Gee, think back to late 2016, and imagine if conservative talk show hosts were tossing around the dark notion that, even though Donald Trump had won the election, there was a strong possibility that President Barack Obama would refuse to relinquish power. Imagine if Trump himself appeared on these shows to discuss the theory, complete with some vague fantasies about the U.S. military picking Obama up by his pants and tossing him onto the White House lawn. Just imagine how The New York Times would respond to that kind of rhetoric. How many times could they fit words like “dangerous,” “racist,” and “conspiratorial” into the inevitable op-eds?
But in the double-standards age of 2020, it’s perfectly fine for Democrats – up to and including presidential nominee Joe Biden – to while away the time preparing Americans for the possibility that President Trump might decide after the election to simply install himself as the Permanent President of the United States.
Not for the first time, Daily Show host Trevor Noah breached the notion of this idiotic fantasy in an interview with Biden on Wednesday.
The former vice president kicked things off with a separate-but-still-deranged conspiracy theory about Trump.
“It’s my greatest concern, my single greatest concern, that this president is going it try to steal this election,” Biden said. “This is a guy who said all mail-in ballots are fraudulent, voting by mail, while he sits behind the desk in the Oval Office and writes his mail-in ballot to vote in the primary.”
Noah then asked: “Have you considered what would happen as the election result came out as you being the winner and Trump refused to leave?
The right answer to this would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of: Of course I haven’t thought about that, Noah, because the very idea is ridiculous. Next question.
Instead, Biden let fly with this nonsense: “Yes, I have. And I was so damn proud. You have four chiefs of staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump. And you have so many rank and file military personnel saying ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not what who we are.’ I am convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”
The next day, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed Biden’s senile ramblings.
“Leave it to Democrats to go out there and grandstand and level these conspiracy theories,” McEnany said.
From talk of “stealing the election” to notions of Trump refusing to abide by the results, it sure feels like Democrats are setting the stage to contest the election themselves. Could it be that they aren’t so confident in all of those glowing polls showing Biden ahead?
