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MARCH 24, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

Trump's Time Travel

Still working to 'rescind' the 2020 election, the Donald demands his
party undo the past.

Donald Trump's

**raison d'ȇtre**for his 2024 presidential campaign-and by
extension, the substance of the 2024 Republican platform should he be
its nominee-became even clearer this week, even though it apparently
involves time travel.

As countless news stories had already reported, Trump remains obsessed
with overturning his defeat in the 2020 election. Yesterday, however, we
learned

just how obsessed, when he withdrew his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks,
as faithful a Trump acolyte as ever encouraged the January 6th
insurrection, for an open Senate seat in Alabama. Brooks was the first
member of Congress to suggest using the January 6th congressional
recording of the electoral vote to nullify and overturn the outcome,
and, anticipating that the day's events could involve violence, wore
body armor that day as he addressed Trump's rally.

What would lead Trump to withdraw his support from so fervid a
numbskull? According to Brooks, beginning last September-eight months
after Joe Biden had taken office-Trump repeatedly asked Brooks to lead
a charge to "rescind" the election by removing Biden from office and
mandating a special election to replace him. Brooks said that Trump has
repeatedly requested this of him, and that at each such occasion, he
told Trump that there was simply no way to do it-that nothing in
American constitutional law allowed this course of action.

These refusals so irked the Donald that he withdrew his Brooks
endorsement yesterday, noting that even this uber-loyalist had succumbed
to wokeness. To which Brooks responded by revealing his "rescind"
discussions with Trump.

Have we learned anything new from this deeply nutsy tale? I'm anything
but a trained psychoanalyst, so I can't say at what point Trump's
obsession tips over into psychosis. What I can say is that if Trump runs
in 2024, disputing the 2020 outcome will be his chief focus. And with
that as his starting point, he may well argue that all bills signed into
law by Biden and all his executive actions are

**ipso facto**null and void.

What I can also say is that if Trump wins the Republican nomination that
year, the party will embrace his obsession as its own, as it has always
done. Besides, Republicans have long campaigned on the myth of voter
fraud, well before Trump appeared on the scene, so it's really not
that much of a leap to go full batshit crazy on this score.

That said, no one has ever sought the presidency before-at least,
since popular voting became the norm during Andrew Jackson's
presidency-on a platform of literally overturning the previous
election and its consequences. Should Trump win, I suppose, it would set
a precedent that could enable Democrats to declare all the laws enacted
during the presidency of George W. Bush to be null and void. American
politics could become entirely about erasing the past, and not just in
the way the Republicans would like us to do by, say, stopping teaching
about slavery.

Ever since the ascent of Barry Goldwater in 1964, Republicans have been
a fundamentally reactionary party, but Trump '24 affords them the
opportunity to take that to a whole new level.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Geographic inequality is one of the forces tearing our democracy apart,
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The benefits fossil fuel companies derived from COVID relief created the
dynamic in the industry we see today. BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

The Ted Cruz CRT Minstrel Show

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson held her own during the Texas senator's
bizarre show-and-tell over teaching American history. BY GABRIELLE
GURLEY

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