A Disturbing Number of Republicans Believe Trump's Batshit Claim About Being "Reinstated" as President

By Bess Levin, Vanity Fair

14 June 21

One-third of GOP voters actually think Trump is going to be president again at some point this year.

arlier this month, we learned that while Donald Trump appeared unhinged as unhinged can be during the years in which he was the leader of the free world, he’s somehow become even more insane since departing the White House in January. And the reason we know this is because, according to multiple reports, he’s told people he’s going to be “reinstated” as president this summer, several years before Joe Biden’s first term is up. And perhaps even scarier than the idea of an ex-president thinking there’s a mechanism in the Constitution to just put him back in the White House after he definitively lost the election is the fact that a wildly disturbing number of Republicans actually believe him.

According to the results of a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted between June 4 and June 7, 3 in 10 Republican voters think that Trump is going to be back in the Oval Office this year. While 61% of GOP voters (and 84% of Democrats and 70% of Independents) dismiss the idea as the ramblings of a deeply disturbed individual who should’ve been put in a straitjacket a long time ago, one third is an unnervingly high percentage, considering, again, that we’re talking about the prospect of Trump replacing Biden as president with 1,320 days to go in the latter’s term. As the National Review described the scale of the delusion last week:

This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter. It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government. There is no Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. Hell, there is nothing even approximating a Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution. The election has been certified, Joe Biden is the president, and, until 2024, that is all there is to it. It does not matter what one’s view of Trump is. It does not matter whether one voted for or against Trump. It does not matter whether one views Trump’s role within the Republican Party favorably or unfavorably. We are talking here about cold, hard, neutral facts that obtain irrespective of one’s preferences; it is not too much to ask that the former head of the executive branch should understand them.

Just how far out there is Trump’s theory? Consider that, even if it were true that the 2020 election had been stolen—which it is absolutely not—his belief would still be absurd. It could be confirmed tomorrow that agents working for a combination of al-Qaeda, Venezuela, and George Soros had hacked into every single voting machine in the country and altered the totals by tens of millions, and it would remain the case there is no mechanism within the American legal order for a do-over of any sort. In such an eventuality, there would be indictments, an impeachment drive, and a constitutional crisis. But, however bad it got, Donald Trump would not be “reinstated” to the presidency. That is not how America works, how America has ever worked, or how America can ever work. American politicians do not lose their reelection races only to be reinstalled later on, as might the second-place horse in a race whose winner was disqualified. The idea is otherworldly and obscene.

And yet, one third of Republican voters think it’s probably going to happen, which is probably a testament to Trump (and Fox News) scrambling their brains.

In other news re: the ex-president’s industrial-sized lies, NPR reports that lawyers who defended him in his second impeachment trial are now going to bat for his supporters who stormed the Capitol on his behalf after being falsely told the election had been stolen:

Attorneys Michael van der Veen and Bruce Castor defended former President Donald Trump at his Senate impeachment trial over allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Even as van der Veen, Castor and the Trump defense team called the impeachment “political theater” and ultimately secured Trump’s acquittal, they condemned the rioters for bringing “unprecedented havoc, mayhem, and death” to the Capitol. They argued in a legal brief that the rioters’ actions deserve “robust and swift investigation and prosecution.” Now, van der Veen and Castor find themselves on the other side of those prosecutions, defending at least three people charged in connection with the Capitol breach.

It’s a real circle-of-life story.