I’m quite sure it really happened.”

I wish that I could believe that, but I do not. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. Trump lost over 1 million voters to Covid thanks to his mishandling of the pandemic response. I know many 2016 Trump supporters who just could not continue supporting him — especially AFTER January 6.

But the thing that I cannot let go is that Trump told us that he did not need Republican voters to vote for him to win! Trump is famous for telling on himself when he is doing something that will help him win when everyone says it cannot happen. It’s his narcissistic personality disorder that makes him brag that he is going to shock us by accomplishing something he shouldn’t be able to. Like winning an election without the support of Nikki Haley supporters that everyone said he needed to win over to have enough votes to beat the Democrats. Telling voters that this would be the last time they’d have to vote and, not to worry, he’d still win without them. He needed for them to be amazed with his self-confidence.

How did he do it? I don’t know. I am curious as to where Elon Musk’s money went to win Trump the election. How many voters took part in university programs that focused on mail in ballots and paid participants a few thousand dollars for their participation (and came with a iron clad non-disclosure agreement that would sue for all the money back plus thousands in damages if it were violated). Voters in the poorest areas would jump at the chance to participate and wouldn’t dare risk losing it. Plus, they are told they were helping with a study being conducted; so there was no reason to suspect anything criminal was afoot.

Elon had no issue with believing he could pay people for their votes. These operations could get 100’s of voters to sign their mail in ballots without filling them in themselves. And it was a plan that had already proven it would work without setting off any red flags. This was done back in 2012 and would have worked had one reporter not noticed a housing project went from having 1 or 2 people requesting absentee ballots per election in the past to having 40 in the most recent election. He started asking questions and discovered a well thought out plan to get people to hand over their ballots freely (and reward them with a couple hundred dollars for their time.) No one reported it to authorities and no investigations were looking into it because no one thought anything was wrong! It was purely by LUCK that it was caught and the state had to redo that election. How many voters do you think Musk could get to vote how he wanted when he was working with $50 or $60 million dollars?

JL

Yes, there are lots of folks who were fully behind Trump’s campaign to be President and they still back him. Those voters have been active since 2016.

But I am not talking about those folks. I am talking about voters who did not support him in 2016 or 2020, but did vote for him in 2024. How many voters do you know who suddenly started supporting Trump just prior to the 2024 election? How many voters have told you that Trump had won their support after his first term ended? I have not met anyone who Trump has won over to his side since 2016. So where did all of those new votes for Trump come from? Why did Trump claim that he did not need more people to vote for him to win the election? Where did all of these new voters who supported Trump come from?

"support" as in recruit people to join the effort

"disappearing" as in ordering masked federal agents with no identification to secretly kidnap people off the street.

on second reading, Donald's popularity going down does make a lot more sense, but the other thing is still in fact happening.

JL

Here's what I took away, because I don't actually have the opportunity to use the Friday Talking Points to debate conservatives and Trumpists:

"It is governing by tantrum."

That says it all, I think. Again, thanks for the column.