Former GOP strategist Rick Wilson said he expects President Donald Trump is using bogus claims of voter fraud and rigged elections to dispute the incoming blue wave threatening to wash Republicans out of the House and possibly the Senate in November.
Wilson proffered his prediction after MS NOW anchor Eugene Daniels pressed him to explain why Trump remains focused on passing the SAVE Act and selling faulty elections nonsense when he could otherwise be working to make voters happier with smarter policies.
“This is a setup for watching a Democratic wave hit the country this fall after failing completely to address affordability," said Wilson. "He thinks affordability is a joke and a fraud. But I also think he's setting it up in the fall to say ‘[Speaker] Mike Johnson don't seat these new newly elected Democrats. It's all a fraud.’ I think he's looking to raise that level of chaos and uncertainty and give Republicans something to cling to after the election is over. The shenanigan here is to deny Democrats their victory.”
Trump already has a sordid history of undermining legitimate elections to try to keep the White House. Not only did he refuse to concede his loss to Biden in 2020, he continues to argue the election was stolen from him by Democrats despite no judge siding with his argument after numerous lawsuits—not even judged that Trump himself appointed.
As recently as June, Trump was undermining local races in California, claiming state officials had derailed candidates he’d endorsed for mayoral races.
Wilson added, however, that Trump is the kind of egomaniac who personally cannot admit defeat, and he is dragging his party into a thrashing by forcing them to rehash the 2020 election — even as voters grow increasingly angry at the party for following Trump’s string.
“Trump has an arrogance about him, that he's the only thing that matters,” said Wilson. “And, you know, he earned that from [Republicans] because they've treated him like he's the only thing that matters. But I've never seen a president of either party so willing to throw his own people under the bus, and so willing to start blaming them for things that clearly either couldn't be accomplished or were counterproductive or were off message politically.”
“They've tried, in some cases, to save him from himself, and he doesn't want it,” continued Wilson. “He doesn't want to want to be saved. He doesn't want to have help. He just wants them to obey him because he believes that that they are his political property at this point. And I think it is really extraordinary to watch how much venom he has for them versus how much venom he has for the Democrats.”