Is Trump’s False Claim Of 3 Million Illegal Voters Foreshadowing A 2020 Tantrum?

Donald Trump’s erroneous and baseless claim that he would have won the popular vote by three million votes if not for the Clinton campaign’s dependence on fraudulent votes from illegal citizens is a troubling affair with fascist paranoia. Might this be a hint of foreshadowing for the electoral sequel to 2016?

Fact check: Trump is wrong. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with the same electoral legitimacy that Trump won the Electoral College and subsequently the election, and such an election is not an unfamiliar occurrence in contemporary politics—what a historic inconvenience the Electoral College has been for calm, progressive advancement, Al Gore and now Hillary Clinton.

But Trump is being a sore loser over the popular vote with a classic Little Dictator huff. If we know one thing about Trump—because he says it all the time—it is that he has a borderline psychological phobia of being perceived as a loser, and this is the conspicuous reason Trump is contesting an election that he won.

Imagine how Trump might act on this delusion throughout the next four years as president. What kind of domestic fear mongering might he incite to cover for anti-democratic legislation ahead of the next election?

The Republican Party apparatus is already committed to the convenient disenfranchisement of voters who typically do not vote Republican—might they embrace the opportune Trumpian fiction of mass-Democratic fraud in order to double-down on what they call—with Orwellian maliciousness—the sanctity of our elections?

More troubling are the seemingly suggestive comments Trump has made regarding possible political benefits of gun violence. Can we all agree, on both sides of the echo chamber aisle, that President Trump must be unambiguous about the expelled role violence plays in American democracy? Particularly toward the various hate groups Trump has inspired with his nativism.

If the illegal voting claim is foreshadowing, let us identify it now and prepare for 2020. Trump’s Little Dictator tendencies must be opposed for the sake of our democracy.