Trump is preparing the ground for another attack on US democracy

The theme that permeated the first and perhaps only presidential debate on September 10 between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was the vice president's message to voters: “Let's turn over a new leaf.”

This was the defining moment in the 2024 presidential campaign before the November 5 election, when Harris exposed Trump as a clear and present danger to America, while the rattled and outwitted former president had no convincing arguments to refute this dire warning. Indeed, Trump had no message to convey other than bombastic lies and conspiracy theories, as is his way.

In ABC's debate portion, Vice President Harris outdid him in style and substance, while an overbearing, unprepared, nervous and defensive Trump was clearly at his wits' end. She went on to lay out her policies in clear terms and position herself as an agent of change, telling viewers that Trump would fall back on “the same old, hackneyed script: a bunch of lies, complaints and name-calling.” “Let's turn over a new leaf. Let's not go back,” she said.

For four years we have witnessed the chaos and pretense of Trump. Then and since, we had ample reason to suspect that a repeat of this show would have catastrophic consequences. The debate on September 10 confirmed those fears.

In the debate, Harris succeeded in putting the former president on the defensive about his record from 2017 to 2021, especially on sensitive issues: Trump's anti-democratic leanings and his reluctance to confront autocrats like Vladimir Putin, his support for white supremacists, the outrageous lies he continues to spread about the 2020 election, which he lost by 7 million popular votes and 74 decisive Electoral College votes, and his responsibility for the unprecedented attack on American democracy on January 6, 2021, orchestrated as part of an egregious attempt to overturn the election.

In fact, Trump had a chance to turn the tide, as one analyst wrote in The Nation. But then he blew it. At the debate, moderator David Muir asked Trump: “For three and a half years after you lost the 2020 election, you repeatedly falsely claimed that you won, and often you said you won in a landslide. In the final weeks before this debate, you said, quote: 'you lost by a whisker,' that you, quote: 'didn't quite make it,' that you 'fell a little short.' Are you now admitting that you lost in 2020?”

The answer was nonchalant: “No, I don't recognize that at all,” Trump said, claiming his comment about the “narrow defeat” was “meant to be sarcastic.” He then repeated the massive lie about election fraud that never happened. “I got almost 75 million votes – the most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told that if I got 63 [million]what I got in 2016, 'You can't be beaten,'” he said, explaining that his defeat was the result of a “fraudulent” vote count. What he didn't say, of course, was that federal regulators, state and local election officials and dozens of judges have determined that Joe Biden received 81 million votes and won the Electoral College by a margin of 306 to 232, the analyst noted.

By shamelessly lying about the fairness of the election and not even showing any semblance of concern or even remorse for the attack on the Capitol that he incited on January 21, 2021, it is clear that Trump is setting the stage to once again reject the election results as fraudulent in 2024 if he loses – and to plan another attack on symbols of US democracy.

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