It is “déjà vu” all over again. Paul Krugman, a well-known economist and regular columnist for the New York Times, predicted this week that President Donald Trump will ignore the legitimacy of the elections next month, should the Democrats regain the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If this sounds familiar, it should.
Following the final televised debate of the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump was asked if he would accept the results should Clinton win. Clinton was not asked the same question were Trump to win. After Trump refused to take the bait and agree to abide by the results should Hillary Clinton prevail (and one presumes not challenge the results if he had reason to believe there were some voter fraud), the Democrats and their media allies reacted in horror.
Clinton called Trump’s reticence to pledge to accept the results without the possibility of challenging them “horrifying.” Even President Barack Obama chimed in, as if on cue: “That is dangerous. Because when you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of elections, that undermines our democracy. They you’re doing the work of our adversaries for them.”
Of course, when Trump pulled off a stunning upset over Clinton, she and the media have spent the past two years attempting to sow seeds of doubt in the public’s minds about the legitimacy of Trump’s election.
Now, perhaps hoping the voters have forgotten all that, Krugman said Trump’s persistence in arguing that there was massive voter fraud in the last presidential contest is an effort to prepare for a claim that the mid-term elections are fraudulent, were the Democrats to take back the House of Representatives in the upcoming mid-terms. Krugman has pointed to Trump’s claims that as many as 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential contest.
Most liberal media, when they report Trump’s assertion that as many as 5 million voted illegally, insert the editorial remark into their supposedly “straight news story” that Trump’s claims are “without evidence.” (But “evidence” is not as important when one is attempting to destroy the reputation of a Trump Supreme Court nominee.)
Trump established a commission to investigate the 2016 election, but the commission has not yet issued any reports, so it is a little premature to say what evidence there is or is not concerning massive voter fraud. Not surprisingly, Matthew Dunlap, the secretary of state for Maine and a Democrat who is on the commission is not taking the investigation seriously, dismissing the allegations by Trump as “bizarre.”
Trump has warned that any voter fraud will be punished. In a tweet, he said, “All levels of government and law enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING. Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to massive penalties, both civil and criminal.”
In response, Krugman is making the wild prediction that if the Democrats win the House majority, Trump and other Republicans will make the case that the election was stolen. Krugman tweeted, “If Democrats don’t at least take the House, God help us. But even if they do, we’ll be facing a nightmarish political scene. Republicans will claim that the election was stolen, and deny the majority’s legitimacy.”
Not only that, Krugman predicts, but even after Democrats “gain subpoena power,” we can “expect the Trump administration to simply defy requests for information, the way they already are on issues like the Mar a Lago crowd’s influence on the Veteran’s Administration. They’ll also probably abuse executive power in many other ways. And they’ll use claim of voter fraud to justify their disregard of the law and the Constitution. If you don’t think this is going to happen, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Actually, if you swallow any Paul Krugman prediction on what is going to happen after an election, then you have not paid as close attention as you should have. Using what political scientists refer to as the “doomsday prediction” propaganda method, Krugman predicted Trump’s election would lead to a global recession. In a short post in the New York Times printed in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, Krugman said, “Under the circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man [Trump] who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news.”
How bad? Krugman darkly warned that Trump’s election meant “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”
Using Krugman’s word probably, let us make our own prediction: Krugman will probably continue to make outlandish predictions, which the compliant left-wing media will probably report as coming from an Old Testament prophet. And like the false prophets the Jews stoned, the predictions will probably not come to pass.
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