Why is Trump not conceding?
President Donald Trump knows that he has lost the 2020 election to President Elect Joe Biden. Trump also knows that his claims of fraud make a lot of noise on social media, but do not hold in front of a court of law. Trump realizes that no court will take up his case, let alone order reversal of election results. So why is Trump not conceding?
The answer is that Trump is raising hell, not to beat Biden or the Democrats, at least not in this round anyway, but to beat Republicans. The president has already told advisors, according to Axios, that he will run in 2024. Trump knows that he will have to go through primaries, and that his Republican opponents will use his 2020 loss to knock him out of these primaries. Hence Trump desperately needs to change the narrative, to never recognize his loss, and to make it forbidden to any Republican to recognize his 2020 electoral defeat. When Trump stands on the stage of Republican primary elections, he wants to make sure that no one can use his 2020 loss against him.
So how will Trump save face in 2020? He will simply exit the White House through the backdoor. On January 19, Trump will pack and leave, without partaking in any rituals designed to celebrate the transition of power from him to Joe Biden. Trump will spend four years channeling Republican anger against Democrats, and especially against Biden, over the 2020 “stolen election.” In 2024, Trump hopes to come back, with a vengeance, to beat the very same Biden. Trump, after all, cannot be a loser, or that’s how this narrative plays inside his head.
Maybe by 2024, Republicans realize that Trump poses an existential threat to America. Anyone who has read Hannah Arendt can see that Trump is a classic case of a tyrant-in-the-making.
The rise of rogue rulers is incumbent on suspension of reason, which Trump has skillfully done by painting anything that disagrees with him as fake, and replacing it with his own fake alternative narrative. He then imagines himself as the victim of a conspiracy.
A victim usually absolves him/herself from the rules, because others have presumably unfairly violated these rules. Whataboutism then becomes the norm. The tyrant then convinces his cult that his victory is their victory, whereas in reality, he accumulates power while they lose it.
Trump is not devilishly smart to be aware of what he is doing, but his instinct is one of mobster chiefs where life is “kill or get killed.” Everything is a zero sum game. Americans who do not see this menace are not the first in history. The Germans and many other nations committed the same mistake in the past, and paid for it dearly by losing their republic to atrocious rulers.
As for the American elite who do not see the Trump problem, they are either complicit or dumb. Maybe they think that they can leverage the Trump phenomenon to their own advantage, but it will certainly backfire on them, and they will lose, just like the rest of the American people, save for Trump and his dynasty.
Rome was once a republic before Augustus turned it into an autocracy. There is nothing that makes the American republic immune to being transformed into just another banana republic ruled by a narcissist and aided by his family, his enablers and the simple minded.
