Trump Officials Alarmed President’s Conspiracy Mongering May Lead to Effort to Overturn Election
Axios reported Saturday that senior officials in the Trump administration are concerned about the president’s fixation on conspiracy theories regarding the election and that he might “unleash” and “abuse” the power he holds as commander-in-chief to try to overturn the outcome.
The officials cited Trump’s attention to the comments by former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who suggested this week that the president institute martial law. Also, on Friday there was reportedly talk of taking and inspecting voting machines and giving election lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell a top-level security clearance. Flynn himself was present at the meeting, which was first reported by the New York Times.
When Trump is “retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal,” a senior official told Axios, “it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends.”
“People who are concerned and nervous aren’t the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe,” this person added. “These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history.”
