By Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
On Friday night, Donald Trump appeared at the Turning Point Action’s “Believers Summit” to tell a crowd of conservative Christians that this was the last time they’d have to bother with voting.
"You won’t have to do it anymore,” said Trump. “Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
Since Trump made this statement, right-wing pundits and Republican politicians have pulled out their Trump translators and tried to find a way to pass Trump’s words off as something other than a confession that he intends to do away with democracy. That includes telling everyone that there’s nothing to see here because Trump’s statement was “clearly a joke” according to Sen. Tom Cotton.
Then on Monday, Trump got the chance to sit down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and explain what he meant … and he made it so much worse.
In this interview, Trump made a lot of excuses. Once again he refused to debate Kamala Harris even though his previous excuse that Barack Obama had not yet endorsed her was no longer applicable. He once again demonstrated that he had no better line of attack on Harris than to complain about what he called her “crazy person” laugh.
Trump also tried to brush off JD Vance’s creepy focus on right-wing natalism in a way that doesn’t make it one bit less creepy.
Before giving Trump an opportunity to extract himself from the autocracy hole he dug at the “Believers Summit,” Ingraham primed Trump by saying that Democrats were attacking him for “ridiculous reasons.” Ridiculous reasons like repeating exactly what he said.
“They’re saying that you said to a crowd of Christians that they won’t have to vote in the future,” Ingraham said.
Trump first responded by claiming that Christians, and particularly Catholics were “persecuted” by the administration of Catholic Christian Joe Biden. Then he rambled into how any Jewish person voting for Harris—or “whoever is gonna run”—should “have their head examined.”
Finally, he got down to explaining his statement about Christians not voting.
“That statement is very simple,” Trump said. “I said vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group.”
“This time vote. I’ll straighten out the country. You won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote. You can go back to not voting,” he added.
This does not make things better.
Ingraham was clearly frustrated by how she handed Trump a ladder and he only used it to dig the hole deeper. So she skipped right past allowing Trump to tell her what he meant and tried to get him to just repeat after her.
“You meant you won’t have to vote for you because you have four years in office,” Ingraham said. “Is that what you meant?”
Trump refused to pick up the lifeline and started talking about gun owners. So Ingraham broke out a full-sized life raft and paddled hard to rescue Trump from his babble.
“Just to be clear–” she began. But by this point, Ingraham was clearly struggling to find a way to get Trump back to safety. “It’s being interpreted, you’ll be surprised to hear, by the left as ‘well, they’re never going to have another election.’”
Ingraham put on her best mocking-the-left tone so that Trump would understand this is supposed to be a bad thing. But as she tried to bring it home, she was obviously concerned that Trump still may not understand what he was supposed to say. And she couldn’t think of how to say it any more clearly.
“He’s saying … he’s saying there’s a … he’s …” she tried before giving up. “So. So can you even just respond to that?”
“I said Christians,” Trump began. Then he gathered himself for another go. “I started off by saying ‘Just so you understand, you never vote.’ Christians do not vote well. They vote in very small percentages. Why, I don’t know. Maybe they’re disappointed in things that are happening, but for a long time—I’m saying, ‘You don’t vote. Go out. You must vote. November 5 is going to be the most important election in the history of our country. Whether you vote early or not …’”
At this point, Trump wandered into talking about restrictions on voting like voter ID and the need for paper ballots. He finally came back around to the neighborhood of the original question.
“I said to the Christians in the room, thousands of them, I said typically Christians don’t vote. Why it is, I don’t know. They’re rebellious. Something’s going on. Don’t worry about the future, vote, you have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. Because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore. Because frankly, we will have such love if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s okay,” Trump said.
Love. It was love all along. Love and an end to pesky voting.
Then Trump put a cherry on top of all this by finishing with, “And I think everyone understood it.”
Despite what Republicans tried to claim, Trump clearly wasn’t making a joke. And despite Ingraham’s best efforts, he could not be dragged into saying something other than embracing what sure sounds like the death knell of democracy. Also, Trump’s claim that Christians vote in “very small percentages” is simply not true.
None of this will stop the Trump whisperers from suggesting alternative interpretations. And honestly, one set of tea leaves makes sense: Trump could be telling voters not to bother voting again in four years because he won’t be on the ballot.
Republicans don’t want to provide that interpretation, because it implies that Trump is concerned about no one other than himself and doesn’t care if the party ever wins a race again once he’s not at the top of the ticket. In fact, Trump would probably find it hugely pleasing to see that the party he had shaped into a worshipful mob could not survive without him.
Selfishness uber alles is not exactly the kind of motto that wins elections.
But even that interpretation beats the obvious conclusion: Trump is telling people not to worry about voting in four years because if he gets back in the White House, voting will never again be an issue.
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