Wartime Trump Declares War on His Own Government
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- Trump threatened Strait of Hormuz tolls and offered Gulf state countries safe transit if they invested in the U.S., then vowed to "take out" Iran's Pickaxe Mountain underground nuclear site
- The Associated Press documented only 475 election-fraud cases in 2020 battleground states—far short of altering results—while a National Intelligence Council report found "no indications" any foreign actor altered technical aspects of the 2020 voting process
- YouGov polling shows only 25% of Americans but 50% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was rigged
- Trump's own White House document conceded that "vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results"—the same systems he now publicly attacks
- Washington Post/Ipsos polling this week found Trump at 61% disapproval, with 43% of Americans saying they are "not as well off" as when he took office a year and a half ago
- Cornell political scientist David Alexander Bateman said Trump's election-rigging rhetoric isn't "prelude to a rigged election" but "laying the foundation for him insisting that it was rigged against him" if Republicans lose in November
- Past wartime presidents from Lincoln to FDR asserted the sanctity of American institutions; the piece frames Trump's pivot toward attacking them—while his party faces a potential House and Senate wave—as a sharp historical break
Why it matters: With 61% disapproval and midterm losses threatening to hand Democrats subpoena power, Trump's wartime posture doubles as a preemptive shield: by attacking voting machines now, he builds a narrative to dispute November results before they're tallied—even though his own White House document concedes those systems can't be rigged at scale.
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