You don’t need to be an expert in electoral politics to understand Rule One of any campaign: Candidates should pursue as many votes as possible. In a democracy, it’s common sense: The more votes a campaign has, the greater the chance of success.

With this in mind, Donald Trump appears to have a counterintuitive rhetorical habit. The New Republic noted:

On Fox News Thursday morning, Donald Trump had a weird instruction for his supporters: they don’t have to vote. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” Trump said on Fox & Friends before going on a rant about how much support he has in Florida.

As a clip from the show makes clear, the former president didn’t appear to be kidding: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1816482779581775943

If the phrasing sounded at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. The day after last month’s presidential debate, for example, Trump held a rally in Virginia and told attendees, “We don’t need votes.”

  • norimee@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    They don’t need the votes because they have a plan in place to seize the power with undemocratic measures.

    It’s all he’s been saying the last few weeks. If you listen to him, he says again and again, that they plan to abolish american democracy.

    • n1ckn4m3@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      As one of the other posters mentioned (@Jordan117@lemmy.world) , it’s exactly this. Johnson will refuse to certify the results of the election that put Democrats in the House, claiming some kind of bullshit irregularities with no proof, leaving the House controlled by facists. They’ll then claim irregularities in the presidential election and force a contingent election where they have a 100% chance of electing Trump no matter what the public votes.

      More people need to be made aware that this is 100% legal for them to do, and more people need to be aware that it is almost certainly what they will try. The only thing that can possibly stop it is significant awareness by the mass population of Americans and significant publicity (similar to how mass awareness of Project 2025 turned it into a poison pill).

      EDIT: Oh look, they’ve already started making it super-legal in battleground states: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/georgia-local-election-boards-allowed-withhold-vote-certification

    • emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      ISTG if trump loses, incites another insurrection and we still don’t put him jail I don’t know what the point of it is anymore.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Conservatives: “It’s just a joke!”

      Also Conservatives: “Jan 06 was tourists!”

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      While that’s true, there’s another thing just as true - the other side has a plan to seize the power with democratic measures.

      It’s deep state vs bandits. Surely the latter are not cool, but the former, while being cool, are very dangerous.

      It’s Palpatine vs Hutts. You wouldn’t want to be ruled by a Hutt. But Palpatine has his quirks.

  • Freefall@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Overconfidence, ignorance, and the knowledge of the shady crap the GOP is doing behind the scenes to suppress votes and rig things. Those together with narcissism means he has to brag but can’t reveal why he is so confident.

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Because he’s counting on not having, or needing, the votes to win. His plan is to call the Election rigged, get Mike Johnson to refuse to certify the results, throw the election. Being “So confident” that he has more than enough votes to win, and then showing election results that have him way behind Harris, will just feed his narrative of a rigged election. He’ll go on about how a disparity like that isn’t possible, Johnson will parrot the same shit, opening a process that is much more unclear to certify a different result.

    Trump is laying the groundwork for an election loss, sewing seeds of doubt that he could lose my any margin, much less a big one. When the results come in, the bigger the landslide against him, the louder his screeching that it was obviously rigged.

  • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “We don’t need the votes because we’re going to call this election rigged and stolen just like the last one. We’re going to challenge the legitimacy of Harris as a candidate and draw out the election results in court for years. Hopefully we’ll get it to the supreme court where my lackies will nullify the results and declare me leader. At the same time, we’ll call for more violence against our enemies and try to incite a full blown civil war because I’m a narcissistic man-child who can’t accept that I could be wrong and lose.”