 8th!
PS: We need a decent name for this. “New Birtherism” gives the motive and ties it back to Trump, but isn’t at all descriptive. Birthers was remarkably apt. So what do we call these people, who believe Hillary should be in jail? Guess we will have to wait for the billboard! [see above]
