Trump’s election rhetoric raises fresh questions for Republicans - opinion

Sometimes US President Donald Trump tells the truth. It may not be often, but sometimes. Like when he spoke last week to a convention of his faithful flock in Dallas and asked them to pledge allegiance to him and to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming midterm elections.

Obedient followers of his MAGA cult dutifully raised their right hands, as instructed, many repeating his words aloud:

“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe that I will go out with my family, my friends, I will do it anyway – I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell, as they do.”

This dispensation to cheat and not bother registering to vote comes from a president who claims to be obsessed with assuring all elections are free and fair.

The man who has posted endless memes online portraying himself as the Pope, Jesus, and assorted comic book superheroes warned his audience, “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell.”

'Trump dividend' to all adult Americans

To help them avoid Hades, he offered $5,000 checks – he’s calling it a “Trump dividend” – to all adult Americans if Republicans keep control of Congress in November.

Is that legal? Probably not. It sounds like a pay-to-play bribe, and federal law prohibits offering payment for votes.

Can he really do it? Will he try? Unlikely. Why? Have you gotten your $5,000 DOGE rebate he promised? And what about the $2,000 tariff bonus he said he’d send you? Or the $500 refund for lost healthcare subsidies?

Remember those and other promises to bring down the price of gas, electricity, beef, childcare, mortgages, airline tickets, and inflation? Still waiting on that, too?

A USA Today investigation found Trump and his businesses had a well-documented, decades-long reputation for stiffing contractors and refusing to pay their bills.

It’s like his Iran war. Promise now, plan later.

Republican lawmakers are already distancing themselves from his latest largesse, noting it will cost a whopping $1.2 trillion just as the federal deficit topped $40 trillion.

The only big bonus checks Trump is handing out are for $45,000 to each of his three closest aides, all women.

They are Natalie Harp, 35, known as “the human printer” because she follows him around with a portable printer to provide copies of flattering coverage; Margo Martin, 27, who follows with a camera making videos of his movements; and Chamberlain Harris, 27, an executive assistant he named to the Commission of Fine Arts that rubber stamps his vanity projects.

Trump, who calls himself “the greatest president in the history of the United States,” told his loyalists to make the upcoming election a referendum on him. That delights Democrats, who are trying to do just that. Republicans not so much.

Whatever the outcome on November 3, you can bet Trump will personally take credit for all Republican victories and declare all losses were rigged or the losers were flawed candidates who weren’t sufficiently loyal to him.

His propensity for prevarication is well established. By the end of his first term, the Washington Post Fact Checker team documented 30,573 false or misleading claims. His output has ballooned since he began using his own social media platform, Truth Social, to relentlessly share his thoughts with the world.

Trump's call to “cheat like hell” makes his pious preaching about election fraud, illegal voting, and rigged elections sound more like a confession than an accusation.

This corrupt and lawless president is actively trying to rig the upcoming election by fear, intimidation, money, and the whole federal alphabet soup of agencies from ICE to USPS. All to fight a virtually non-existent crime: voting by illegal aliens. That sounds more like voter suppression than protection.

His Trumpalooza message sounded familiar: “If you can’t beat ‘em, cheat ‘em.” Trump tried it in 2020 and failed, but he’s ready for an encore – and this time he has more power to wield.

His obsession with undermining public confidence in the electoral system through his lies, gerrymandering, threats, intimidation, and unproven charges of election fraud has GOP operatives worried that he may discourage many Republicans from voting.

Columnist Michelle Cottle points out in The New York Times that Trump’s “election fraud lunacy” in Georgia in 2020 “depressed Republican turnout” and helped Democrats win presidential and Senate races in that state and hand control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Another move that backfired was last week when the dangerously weaponized Federal Communications Commission under Brendan Carr pressured ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live to cancel an on-air interview coinciding with Trumpalooza with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas against Republican Ken Paxton.

Carr only hyped attention to the interview, which Kimmel then posted on his YouTube channel, where it has drawn some 10 million views, compared to only 2.5 million who tuned in to Fox News to watch Trump’s “cheat like hell” speech.

Trump went to Texas to bathe in the adulation of his most loyal devotees. Polls show they still overwhelmingly support him, although the numbers are dropping slightly, while across the rest of the country his approval rating has fallen to the low 30s.

MAGA is widely considered a cult of personality, noting its unique reliance on a personal brand of devotion and Trump’s demands for loyalty to one man and his dominance over the Republican Party apparatus.

Political scientist Sarah Gail Hunter defined such a cult as the result of an effort to create an idealized and heroic image of an admirable leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Trump did just that in his Dallas oration.

Princeton Prof. Jan-Werner Müller writes that Trump’s personality cult follows the historical definition, “but his pathological narcissism ensures he cannot deploy it effectively.”

George Conway, a conservative critic, has called Trump a “narcissistic sociopath” with authoritarian tendencies that threaten democracy.

America’s great hope is that if Trump is as good at fixing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the Republic can survive his corrupt, failed presidency.

The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.