Trump’s advisers have been working for months to move his focus away from baseless theories of election fraud. A group of outsiders is making that difficult.
Of all the outside advisers urging President Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Ticktin can claim the deepest ties; the two men went to military school together as teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.
Which is why it might be worth listening when Ticktin says that Trump could do something soon to take over elections. “He’s the only one that I know for sure has the understanding of the severity of it,” Ticktin told us this month before taking the stage at an election-skeptic conference in Las Vegas. The way Ticktin sees it, there are three possible outcomes this fall. The first—a smooth election—won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3. “Either martial law, or step aside,” he told us about Trump’s choices in the last scenario. When we asked about the prospect of riots if Trump tries to overturn the election results, Ticktin said he was not concerned. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.
Trump has already tried to claim greater federal control over elections, which under the Constitution are administered primarily at the state and local level. In February, he said Republicans should nationalize voting in at least 15 places. In August, when the television and radio host Wayne Allyn Root pushed Trump to declare a “national-security emergency” to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures, Trump played coy: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.” Later that month, Trump posted a Root column on the topic, with a headline that described the plan as “foolproof.” Peters announced after meeting with Trump in June that the president “basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.” In a prime-time address at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump again repeated the false claim that he had won the 2020 election, and sarcastically encouraged his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming elections.
At some point Hanlon’s razor becomes a distinction without difference. The wall of lies is too complete to penetrate and whatever their motive, they cannot be recovered. I know you want to believe that most can still choose to be something other than harmful to everyone outside their inner circle. I used to believe it to. I no longer believe that’s true. This is a struggle for survival now.
I think if we all give up our humanity then we’re fighting to persist something which ought to die out. I’ll choose to hold onto mine.
It’s not hate that informs how you treat someone with rabies when you know they’re beyond saving. You know there’s still a person in there somewhere, and you also know you can’t save them, and they’re a danger to everyone around them. They’ve driven themselves rabid with their own ghost stories and phantasms. If they’re only weakly connected to “The Cause” there’s still time, but when they’ve closed that last door tight against the monsters in their head, you can’t undo what’s been done. The only thing left to do is to protect those who aren’t dead from the heart up, from those who are.
I see where you’re from, I really do. But what you are saying is incongruent with reality. I’d highly encourage you to think on this more, and consider changing your mind.
I’m gonna check out of this conversation though, really tired of the threats in my DMs.