What if Trump wanted to lose so he could stage a coup?

What if the insurrection, not the election, was Trump’s Plan A all along?

Most people just accept that Donald Trump’s call to violence was his backup plan: that it was a last resort after all the votes were counted and recounted, the court challenges had been turned aside, and attempts to bully Republican officials (including Vice President Mike Pence) into overturning the will of the people had failed.

That’s what it looks like at first blush. If Trump couldn’t win fair and square, he was going to win by cheating.

But what if cheating wasn’t Trump’s backup plan? What if it was Plan A from the very beginning?

This might sound insane. In competition, people usually cheat because they’re afraid they can’t win if they play by the rules. But that assumes one thing that isn’t true of Donald Trump: that he values the rules.

In fact, all the evidence indicates that he does not. He disdains them. If you win within the rules, that means you’re weak in Trump’s worldview. It means you’ve “submitted” to an outside authority, something Trump finds utterly repugnant.

Above the law

During Trump’s first impeachment, his opponents repeatedly uttered the mantra, “No one is above the law,” which went right to the heart of the matter, because Trump believes he’s a law unto himself. He’s not subject to any guardrails, whether they’re imposed by the Constitution, his Cabinet, the law, the voters, or public watchdogs (this is why he hates the media) — or so he believes.

And all too often, he’s been proved right. He has been above the law, and above anyone who seeks to obey it... instead of him.

Everyone will be exposed as unworthy of the Great and Powerful Trump. He’ll make sure of it.

Even the most loyal sycophants will be tested to, and beyond, they’re limits. They’ll be asked to do the unspeakable, the unthinkable, for one purpose along: to prove that Trump’s word is more important than any moral or legal code.

This is what happened to his biggest toady, Mike Pence, when he refused to undermine certification of the election: Faced with a choice between Trump and the Constitution, Pence chose the Constitution — and he paid the price when Trump’s mob tried to hunt him down and lynch him.

Trump doesn’t just force his lieutenants to choose between Trump and some political opponent. He forces them to choose between him and their consciences; between his interests and their own, and he does so for one simple reason: to certify his self-perceived godhood by affirming that he is above the law.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s state law, federal law, the rule of conscience, a system of ethics, or religious doctrine. Ever wonder why Trump’s not religious? The answer is simple: He doesn’t think the rules apply to him, because he’s deluded himself into believing he always knows better.

Know-it-all

Trump has declared that he knows more about everything from trade to renewable energy, from drones to infrastructure, than anyone else alive. This is irrational and psychotic self-aggrandizement, but it’s also something much more: It’s a way of saying, “The rules don’t apply to me. Any answer I come up with is right because I said so, not because it can be confirmed by any outside authority.”

In his own mind, Trump is the authority. Evidence doesn’t matter, and neither does anyone else’s opinion. Trump’s goal isn’t to prove his worth by conforming to any outside standard. Quite the opposite: It’s to prove he’s better than the standard.

Using hydroxychloroquine or bleach or light therapy to combat COVID wasn’t a good idea because there was any scientific evidence to back it up. It was a good idea by Trump’s warped sense of narcissistic “logic” simply because he thought it was. He didn’t survive a bout with the virus because of science, it was because he had done “a miracle” and because he was Superman.

When questioned about not paying taxes, Trump didn’t buy the idea that it meant he was being un-American. Just the opposite: In his mind, it proved he was smart, because he was above the tax system.

Trump ran for president as an outsider, and kept bragging about the fact that he was doing things differently than previous presidents. Why? Because he wasn’t conforming to norms, and didn’t consider himself subject to them. This wasn’t just an aspect of his approach to the presidency, it was his core guiding principle, he raison d’être.

Winning by the rules wasn’t really winning. It was only winning if he demonstrated he was better than the rules. Winning within the system meant nothing; he had to beat the system.

Playing to lose?

Which brings us to the 2020 election.

It’s been widely assumed that Trump wanted to win the election at the ballot box to secure a second term, but that assumption doesn’t square with the facts. If winning the election fair and square was his Plan A, why did he virtually ignore the pandemic (with the exception of supporting research into a vaccine)? Why did he play to a base that was smaller than the coalition on the other side?

If Trump really wanted to win a democratic election, these actions weren’t just counterintuitive, they were idiotic. But they made sense if, as is his wont, Trump didn’t want to win fair and square. He didn’t want to be a democratically elected president; he wanted to be the sole authority, because that’s how he saw himself.

When he noted that Xi Jinping had made himself president for life, he commented: “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”

He wasn’t joking. That’s what he really thinks. He never wanted to win by submitting to a democratic process or any other process. The only true victory lay in subverting the system, which is exactly what he did.

Setting the table

He started off by claiming the election was “rigged,” undermining the election months before it was even held, and that mail-in voting was inherently biased against him — even though there’s nothing to support that contention.

In fact, common sense would suggest the opposite: that rural voters who are more likely to support Trump would be more likely to use mail-in voting because polling places are simply farther away. In  Florida in 2020 (which Trump won), 57 percent of Republicans voted by mail, while only 41 percent of Democrats did. What on Earth was Trump thinking?

None of it makes sense, unless Trump knew the evidence and was trying to lose. That way, he could play the victim (something he loves to do) and could win by cheating — which would undermine the system so completely that he could scrap it altogether and set himself up as president for life, the ultimate and only authority.

He failed to do so using his traditionally favored method, by suing his way to victory. But he must have known that wouldn’t work, because most of Trump’s successes in court haven’t come through clear-cut, legitimate victories, either, but because he had enough money to outspend and, ultimately, outlast his opponents.

The endgame

Trump must have known that his only path to power he craved was violence, which was, of course, his next move. He issued a call to arms for an assault on the Capitol by a bunch of crazed lunatics who, if they had succeeded, would have killed the next two people in line to the presidency: his own vice president and the speaker of the House.

It’s been assumed that Trump decided against imposing martial law. But what if that’s exactly what he had in mind if the assault on the Capitol had succeeded?

Trump never wanted to win the election legitimately any more than he wants to do anything by the book. Or the Constitution — unless it’s his interpretation Article II, which he falsely believed gave him the right to do whatever he wanted. If it were up to him, he would have burned the Constitution and rewritten it with four simple words: “Whatever I say goes.”

His First Amendment would probably read like this: “Anyone who violates this Constitution shall be guilty of treason, which is punishable by death.”

The irony of it all is this: Trump never wanted to win the election. He wanted to do exactly what he falsely accused his opponents of doing.

He wanted to steal it.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist and author of three books about the Trump presidency, available on Amazon at www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RC7L8X1.