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{"id":5550,"date":"2016-10-20T06:21:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T12:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=5550"},"modified":"2016-10-20T06:22:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T12:22:39","slug":"ill-keep-you-in-suspense-not-as-clever-as-he-thinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/10\/ill-keep-you-in-suspense-not-as-clever-as-he-thinks.html","title":{"rendered":"“I’ll keep you in suspense”: not as clever as he thinks!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So if you haven\u2019t done so already, please read my summary of last night\u2019s debate<\/a>. \u00a0But I wanted to highlight one issue: \u00a0Trump\u2019s response to the question of whether he will \u201caccept the results of the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, the answer was a mess. \u00a0\u201cI will decide at the time,\u201d he said, and he sputtered about the media poisoning the minds of voters, and duplicate or ineligible voters wrongly on the rolls, and even the accusation that Clinton shouldn\u2019t be able to run because \u201cshe\u2019s guilty of a serious crime,\u201d and that for all these reasons the election is rigged.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s pressed. \u00a0Will he conceded?<\/p>\n

And he says, with a smirk, \u201cI\u2019ll keep you in suspense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Folks, let\u2019s presume that he doesn\u2019t actually intend to encourage violence or riots or revolution. \u00a0Let\u2019s presume that we\u2019re really talking about demands for recounts or investigations of voting irregularities, or perhaps petulent claims that it wasn\u2019t the will of the voters, or wasn\u2019t his fault in any way, that he lost, but rather a deceptive media which prevented the truth from being known. \u00a0And twitter was abuzz last night with times in the recent past when Democrats insisted, long after an election was over, that it was lost only due to fraud, or when they promoted theories about Republicans and Diebold machines, and Democrats in turn parsed the meaning of \u201celection\u201d to claim that Gore \u201caccepted the results of the election\u201d because as long as there was still one more recount to be demanded, the \u201celection\u201d wasn\u2019t over. \u00a0(Yeah, this is a bit silly \u2014 I generally think of \u201celection\u201d as the vote-casting, not the vote-tallying, don\u2019t you?)<\/p>\n

But Trump could have simply said something like, \u201cI know the media is making accusations that my supporters will start riots after the election is over, just like they accuse my supporters of being racist and ignorant and deplorable. \u00a0But we know that it was Hillary\u2019s campaign operatives who started the violence at my rallies. \u00a0My supporters are good, honorable, law-abiding people. \u00a0It\u2019s true that I encourage them to monitor the election, and, like every candidate, I won\u2019t rule out legal action if my advisors feel there has been fraud, but it\u2019s despicable to accuse me or my supporters of anything else!\u201d<\/p>\n

But he didn\u2019t. \u00a0Not because he really does plan riots. \u00a0He really seemed like he thought he was being clever last night with this statement. \u00a0Leave \u2019em hanging. \u00a0Be devious. \u00a0Give his supporters something to cheer for.<\/p>\n

But he wasn\u2019t being clever. \u00a0He was being a frickin\u2019 idiot. \u00a0Every word he said in that debate, every effort to project \u201cI am a serious, credible candidate\u201d was erased \u2014 maybe not right then and there, but in the reporting, in the attack ads, in the reaction to that statement in the remaining weeks.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"