At the time of this writing, it appeared Joe Biden was headed for victory, but the tight results reflect, again, a deeply divided America. President Trump decided not to wait for the votes to be counted and as early as Wednesday morning woke Americans from their sleep with his version of "woe is me," saying that "as far as I know" he'd already won and was now preparing his legal team to ask the courts to order a cessation of the counting.
Trump is counting on his supporters. He already knows, which he said four years ago, that they would applaud him even if "I stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody." He knows they'll cheer him when he mocks Joe Biden for wearing a mask. He knows they'll applaud when he says he'll dismiss Dr. Anthony Fauci after the election, and he knows they'll hoot and holler when he calls the coronavirus a hoax, says global warming doesn't exist, and that if it does, it's not because of us.
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He also knows there's no need to explain what happened to his main campaign promise, made just four years ago. He, after all, ran from rally to rally and told his supporters that the most important thing in the world was building a wall between the US and Mexico. He even brought Israel into it, explaining that he learned from its successful experience in building a wall. He also found a wonderful source for funding the project: "Mexicans." Everywhere he went, he vowed that Mexico would pay for the wall. He didn't only promise: At every campaign rally he rhetorically asked his supporters, "Who will pay for the wall?" And they, already knowing the answer, would shout: "Mexico!"
That's where it ended. No wall was built. Mexico didn't spend a dime and the years passed. If it had been another president, he would say: It rained, we were hit by the coronavirus, there were other problems, I had to meet with the leader of North Korea, my friend Kim Jong-un. But Rump is exempt from having to explain. In 2016, nothing was more important than the wall, and his supporters have no problem forgetting about it. Now he wants to convince them that the doctors are exaggerating the number of corona deaths because doing so turns them a better profit. His admirers applaud. They consider it an accurate, realistic argument. All the rest – fake news.
His speech on Wednesday is part of a plan he's been implementing for months. He began by denigrating the American postal service (which he appointed one of his biggest donors to head…), then said mail-in voting was vulnerable to voter fraud. Then, immediately after the death of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he brazenly appointed her replacement, ultra-conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett, who can now rule in favor of his petition to disqualify certain votes sent by mail.
His supporters will back the petition, and the judges – he expects – will follow suit. Nothing is more sacrosanct. Not the rules of the game, not the treatment of prisoners of war ("losers"), not the adamant rejection of racist expressions, not respecting your political rival, and mainly – not the truth.
President of the United States is an official position. The American constitution, outdated and cumbersome as it is, determines who is elected president. It also gave Trump the presidency in 2016, even though his then-rival, Hillary Clinton, received 3 million more votes than him.
"Leader of the free world" isn't an official title, although it is traditionally associated with the president of the United States. Not in Trump's case. It's hard to imagine anyone in the world still willing to say he upheld that role.
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