Politico:
‘Everyone sees the train wreck coming’: Trump reveals his November endgame
After more than four years of nonstop voter fraud claims and insinuations that he might not accept the election results, the president isn't keeping his intent a secret.
After more than four years of nonstop voter fraud claims, insinuations that he might not accept the presidential election results and at least one float about delaying the November election, it’s no secret. Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power this week — and his choice not to walk back his remarks Thursday in the face of widespread unease — merely broadcasts his strategic intent in terms both parties can understand.
As a result, Republicans can no longer truthfully deny that Trump may be unwilling to leave office in the event he is defeated. And Democrats must now confront the possibility they may not have the power to stop him.
It’s an unprecedented backdrop for a modern presidential race, one that could stretch the electoral process to its limits, almost guaranteeing a chaotic, divisive finish to the campaign.
Timothy L O’Brien/Bloomberg:
Elections Aren’t the Only Things Trump Thinks Are Rigged
It’s always somebody else’s fault when things turn against him.
It’s worth worrying about how deeply Trump is corrupting the election, of course — and monitoring him closely. After all, he’s corrupted many of the people around him, including his own children. And, as Barton Gellman pointed out in a meticulously reported and provocative feature in the Atlantic this week, Trump has powerful tools at his disposal to try to upend the results — on and well after Election Day. My colleague Jonathan Bernstein sorts through Gellman’s key conclusions here, including how willing Republicans in swing states would be to assist a Trump coup.
But amid all the hand-wringing over what he may or may not do, don’t let Trump snatch away your own agency and attention. David Axelrod, as canny and experienced a political observer as there is, reminded everyone not to get overly distracted by Trump’s performance art. “You do wonder if the POTUS would sooner have us talking about his outrageous comments on the election than the 202,000 dead of COVID-19 or the 870,000 additional Americans who filed for unemployment this week,” he tweeted.
Politico:
Here’s How the Pandemic Finally Ends
A vaccine by early 2021, a steady decline in cases by next fall and back to normal in a few years—11 top experts look into the future.
“It will take two things to bring this virus under control: hygienic measures and a vaccine. And you can’t have one without the other,” says Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The future laid out above is the likeliest scenario for how the pandemic could end, based on interviews with 11 top-level experts who think about the future of those microscopic SARS-CoV-2 particles every day.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump openly told us exactly what he intends to do
In this interpretation, Trump is merely refusing to commit to his civic duty of giving his personal blessing to an electoral loss. At its outer limit, this is seen as alarming because it might stoke violence among supporters. As CNN put it, it constitutes a “refusal to guarantee a violence-free transition."
But what really matters here is that Trump is making an actual declaration of intent — not just to refuse to respect the outcome, but rather to try to cancel and override it, if he is able to get away with it.