Trump and his allies prepare the ground so that they cannot accept defeat

Weeks before the elections, the former president continues to cast doubts on the transparency of the process, generating mistrust and warning of a struggle after the elections.

By Marta Garde

EFE group

Washington, DC – Former US President Donald Trump and his strong allies have been casting doubt on the electoral process for years and have prepared the ground for not accepting defeat in the November 5 elections. Rhetoric that will generate great uncertainty in very close elections.

The former Republican president (2017-2021) continues to deny that he lost in 2020 against Democrat Joe Biden and has promoted lies that illegal immigrants can vote , while loyalists such as the tycoon Elon Musk have warned without evidence that the Democrats “want to end. with the right to vote.

Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome in 2020 won him two impeachments in Georgia and Washington DC for trying to overturn his case and ended up leading to an attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the day a crowd of his followers tried to prevent that. the victory of his rivals was confirmed.

Four years later, his argument has not changed: “All I want is a fair election,” he told the media recently, insisting that the Democrats are cheating and making it clear that if the system is not honest “we have to fight for the rights. of the country”.

His team defends that same line. “Republicans, as should all Americans, want elections that are transparent without any doubt and that reflect the will of the voters. If elections like this happen, we will have no problem recognizing the result,” said Jaime Florez, spokesman for the conservative campaign, to EFE.

For Jackson Barlow, a professor of Political Science at the University of Juniata College in Pennsylvania, this speech is “designed to undermine confidence” in the outcome of the election.

“Even if it is transparent and the Republican Party accepts it, it will undermine confidence in the system. The damage will already be done and the trust will continue in the future,” the expert explains to EFE, expecting that if there are protests they may not reach the level of January 6, but they can do the process ” complicated. “.

The Democrats criticize that Trump and his allies have “conspired to cast doubt” on the elections this time and “be able to complain when they lose,” but they say they are ready for any eventuality.

“The Harris-Walz team goes into the home field with a strong voter and election protection operation and the best lawyers in the country, ready for any challenge the Republicans throw at us. “We will give Americans the free and fair elections they deserve,” campaign president Harris Jen O’Malley Dillon told EFE.

At the moment, the US vice-president and Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, is still leading in voting intentions, according to the average of the polls prepared by the website FiveThirtyEight.

He leads Trump by 2.5 percentage points at the federal level, but in some key states that could tip the balance, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that difference is reduced to 0.8 points and in others such as Arizona and Georgia have the conservative candidate ahead by 1.4 and 1.1 point margins, respectively.

Mark Smith, a constitutional expert at Cedarville University, believes the Trump campaign will only accept the results if he wins or loses decisively. “With the actions of 2020, you don’t have a reasonable standard as to what is fair or legal,” he notes.

It seems that there is violence or riots like those that surrounded the previous report, he explains.

On January 6, 2021, approximately 140 officers were injured when approximately 10,000 people, most of them Trump supporters, demonstrated in front of the Capitol and nearly 800 broke into the building with the intention of stopping cemented Biden’s victory. A total of five deaths are believed to be related to that attack.

Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Institute of Public Affairs and a professor of Political Science at Syracuse University, believes that Trump’s attitude after the elections will be decisive.

“A lot depends on your attitude and what you say. If he loses again he will have a chance to repair at least some of the damage he did to his legacy on January 6, 2021, and I hope his family and closest advisors will remind him of that. But there could also be violence if he wins. The left in the US has already shown that it is capable of violence in protests in some cities,” he said.

Biden himself doubted this month that the elections will be calm. “I’m confident that (the process) will be free and fair, but I don’t know if it will be peaceful,” he warned in a dramatic appearance in the White House press room.