(Lead article in today's NYT)
Tuesday’s Debate Made Clear the Gravest Threat to the Election: The
President Himself
President Trump’s unwillingness to say he would abide by the result and
his disinformation campaign about election fraud went beyond anything
President Vladimir V. Putin could have imagined.
By David E. Sanger
NY Times, Sept. 30, 2020
President Trump’s angry insistence in the last minutes of Tuesday’s
debate that there was no way the presidential election could be
conducted without fraud amounted to an extraordinary declaration by a
sitting American president that he would try to throw any outcome into
the courts, Congress or the streets if he was not re-elected.
His comments came after four years of debate about the possibility of
foreign interference in the 2020 election and how to counter such
disruptions. But they were a stark reminder that the most direct threat
to the electoral process now comes from the president of the United
States himself.
Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to say he would abide by the result, and his
disinformation campaign about the integrity of the American electoral
system, went beyond anything President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could
have imagined. All Mr. Putin has to do now is amplify the president’s
message, which he has already begun to do.
Everything Mr. Trump said in his face-off with Joseph R. Biden Jr., the
Democratic presidential nominee, he had already delivered in recent
weeks, in tweets and at rallies with his faithful. But he had never
before put it all together in front of such a large audience as he did
on Tuesday night.
The president began the debate with a declaration that balloting already
underway was “a fraud and a shame” and proof of “a rigged election.”
It quickly became apparent that Mr. Trump was doing more than simply
trying to discredit the mail-in ballots that are being used to ensure
voters are not disenfranchised by a pandemic — the same way of voting
that five states have used for years with minimal fraud.
He followed it by encouraging his supporters to “go into the polls” and
“watch very carefully,” which seemed to be code words for a campaign of
voter intimidation, aimed at those who brave the coronavirus risks of
voting in person.
And Mr. Trump’s declaration that the Supreme Court would have to “look
at the ballots” and that “we might not know for months because these
ballots are going to be all over” seemed to suggest that he would try to
place the election in the hands of a court where he has been rushing to
cement a conservative majority with his nomination of Judge Amy Coney
Barrett.
And if he cannot win there, he has already raised the possibility of
using the argument of a fraudulent election to throw the decision to the
House of Representatives, where he believes he has an edge because every
state delegation gets one vote in resolving an election with no clear
winner. At least for now, 26 of those delegations have a majority of
Republican representatives.
Taken together, his attacks on the integrity of the coming election
suggested that a country that has successfully run presidential
elections since 1788 (a messy first experiment, which stretched just
under a month), through civil wars, world wars and natural disasters now
faces the gravest challenge in its history to the way it chooses a
leader and peacefully transfers power.
“We have never heard a president deliberately cast doubt on an
election’s integrity this way a month before it happened,” said Michael
Beschloss, a presidential historian and the author of “Presidents of
War.” “This is the kind of thing we have preached to other countries
that they should not do. It reeks of autocracy, not democracy.”
But what worried American intelligence and homeland security officials,
who have been assuring the public for months now that an accurate,
secure vote could happen, was that Mr. Trump’s rant about a fraudulent
vote may have been intended for more than just a domestic audience.
They have been worried for some time that his warnings are a signal to
outside powers — chiefly the Russians — for their disinformation
campaigns, which have seized on his baseless theme that the mail-in
ballots are ridden with fraud. But what concerns them the most is that
over the next 34 days, the country may begin to see disruptive
cyberoperations, especially ransomware, intended to create just enough
chaos to prove the president’s point.
Those who studied the 2016 election have seen this coming for a long
while and warned about the risk. The Republicans who led Senate
Intelligence Committee’s final report on that election included a clear
warning.
Brad Parscale steps away from the Trump campaign entirely after episode
involving law enforcement.
“Sitting officials and candidates should use the absolute greatest
amount of restraint and caution if they are considering publicly calling
the validity of an upcoming election into question,” the report said,
noting that doing so would only be “exacerbating the already damaging
messaging efforts of foreign intelligence services.”
That has happened already. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of
California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in
a recent interview he had asked the intelligence agencies he oversees to
look for examples of the Russians picking up on Mr. Trump’s words.
“Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the intelligence community started
seeing exactly that,” Mr. Schiff said. “It was too enticing and
predictable an option for the Russians. They have been amplifying
Trump’s false attacks on absentee voting.”
What is striking is how Mr. Trump’s fundamental assessment that the
election would be fraudulent differed so sharply from that of some of
the officials he has appointed. It was only last week that the director
of the F.B.I., Christopher A. Wray, said his agency had “not seen,
historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a
major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.”
Mr. Wray was immediately attacked by the White House chief of staff,
Mark Meadows. “With all due respect to Director Wray, he has a hard time
finding emails in his own F.B.I.”
Mr. Trump himself has provided no evidence to back up his assertions,
apart from citing a handful of Pennsylvania ballots discarded in a
dumpster — and immediately tracked down, and counted, by election officials.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. have been
issuing warnings, as recently as 24 hours before the debate, about the
dangers of disinformation in what could be a tumultuous time after the
election.
“During the 2020 election season, foreign actors and cybercriminals are
spreading false and inconsistent information through various online
platforms in an attempt to manipulate public opinion, discredit the
electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic
institutions,” the agencies wrote in a joint public service announcement.
It detailed the kind of data that could be leaked — mostly voter
registration details — and said the agencies “have no information
suggesting any cyberattack on U.S. election infrastructure has prevented
an election from occurring, compromised the accuracy of voter
registration information, prevented a registered voter from casting a
ballot, or compromised the integrity of any ballots cast.”
When officials involved in those announcements were asked whether Mr.
Trump had different information, which would explain his repeated
attacks on the election system, they went silent.
They had little choice. It was apparent to them that the chief
disinformation source was their boss. And for that, they had no playbook.
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