 We are now seeing the culmination of a months-long ploy by Donald Trump to Delegitimize the selection because he knows the odds of him just winning legitimately are diminishing. He could still win fair and square That's a possibility However, he knows that there has to be some plan in place to get him to cling to power if Joe Biden pulls ahead And he is using his bully pulpit the institutional advantage that he has as an incumbent president to make sure that He wins by all means necessary even if that means cheating So he's been griping about mail-in ballots lying about how they lead to fraud now This is a lie, but he's been conditioning his supporters So now most people who support Donald Trump probably buy into his lies about how dangerous it is to vote by mail And they will most likely show up to vote in person However, Democratic Party voters will be more likely to vote by mail Probably being more concerned about the pandemic than Donald Trump supporters And so what we're going to see is a lot of people Vote by mail who are Democratic and a lot of people who are Republican show up in person to vote for Donald Trump So he tweeted this out the election should end on November 3rd not weeks later Think about what he's saying here He is literally calling for us to invalidate millions of ballots because it has never been the case that Any state has certified the results of an election on election day. That's never happened We've seen projections of who will win in the media because they basically take their data analysts And they crunch the numbers and make an educated prediction based on who is ahead in certain states But it's never been the case that states have finished the count and certified the results on the same day But what he's saying is listen all of the votes that come in on November 3rd That's it. Whatever doesn't get counted isn't getting counted And he has lawyers ready to basically try to stop the votes from being counted the minute the clock strikes 1201 now David Pakman made a really good point that you know while the polls are closing in Hawaii for example Well, it's already November 4th In New York on the East Coast so I mean Donald Trump It doesn't even make sense what he's saying But this is all his ploy to cling to power because what is probably going to end up happening is a lot of Republican Party voters Will show up in person those votes will get counted first and it will look like Donald Trump has a pretty sizable lead However, as states shift to counting the mail-in and absentee ballots Well, we may see the results change and so what Trump is trying to get his supporters to believe is that that's actually Rat fuckery that's happening. It's not just that we're counting the mail-in ballots Which we're expecting to lean heavily in favor of the Democratic Party. That's just Democrats Stealing the election that is called the red mirage. It is not something that is illegitimate. It's not electoral theft or fraud It's just that we are at a certain Point the states are at a certain point in the process of counting the ballots There's nothing nefarious about that But Donald Trump wants people to believe it's nefarious because he wants to try to try to use that as ammunition To steal the selection because what is he gonna do? Well, if it does look as if he's in the lead He is going to prematurely declare victory even if he has not won So Jonathan Swan of Axios details Trump's plan to declare a premature victory in this article that isn't surprising But I mean nonetheless, it still is pretty terrifying. He explains president Trump has told confidants He'll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's ahead according to three sources familiar with his private comments That's even if the Electoral College outcome still hinges on large numbers of uncounted votes in key states like Pennsylvania Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening Trump denied that he would declare victory prematurely Before adding I think it's a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election Is over Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks Describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare He has won for this to happen his allies expect He would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and Georgia Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after November 3rd a legitimate count Expected to favor Democrats are evidence of election fraud many prognosticators say that on election night Trump will likely appear ahead in Pennsylvania though the state's final outcome could change Substantially as mail-in ballots are counted over the following days Trump's team is preparing to claim baselessly that if that process changes the outcome in Pennsylvania from the picture on election night Then Democrats would have stolen the election Trump's advisors have been laying the groundwork for this strategy for weeks But this is the first account of Trump explicitly discussing his election night Intentions now we're about to find out what happens if he's able to do this He can't pull this off if it's a blowout and Joe Biden wins pretty quickly and decisively So this really will hinge on a few key battleground states Now the reason why people are worried about this is because if Trump uses his bully pulpit and starts partying at the White House As if he won well that can create this sort of bandwagon effect where corporate media will feel pressured to Respond to OAN and Fox News likely announcing that Donald Trump has in fact won Now it is the case that since 2000 which is when basically Fox News announced that George W. Bush had won and other corporate media outlets followed suit They did make some changes so that way there isn't a like this scenario where one media outlet will announce and then we'll see this Domino effects basically the New York Times lays all of this out in an article the data analysts of all networks including Fox News They're actually separated from the news anchors who are reporting on the results as they come so that way these data Analysts won't feel pressured to make the call too early and producers won't be in their ear about you know Pressuring them to say who won or will win so that is something that is encouraging the problem However, is that even if Donald Trump says that he won and outlets say Trump falsely claims that he won His supporters aren't going to listen to the news outlets So just the mere fact that he is speaking this into existence They're going to take his word as if it's gospel and they'll think okay Well, he won he said he won so I trust him over the fake news media. So he won and So he's setting up the situation where his supporters are going to sow chaos as they believe the media or Democrats are trying to steal This election away from Donald Trump when in actuality that's not happening now. What could they do who knows? I mean they could try to stop more votes from being counted they could disrupt the counts intimidate voters at the polls depending on how early he tries to declare victory and We don't necessarily know how this is going to play out although again We'll find out soon, but Trump is hinting that violence might actually occur So as Lachlan Markey of Daily Beast explains a Supreme Court decision extending time frames for states to count mail-in votes may result in Physical violence President Donald Trump predicted on Monday. They made a very dangerous situation And I mean physically dangerous Trump said at a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania He was referring to Supreme Court decisions allowing officials in Pennsylvania and North Carolina to continue accepting and counting mail-in ballots in the Days after Election Day, they did a very bad thing for the state They did a bad thing for this nation Trump said of the decision the danger that could be caused by that extension and especially when you know What goes on in Philadelphia? He added Trump and his allies have described mail-in votes Tallied after Election Day as tantamount to election fraud and insisted that a winner of the presidential contest should be declared on Tuesday So understand what he's saying here. He's not technically advocating for violence So, you know, he's speaking in a way that gives him plausible deniability But what he's saying is because these states are going to be able to count all of the ballots and since that might take a while That's going to lead to violence Well, where's the violence going to come from he knows where it's going to come from his supporters who over the weekend have been shutting down highways and bridges to intimidate voters and Literally ran the Biden campaign out of Texas. I mean, he knows that they're not going to believe the media They're going to believe Donald Trump So as we try to warn voters that we might not get the results on Election Day We warned them about the possibility of a red mirage situation where it seems as if Donald Trump is ahead from the in-person votes And then the mail-in votes tip it in Biden's favor He is trying to undermine our attempt to inform voters And he's trying to use the red mirage at worst to seal the election But at best to sow chaos and division throughout the country using his very loyal Cultist supporters who will do whatever he wants at the behest of his presidency And it's not like they're only implying that, you know counting all of the votes It's tantamount to Democrats dealing the election. His advisors are saying explicitly If we count the votes past November 3rd past today, then that is Election death that is them stealing this election. It's a different world now George And that's why we're trying to turn out our supporters We feel good about it and one final thing George if you speak with many smart Democrats They believe the present Trump will be ahead on election night probably getting 280 electorals somewhere in that range and then they're gonna try to steal it back after the election We believe that we will be over 290 electoral votes on election night So no matter what they try to do what kind of high jinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense They try to pull off. We're still gonna have enough electoral votes to get president Trump reelected Now that wasn't some random Trump supporter That is a senior Trump campaign advisor who literally just said on national television to no pushback mind you That if Donald Trump is ahead based on where they're at when they're counting the votes Well, if Joe Biden somehow pulls ahead that it's tantamount to Democrats stealing this election So he's literally saying that if all the votes are counted and Who is in the lead? Shifts throughout the process as we count all the votes that is election theft That is insanity This is anti-democratic Rhetoric, they don't want the votes to be counted They want to just look at who voted in person assuming that that will most likely be Trump supporters disproportionately and then stop all the votes Stop the rest of the votes from being counted pause Where we're at when Trump is in the lead and then that's it we claim victory But that's not all because Trump's deputy campaign manager sent out this email to supporters warning that it's actually the Democrats Who are trying to delegitimize this election as they warn about a red mirage? Situation saying Democrats are panicking because Joe Biden has not run up a large enough lead in early votes in Battleground states and they know that President Trump's in-person votes on election day will make up the difference and propel him to victory Biden's political operatives have been distributing talking points and research to delegitimize election day results by coaching Surrogates to refer to the president's election day success as a red mirage The operatives are advising surrogates and media to create a smokescreen by casting blame all around Imagining postal delays or falsely claiming that mail-in ballots that have simply not been returned should be considered a legitimate Votes that need to be counted none of this will be true But it will be held up as proof that President Trump's victory is a so-called red mirage. No one should fall for it Now this is of course incorrect. This isn't Joe Biden surrogates talking about the red mirage It is data analysts who are warning about the red mirage Anticipating more Republicans to vote in person and more Democrats to vote by mail It's not a talking point from the Joe Biden campaign and all that people are saying is that we should count all of the votes See the problem is that what they want to do is if somebody mails out their their ballot and it doesn't get there on election Night by November 3rd. Well, even if they sent it in weeks ago and it's postmarked for before November 3rd They want to say nope that is no longer acceptable that ballot is illegitimate They want to invalidate that ballot not count that ballot and the argument that they're making well if we count that ballot That's Democrats dealing the election. I Mean this is projection because that's exactly what they're trying to do now We don't necessarily know what's gonna happen like it could be an anti-climatic evening, right? Joe Biden could end up winning quickly Trump could end up winning quickly We don't know what's going to happen But even if Donald Trump isn't able to steal the selection by using the red mirage to you know Create some sort of legal battle or try to stop the counting process Still the amount of chaos that he's trying to sow is truly astounding