Looks Like a Failed Road Test To Me

Road testing Trump's stupid, failed approach:

“It’s probably rigged.” That was Donald Trump’s assessment of the effort to recall Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom, during an appearance on the dutifully sycophantic network Newsmax. “They’re sending out all ballots―the ballots are mail-out, mail-in ballots. I guess you even have a case where you can make your own ballot. When that happens, nobody’s going to win except these Democrats.” 

...As with so many of the ideas that spill from Trump’s paranoiac imagination, the idea that Democrats have engineered a massive voter fraud conspiracy across dozens of states is now a key plank of the Republican Party platform; an operating premise of the party that’s done more to undermine democracy than any since the Reconstruction era. 

...Fox Nation’s Tomi Lahren told her viewers that “the only thing that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud.” Baseless claims of fraud have trended on social media throughout the summer. Larry Elder, the Republican radio host most likely to become the state’s governor if Newsom is recalled, has also suggested that Dominion Voting Systems was working to rig the gubernatorial recall election.

...As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump argued on Wednesday, these tactics also provide “a way to undermine the credibility of elections in general, using a Democratic state preserving a Democratic governor as evidence that Democrats are somehow cheating.” This all bolsters the larger argument that will be the foundation of Trump’s 2024 run: that he was cheated out of reelection in 2020 by a vast conspiracy that is stealing elections from righteous Republicans.