POLTERGEIST

Donald Trump repeatedly makes the following statement: I won a landslide victory in the 2020 election, and everybody in this country knows it.

Lets take this notion apart and see how it holds up.

First, did he win a victory, landslide or otherwise, in the election?

Not apparently. At least, not according to election officials in the various states. Votes have been tallied and re-tallied (sometimes more than once) in several swing states, and nothing has come close to affecting the outcome.

All states have now certified their elections. Electors have voted, awarding Joe Biden 306 votes—the same number Donald Trump won in 2016, which at the time he labeled a landslide victory. A man with Trump's gigantic ego can never succeed by a hair; he can only win bigly.

It seems clear the election went for Biden this time, the man winning the popular contest by some seven million votes.

Yet Trump persists in saying he won, claiming he has uncovered massive fraud at the polls, enough egregious and disgraceful malfeasance by Democratic governors (and others) that the needle has indeed swung the other way, putting him firmly in the winner's column.

Unfortunately, the evidence of this rampant and fraudulent voting has proven impossible to haul into any court, including the Supreme Court. Perhaps it's too big to fit through the doors.

Trump claims the judges all lack the courage to do what is right.

Others would say the judges (including those put on the bench by Trump) are simply doing their jobs and facing reality, something Trump is unwilling or unable to do.

Despite the made-up controversy, the first part of Trump's statement is clearly false: He did not win re-election.

The second part is full-on delusional.

Do the 80 million folks who voted for Biden think Trump won? I doubt that.

Trump might say those 80 million voters thought they had voted to re-elect the president, and can't imagine how their candidate managed to lose, as reported by all those Deep State Democrats.

Or are Biden's voters starting to think they actually voted for Trump by accident (or satanic intercession), and corrupt Dems somehow managed to made it look like they voted for Biden after all?

The second part of Trump's statement is paranoid fantasy. The way he sees it, people are deliberately harming him when they claim he lost the election. And they know it. They celebrate that harm, gleefully.

Trump portrays himself as a victim of election abuse. It would probably take a trained psychologist to evaluate how a man with such an enormous ego could take on the role of victim-hood. But it's all he has.

Of course, Trump is actively trying to rise above his unfortunate circumstances. He told folks at a rally he is working harder now than at any time in his life.

And making a great deal of money in the process.

Seventy-five million Americans voted for the man, and they want the fellow to remain president. Many of them are putting their money where their vote was, attempting to fund the insatiable "Stop the Steal" campaign. No doubt most of them see the "official" election results as Fake News.

As they have been trained to do.

Trump is back in Mar-a-Lago. He has the long-awaited Covid relief bill on his desk but is threatening to veto it. He can now delay doing anything long enough to cause a pocket veto, which would put any veto-overturning attempt in the hands of the next Congress. (If fact, the new Congress would probably have to start all over again to pass an omnibus bill.)

As is often the case, Trump has placed himself in the spotlight. We're stuck in a cliffhanger episode at the end of the Season One of Trump's presidential reality show.

Millions of Americans cringe in their Covid shelters with bated breath, wondering if their blighted lives will get even worse. End of unemployment insurance? Eviction? Foreclosure? Starvation? (Not to mention death on a ventilator, alone in a drafty hospital tent.)

Beyond that, a full or partial government shutdown. It's all possible, thanks to our clueless leader.

How can we avoid this kind of foreseeable calamity in the future? We'll take that subject up next time, here at What's Wrong With Us.