Gene Collier: The Trump train is the last train to Crazytown

Gene Collier / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The cal­en­dar in­sists this race for the White House still isn’t over, a race that gets cra­zier ev­ery time you think it can’t get any cra­zier, so it’s prob­a­bly cra­zier still to try and freeze frame it in the mo­ment, one week out from Elec­tion Day.

Some­how I feel like we’re up to it.

The ground rules

First, let’s quickly re­view the ground rules as in­ter­preted by the sta­ble ge­nius lead­ing the Re­pub­li­can ticket for the third con­sec­u­tive cy­cle.

Votes for Kamala Har­ris are fraud­u­lent. Votes for Don­ald J. Trump are le­git. Trump will ac­cept the re­sults of the elec­tion so long as the elec­tion is fair, de­fined as an elec­tion that Trump wins. Any Trump win shall be de­fined as a land­slide, while any Trump loss will be “an em­bar­rass­ment to our coun­try.”

It’s all right there in our men­tal mus­cle mem­ory, if you will, so no one should be sur­prised with the way it will play out. There are still plenty of elec­tion drop boxes to be lit on fire, of course, but that’s well un­der­way in Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon, so some­body’s al­ready warm­ing to the larger task at hand.

One week from to­day, Trump will de­clare vic­tory, well be­fore all the bal­lots are counted and cer­ti­fied. The only po­ten­tial vari­able is this — the more ev­i­dent it be­comes that he’s los­ing, the ear­lier he’ll say that he’s won.

Last time he waited un­til 2:29 a.m. the next day, but I’m pro­ject­ing just this side of mid­night for 2024. For­tu­nately for the fe­lo­ni­ous can­di­date, Trump’s own men­tal mus­cle mem­ory has the text from 2020 all cued up.

“This is a fraud on the Amer­i­can pub­lic. This is an em­bar­rass­ment to our coun­try. We were get­ting ready to win this elec­tion. Frankly, we did win this elec­tion.”

It was a lie that night and it’s a lie to­day, a de­moc­racy-con­vuls­ing lie that’s been sus­tained for four years through Trump’s own gar­gan­tuan men­dac­ity, the con­victed li­ars at Fox News, and the var­i­ous MAGA lick­spit­tles in Con­gress and in state leg­is­la­tures coast-to-coast in­clud­ing Penn­syl­va­nia’s.

Try­ing to en­rage

The lie is all Trump has left. When it was time for clos­ing ar­gu­ments, he did not as­sem­ble the best and the bright­est GOP pol­icy per­suad­ers for his Madi­son Square Garden Spec­tac­u­lar. He did not even as­sem­ble the half dozen down bal­lot Re­pub­li­cans in con­tested New York House races who could prove cru­cial to his fur­ther skulldug­gery. He sum­moned com­ics and wres­tlers and Putin apol­o­gists to in­sult the very vot­ers he most needs to win the elec­tion.

As I’ve said for months in this space, Trump is not try­ing to win. He’s try­ing to en­rage his loy­al­ists to fight for him when he doesn’t.

In Penn­syl­va­nia, the fierc­est bat­tle­ground of the bat­tle­ground states, 500,000 Puerto Ri­cans in­clud­ing nearly 300,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers are now in­flamed from one of Trump’s speak­ers call­ing their na­tive land a float­ing is­land of gar­bage in the At­lan­tic. Puerto Ri­cans fur­ther make up a po­ten­tially piv­otal por­tion of the elec­tor­ate in Geor­gia, Ari­zona, Wis­con­sin, and North Car­o­lina, all bat­tle­grounds as well.

That’s try­ing to win? That’s try­ing to in­cite.

Later at Trump’s Garden party, the head­liner couldn’t help him­self from giv­ing the game away by turn­ing to Mike John­son, Speaker of the House, and wink­ing over the fi­nal con­tin­gency.

“I think with our lit­tle se­cret we are gonna do re­ally well in the House, right?” Trump said, look­ing to John­son. “Our lit­tle se­cret is hav­ing a big im­pact. He and I have a se­cret. We will tell you when the race is over.”

There’s noth­ing too mys­te­ri­ous in there, is there? The ob­ject in the weeks af­ter the elec­tion would be to cre­ate just enough chaos to en­gen­der just enough doubt that the is­sue winds up in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, where each state would cast a sin­gle vote and Trump could win an elec­tion he lost.

Trump’s first four days

If that hap­pens, a new ad­min­is­tra­tion will hurry about all the things Trump has prom­ised to do on Day 1, which he’s said in­cludes the start of the larg­est de­por­ta­tion op­er­a­tion in Amer­i­can his­tory, the end of birth­right cit­i­zen­ship, and about 100 other things that used to be flatly im­pos­sible given the Con­sti­tu­tional lim­its on pres­i­den­tial power. Quite a day for a guy who might or might not show up for work by 11 and leaves with enough sun­light left for 18 holes.

You’d ex­pect it to take un­til at least Day 2 be­fore he gets around to ap­point­ing a “real spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor,” to go af­ter the Bid­ens “and all oth­ers in­volved with the de­struc­tion of our elec­tions, bor­ders, and our coun­try it­self.” Hop­ing that the me­dia en­ti­ties who’ve com­mit­ted “trea­son” can wait un­til Day 3 (you’re good Jeff Bezos), and that the na­tional guard or the mil­i­tary com­ing for “the en­emy within,” can be Day 4 or later.

Any­thing that has an­gered Trump — and it would ap­pear they are nu­mer­ous — most par­tic­u­larly those re­lated to his elec­tion fraud fan­tasy, “al­lows for the ter­mi­na­tion of all rules, reg­u­la­tions, and ar­ti­cles, even those found in the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

So say­eth His High­ness, King Don­ald I.

Gene Collier’s previous column was “Trump's favorite word, and my favorite words for him.”