Trump supporters’ kooky quest to get the former president back in the White House - this year
He is the former President of the United States, but to his most ardent supporters, Donald Trump is the president-in-exile, the rightful head of state whose sovereignty was stolen in a rigged election.
And that makes Trump a dangerous man, political experts say — but not nearly as dangerous as his most faithful followers and fringe conspiracy QAnon adherents, for whom a coup d’etat isn’t out of the question and debunked election fraud is real.
Just listen to the hundreds gathered last week at the For God & Country Patriot Roundup in Dallas where the question of yet another military insurrection was openly raised.
Among the speakers was Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with a Russian ambassador.
Flynn, who was later pardoned by the former president, was asked by an audience member why a military coup like the one in Myanmar could not happen in the United States.
“No reason,” Flynn told the crowd. “I mean, it should happen here.”
Flynn later said his alarming comment had been “misinterpreted,” but the die had already been cast, much like it was at the same event when a Trump-supporting Texas congressman downplayed the seriousness of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
With the slogan for right-wing conspiracy group QAnon flashing on stage behind him, GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert told the crowd that the insurrection was not the assault on America that liberals were making it out to be.
“Some of us think Pearl Harbor was the worst attack on democracy, some of us think 9/11 was the worst attack,” Gohmert said. “Some of us think that those things were worse attacks on democracy.”
Gohmert later posed for a photo with a QAnon-promoting podcaster who has claimed he participated in the Jan. 6 riot, according to Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group.
Another ardent supporter, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, bizarrely told Newsweek and Steve Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic” show that Trump will return as president in August, citing a “clear path” from Supreme Court rulings and the disputed and partisan audit in Arizona and a similar recount by GOP lawmakers in Pennsylvania.
“They’re gonna all come crumbling down like a house of cards,” Lindell said of unsubstantiated election fraud that he maintains would trigger a change in the outcome of the entire 2020 election, Newsweek reported.
Even Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, thinks the Lindell theory is over the top.
“There are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August,” she told Fox News.
“Maybe there’s something I don’t know,” she said, but “I think that’s a lot of folks getting a little worked up about something just because there wasn’t enough pushback from the Republican side.”
Yet the disturbing wishful thinking will likely be reflected in crowds that’ll greet Trump this summer as he returns to the stump for campaign-like rallies in several key battleground spots.
The first stop for Trump, who spent months cooped up at his Mar-a-Lago club in south Florida, will be North Carolina’s Republican Party state convention, where the former president was set to speak at a rally on Saturday.
“North Carolina produced a big victory for us, without a fraudulent outcome — missing ballots, illegal voting, dead people voting, and all of the other Democrat tricks,” Trump said in a statement.
Trump’s speech was to be live-streamed on C-Span.org.
Trump narrowly carried North Carolina in 2020 and held numerous events in the state toward the end of his campaign. It is also the state where his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is considering a 2022 U.S. Senate run.
The former president has yet to endorse any of the three Republicans already running for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Richard Burr.
But the most ardent MAGA supporters are keeping closer track of Trump’s own political future, and are expected to pack upcoming rallies in June and July, including those in Florida and Ohio.
A CNN poll in April found that 70% of Republicans said they did not believe President Biden had won the election legitimately.
“Great work is being done in Georgia revealing the Election Fraud of the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump, who has been banned from Twitter and Facebook, said in a statement. “The Left talks about election security but they do not practice what they preach because they are afraid of what might be found.”
His rallies may target the 2022 midterms — and settling scores with Republicans who distanced themselves from his rhetoric about election fraud — but his eye is on 2024, an aide recently said.
“If the president feels like he’s in a good position, I think there’s a good chance that he does it,” Trump adviser Jason Miller told NBC News about a White House run, adding: “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.”
