Fenster said that while conspiracy theories have long been an underbelly of U.S. politics, Trump’s attack on the legitimacy of the election was unique and “troubling.”
“The worst possible scenario here would be one in which no matter how the election turns out—suppose Clinton wins in a walk, or the race tightens—Trump refuses to accept it,” Fenster said. “Or maybe Trump accepts the results but his supporters, particularly the more extreme ones, refuse to accept it. That seems deeply problematic.”
He likened it to a scenario in which Al Gore could have refused to concede after the contested 2000 election, or in which former President Bill Clinton refused to vacate the White House on the belief that George W. Bush stole the election…
“Trump believing and convincing his supporters that the election was rigged matters a lot,” former Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on his podcast, Keepin’ It 1600. “Because when you add with the ‘lock her up,’ ‘Hillary Clinton’s a crook,’ [FBI Director] ‘Jim Comey’s in the pocket of the Clinton campaign’—it’s all about de-legitimizing Hillary Clinton’s first term. To create a set of excuses for why Republicans should oppose the most basic governing responsibilities.”
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