One of the keys to understanding Donald Trump’s worldview is acknowledging one of his core, conspiratorial beliefs: The former president believes just about everything in American society — from elections to the judicial system to the Emmys — has been “rigged” by nefarious forces he never identifies.
With this in mind, it’s not surprising the Republican has told anyone who would listen that his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was, of course, “rigged.” Indeed, Trump sat down this week for a Fox Nation interview with Kellyanne Conway, who heard him continue to whine about the debate he lost three weeks ago.
Follow live updates covering the 2024 vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz.
But that’s not all he said: In the same on-camera exchange, the GOP nominee also made a prediction on the eve of the vice presidential debate. Asked by his former White House aide about the prospects for additional debates, Trump said:
‘I would love to have two or three more debates. I like it, I enjoy it. But they’re so rigged and so stacked. You’ll see it tomorrow with JD, it’ll be stacked.’”
As the video makes clear, the former president, who has suggested targeting ABC’s broadcast license because he didn’t like his recent debate defeat, was not kidding.
Trump says the VP debate tomorrow night will be rigged against Vance, and he would love to have more debates against Kamala Harris but they are too rigged and unfair to him. pic.twitter.com/ZrZ4WPhTFx
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 1, 2024
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, the vice presidential debate has not been rigged against the Republican nominee. Last month’s Trump-Harris debate wasn’t “stacked,” either. The larger question, however, is why the former president is already attacking a debate that hasn’t happened yet.
The answer, of course, is that Trump realizes that his running mate might fare poorly, so he considers it smart to attack the integrity of the event in advance.
As regular readers know, it’s a process I like to call preemptive delegitimization. Fearing possible election defeats, for example, the Republican has consistently taken steps to delegitimize the process to explain away potential losses. Fearing possible legal setbacks, he’s also repeatedly tried to delegitimize the justice system to invalidate potential adverse outcomes. And fearing possible debate defeats, he’s done the same thing, making preemptive excuses for possible failure ahead of his debate with President Joe Biden, and then doing it again ahead of his debate with Harris. Trump approaches effectively every challenge with the same thought: “If I fail, it can’t be my fault.” This week, Trump took the next logical step and extended his pitiful bubble to include his running mate. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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