Former President Donald Trump appeared to question the point of elections in recent remarks — and an MSNBC producer believes people should take that threat seriously.
Trump said at an event in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday that because he was at "93 percent" in polls, “Why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?”
It wasn't immediately clear which poll he was referring to and Raw Story couldn't immediately find a poll showing a similar number.
Regardless, Steve Benen wrote for MSNBC's MaddowBlog, Trump's dismissal of the idea of an election reflects a "degree of animosity toward the American system of government."
"Evidently, he’s still outraged that the Democratic Party didn’t go through a traditional nominating process before rallying behind Vice President Kamala Harris. The 'they' in his quote, in other words, referred to his Democratic rivals. It was less obvious who Trump was referring to with 'we.' To be sure, it was a rhetorical question, but 'we' are having an election because that’s how we make decisions in the United States."
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Trump and his supporters have recently taken to claiming that Democrats' decision to replace President Joe Biden with Harris is a "coup," or even possibly against the law, none of which is true. The worry, wrote Benen, is that he could use this to lay the groundwork for another effort to overturn the election results this year.
This comes amid the context of Trump saying a lot of other things that have alarmed political observers, from suggesting he would be a dictator on "day one" to saying far-right Christians "won't have to vote anymore" when he takes office.
"It’s against this backdrop that Trump asked his supporters, 'Why are we having an election?' as if this were a legitimate question," Benen concluded ominously. "It isn’t."
