“I love you,” Donald Trump told an audience of Christian conservatives recently. “You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
What does that mean?
That there will be no election in four years? That Donald Trump will not leave office in four years?
Democrats lost no time in painting the man they see as a threat to democracy as just that, in his own words.
“Donald Trump has been clear about what he wants to do if he wins this November — he repeatedly suggested this November might be America’s last election, said he’d ‘terminate’ the Constitution, and promised to rule as a dictator on ‘day one,’” said Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokeswoman.
For his part, Trump ally Sen. Tom Cotton told Jake Tapper of CNN, “He’s obviously making a joke.”
That’s not what he told Laura Ingraham on Fox News last Monday. She tried — three times — to get him to back away from his comments.
Ingraham told the former president: “They’re saying that you said to a crowd of Christians that they won’t have to vote in the future.”
And Trump responded: “Let me say what I mean by that. I had a tremendous crowd, speaking to Christians all in all — I mean, this was a crowd that liked me a lot.” Catholics, he said, are “treated very badly by this administration … they’re like persecuted.” By whom? The Catholic president? And Jewish people who vote for Democrats “should have your head examined.”
Having disposed of Catholics and Jews, he returned to what he said about Christians. “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true. Because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group. They don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote.”
Ingraham then gave him an out: “You mean you don’t have to vote for you, because you’ll have four years in office.” Trump then began talking about gun owners not voting, which isn’t true either.
Ingraham kept trying, to save him from himself. “It’s being interpreted, as you are not surprised to hear, by the left as, well, they’re never going to have another election,” she said. “So can you even just respond …”
Nope. Christians, he said, “vote in very small percentages,” or so he told them. “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”
So don’t ever vote again. Or does that mean, as Ingraham tried yet again, that Trump would never leave office. She laughed as she asked, “But you will leave office after four years?”
“Of course. By the way, and I did last time,” Trump said.
But of course, he did not leave office peacefully last time. He fought — unsuccessfully — in courts across the country. He came up with slates of fake electors. He tried to convince Georgia officials to find votes for him and his vice president to ignore his constitutional duties. And he sent a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol.
This election really is about the fate of democracy. You just have to ask Donald Trump, three or four times, in Ingraham’s case. It is not funny. It is outrageous. He says these things because he can, because he gets away with saying and doing outrageous things — and because he means it. This is not, it bears saying, what presidents should do. It is beyond arrogant and irresponsible. It is weird, yes, but it is scary weird.
