From a behavioral perspective, Trump isn’t preparing for election rejection.
He’s manufacturing the belief system that makes rejection inevitable regardless of outcome. When you spend ten months priming people to expect fraud, the fraud becomes unfalsifiable. If you lose, it proves the fraud. If you win, it proves you overcame the fraud. The claim isn’t designed to be tested. It’s designed to be believed.
The ICE-at-polling-places threat isn’t about preventing fraud. It’s about creating conditions where voting itself becomes traumatic for targeted populations while signaling to supporters that extraordinary measures are justified.
When the system is presented as fundamentally corrupted, any response, including violence, becomes defensible as restoration rather than destruction.
This is how democracies collapse.
Not through sudden coups, but through systematic delegitimization of the mechanisms that make peaceful transfer of power possible. January 6 wasn’t the plan. It was the test.
Now he knows the incentive structure: his supporters will act, institutions won’t hold, and consequences won’t come.
There's such a strong, clear parallel between this and the steady barrage of disinformation and psy-ops oozing out of Putin's Kremlin every day. The goal of distorting reality and skewing history to make it look like a one-dimensional absurdity isn't so much to get you to agree with the distortions, but to wear you down, so you no longer have confidence in your own eyes and ears. The goal is to cast *everything* as unreliable. It's the kind of absurdity that makes people find RFK, Jr.'s nonsense about autism and vaccines credulous, making silly people make silly assertions, like "I prefer to do my own research."
Do you think we can provide a supportive opposition strategy at the polls and broadcast this beforehand? Kind and helpful observers who can do shifts after voting to hand out snacks, water, and discourage voter suppression. Possibility help escort folks to the polls. There are more of us than ice…
wow! You always have the most spot on, detailed and eloquently stated comments that really lay things out so clearly! My hope is that he has less supporters now than he did before, more people in positions of power will begin to speak out AND take action, and those on the sidelines will realize we need everyone to take action to save this democracy.
*My questions to you are how are we doing with the 3 things I mentioned? Is there anything else we can do that is not being done now?
PS- I also think that once we get the majority back in Congress we need to step up passing legislation that tightens up our ambiguous laws and makes laws for things we didnt think we needed laws for because we thought someone in the position of President would be ethical and not break every norm or test every single one.
Your analysis is mostly right, IMHO. Trump is going to pull out all of the stops in the way of bizarre stunts, dirty tricks, and voter suppression and intimidation in order to subvert the 2026 midterm elections.
To try to stop from being humiliated by the American people in a massive landslide election loss. But there is no guarante it will work in the end.
Honestly, I don't think the town drunk who always looks like he crawled straight out of a vomit-covered gutter is much of a spokesman to be taken seriously at this point. The more Trump and his wormtongue goons shriek about how victimized they all are, the less anybody takes them seriously. He is decompensating and dementifying every day before our eyes in ways his scalawags can't even follow, much less clean up afterward.
While we shouldn't let our guard down for a second, we're much stronger than he thinks we are. We're ready in ways we simply weren't back in 2021.
There is so much written about all the horrible things dumpy will do to cheat at this upcoming election. But what I don’t hear a lot about is how much more knowledgeable we are now, how much more aware we all are of his constant attacks on our democracy. We know the repub playbook, been there done that. We are not stupid and a great deal of us are pissed off and angry. We need to focus on what we know so we are ready to combat the fraud and disinformation that he is spreading. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. This is the time for our fight for legitimate elections.
Then why don’t the dems do the same with the truth? They never do. Fight fire with fire. Don’t let him say lies and do nothing cause then he wins and continues to destroy us
How come nobody talks about the “fact” that he won in 2024. (I know he didn’t, but shamefully, nobody got to the part about Elon buying the swing states for him). I mean, if the elections are so rigged, then how can he explain that he “won”?
This excuse for a human being, and his followers, are a cancer in this country. They need to be cut out and destroyed. Until then, this country is consumed with disease.
This has to be the thousandth time, Mr. Kinzinger, that you or another Democracy Savior has written all the words in this submission.
The maga-ts will believe whatever dtrump tells them to believe. However, its about time to give the rest of America their due, and realize we are not idiots. No one believes dtrump except his maga-ts. And some of them are no longer on board with him.
Will he try another JAN 20? Probably. I do not believe he will get away with it another time. America has been primed by the actions of this administration; by the cowardly behavior of dtrump's MAGAGOP in Congress; by the outright lies told by all dtrump's Cabinet and department heads.
I agree we are left with a government WE cannot trust; a government demonstrably working to undue every Civil Rights gain, whether for Women or for People of Color. However, WE do know that this too shall pass.
What has to be done is to mount an effective opposition, and make sure our friends and neighbors VOTE in 2026, and most importantly in 2028.
We do not need guns and ammo - we need our brains and fortitude.
Okay so we are hearing this over and over and over again. How can the ordinary US citizen prepare for this? Is there anything we can actually DO except repeat the same ominous threats. YES, I am taking them seriously but repeated dire warnings are starting to wear down my emotional health.
Agreed! I just wrote a post saying something similar! WE KNOW! The question is, what do we do about it? What do states do about it to flex their Constitutional right to control their elections?
Well I am here in purple Arizona where the state politics make my head dizzy. But I joined Democratic Women of Southeast Arizona last year, when I became a US citizen, and I know they have a committee that is involved in election integrity. I am not a great committee person but I think it's time I joined in. I registered Democrat because I didn't want to split the vote but I also think we could make inroads with the Independents as I know several people here in my own ruby red district that are leaning toward going Independent because they are ex GOP who can't go as far as voting Democrat. As long as the votes we are siphoning off to go Independent are GOP votes!!
I don’t know your situation, but you could volunteer to be an Election Protection volunteer through the ACLU or League of Women Voters. I did this during early voting for the 2024 election. If I am In finally decent health, I will do it again in the 2026 midterms. If that is not your cup of tea, I bet either of these two organizations can use volunteers in other ways.
Yeah, I agree with you. If part of his official duties as President is to uphold the Constitution, then fomenting an insurrection wouldn’t be an official duty. More like an impeachable act. The orange turd can’t have it both ways.
Thanks Adam for putting out there so clearly what Bannon's game plan is for the 2026 election. We know it isn't trump's idea because he's not that smart. My fear is with ice agents around polling places, anyone non-white will be afraid to show up to vote. Will all the swing State election officials be proactive enough to overcome the onsite voting problem? Every American needs to read your posting! Have a blessed week!
Bear with me, because I haven’t read the piece yet, and maybe my question answered, but I want to get it out there because it feels important.
Why are they posing these election threats so openly and so early? It seems counterintuitive to the sneakiness required for the task. So what’s up? Is this a head fake, and we should be looking beyond what they are saying?
Okay, now I’ll see if this is discussed in the newsletter.
I DID have one thought that makes me feel better: those of us who can do mail-in voting should return our ballots as early as possible and then check to make sure they have been received. If my suspicion has any grounds, that MAGA somehow knew which people hadn't yet voted and used those votes. Of course, overall voting was down, wasn't it, so maybe I'm wrong.... But, still, we need to vote early and check to make sure our vote was received to ensure no one else takes our vote!
I always vote early at the town office, as I leave the country in mid-October. I used to qualify as a U.S. resident living overseas and could vote online, but they've killed that.
In California it would be illegal for them to be within 100 yards of a polling place, but what's to stop ICE from patrolling outside that perimeter stopping brow and black people to check IDs and threatening talk?
In 2024 in places the police had to chase away individual trumpers with their trump flags in pickup trucks.
Congress is voting on the DHS/ICE funding Friday. Tell them to vote NO unless they reign in ICE including no ICE at polling places- that's a sensitive location. Here's a link to call with a script included!
Question: Does anyone have numbers on how many of the newly recruited ICE “soldiers” are Jan. 6 pardonees or members of right wing paramilitaries, eg Oath Keepers, Proud Boys etc., who were ordered to “stand down and standby”?
Great piece Adam. Can you provide references for the voting audit statistics you cited? That would be most helpful in fighting back against this MAGA nonsense.
That image is treasonous. It is a call-to-action to his supporters to burn down the election polls and burn down the American democracy. It is a call-to-action for civil war with Trump as the leader of the pack. He should be impeached for posting this dangerous image.
From a behavioral perspective, Trump isn’t preparing for election rejection.
He’s manufacturing the belief system that makes rejection inevitable regardless of outcome. When you spend ten months priming people to expect fraud, the fraud becomes unfalsifiable. If you lose, it proves the fraud. If you win, it proves you overcame the fraud. The claim isn’t designed to be tested. It’s designed to be believed.
The ICE-at-polling-places threat isn’t about preventing fraud. It’s about creating conditions where voting itself becomes traumatic for targeted populations while signaling to supporters that extraordinary measures are justified.
When the system is presented as fundamentally corrupted, any response, including violence, becomes defensible as restoration rather than destruction.
This is how democracies collapse.
Not through sudden coups, but through systematic delegitimization of the mechanisms that make peaceful transfer of power possible. January 6 wasn’t the plan. It was the test.
Now he knows the incentive structure: his supporters will act, institutions won’t hold, and consequences won’t come.
He’s scaling what worked.
—Johan
There's such a strong, clear parallel between this and the steady barrage of disinformation and psy-ops oozing out of Putin's Kremlin every day. The goal of distorting reality and skewing history to make it look like a one-dimensional absurdity isn't so much to get you to agree with the distortions, but to wear you down, so you no longer have confidence in your own eyes and ears. The goal is to cast *everything* as unreliable. It's the kind of absurdity that makes people find RFK, Jr.'s nonsense about autism and vaccines credulous, making silly people make silly assertions, like "I prefer to do my own research."
Do you think we can provide a supportive opposition strategy at the polls and broadcast this beforehand? Kind and helpful observers who can do shifts after voting to hand out snacks, water, and discourage voter suppression. Possibility help escort folks to the polls. There are more of us than ice…
Yes I think the time to start talking about this is right now.
wow! You always have the most spot on, detailed and eloquently stated comments that really lay things out so clearly! My hope is that he has less supporters now than he did before, more people in positions of power will begin to speak out AND take action, and those on the sidelines will realize we need everyone to take action to save this democracy.
*My questions to you are how are we doing with the 3 things I mentioned? Is there anything else we can do that is not being done now?
PS- I also think that once we get the majority back in Congress we need to step up passing legislation that tightens up our ambiguous laws and makes laws for things we didnt think we needed laws for because we thought someone in the position of President would be ethical and not break every norm or test every single one.
Johan,
Your analysis is mostly right, IMHO. Trump is going to pull out all of the stops in the way of bizarre stunts, dirty tricks, and voter suppression and intimidation in order to subvert the 2026 midterm elections.
To try to stop from being humiliated by the American people in a massive landslide election loss. But there is no guarante it will work in the end.
Honestly, I don't think the town drunk who always looks like he crawled straight out of a vomit-covered gutter is much of a spokesman to be taken seriously at this point. The more Trump and his wormtongue goons shriek about how victimized they all are, the less anybody takes them seriously. He is decompensating and dementifying every day before our eyes in ways his scalawags can't even follow, much less clean up afterward.
While we shouldn't let our guard down for a second, we're much stronger than he thinks we are. We're ready in ways we simply weren't back in 2021.
There is so much written about all the horrible things dumpy will do to cheat at this upcoming election. But what I don’t hear a lot about is how much more knowledgeable we are now, how much more aware we all are of his constant attacks on our democracy. We know the repub playbook, been there done that. We are not stupid and a great deal of us are pissed off and angry. We need to focus on what we know so we are ready to combat the fraud and disinformation that he is spreading. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. This is the time for our fight for legitimate elections.
they are too
Then why don’t the dems do the same with the truth? They never do. Fight fire with fire. Don’t let him say lies and do nothing cause then he wins and continues to destroy us
How come nobody talks about the “fact” that he won in 2024. (I know he didn’t, but shamefully, nobody got to the part about Elon buying the swing states for him). I mean, if the elections are so rigged, then how can he explain that he “won”?
This excuse for a human being, and his followers, are a cancer in this country. They need to be cut out and destroyed. Until then, this country is consumed with disease.
This has to be the thousandth time, Mr. Kinzinger, that you or another Democracy Savior has written all the words in this submission.
The maga-ts will believe whatever dtrump tells them to believe. However, its about time to give the rest of America their due, and realize we are not idiots. No one believes dtrump except his maga-ts. And some of them are no longer on board with him.
Will he try another JAN 20? Probably. I do not believe he will get away with it another time. America has been primed by the actions of this administration; by the cowardly behavior of dtrump's MAGAGOP in Congress; by the outright lies told by all dtrump's Cabinet and department heads.
I agree we are left with a government WE cannot trust; a government demonstrably working to undue every Civil Rights gain, whether for Women or for People of Color. However, WE do know that this too shall pass.
What has to be done is to mount an effective opposition, and make sure our friends and neighbors VOTE in 2026, and most importantly in 2028.
We do not need guns and ammo - we need our brains and fortitude.
And our votes…
Okay so we are hearing this over and over and over again. How can the ordinary US citizen prepare for this? Is there anything we can actually DO except repeat the same ominous threats. YES, I am taking them seriously but repeated dire warnings are starting to wear down my emotional health.
Agreed! I just wrote a post saying something similar! WE KNOW! The question is, what do we do about it? What do states do about it to flex their Constitutional right to control their elections?
Well I am here in purple Arizona where the state politics make my head dizzy. But I joined Democratic Women of Southeast Arizona last year, when I became a US citizen, and I know they have a committee that is involved in election integrity. I am not a great committee person but I think it's time I joined in. I registered Democrat because I didn't want to split the vote but I also think we could make inroads with the Independents as I know several people here in my own ruby red district that are leaning toward going Independent because they are ex GOP who can't go as far as voting Democrat. As long as the votes we are siphoning off to go Independent are GOP votes!!
I don’t know your situation, but you could volunteer to be an Election Protection volunteer through the ACLU or League of Women Voters. I did this during early voting for the 2024 election. If I am In finally decent health, I will do it again in the 2026 midterms. If that is not your cup of tea, I bet either of these two organizations can use volunteers in other ways.
Is this not fomenting insurrection? Is it not outside the bounds of his official duties and therefore subject to indictment?
Yeah, I agree with you. If part of his official duties as President is to uphold the Constitution, then fomenting an insurrection wouldn’t be an official duty. More like an impeachable act. The orange turd can’t have it both ways.
Thanks Adam for putting out there so clearly what Bannon's game plan is for the 2026 election. We know it isn't trump's idea because he's not that smart. My fear is with ice agents around polling places, anyone non-white will be afraid to show up to vote. Will all the swing State election officials be proactive enough to overcome the onsite voting problem? Every American needs to read your posting! Have a blessed week!
Bear with me, because I haven’t read the piece yet, and maybe my question answered, but I want to get it out there because it feels important.
Why are they posing these election threats so openly and so early? It seems counterintuitive to the sneakiness required for the task. So what’s up? Is this a head fake, and we should be looking beyond what they are saying?
Okay, now I’ll see if this is discussed in the newsletter.
Why …’ posing these election threats so openly and so early?’
Because Trump can’t control his tongue.
He’s worried & all the world must listen to him caterwauling.
— Every dirty voting trick Republicans have ever used will be brought into play now.
I DID have one thought that makes me feel better: those of us who can do mail-in voting should return our ballots as early as possible and then check to make sure they have been received. If my suspicion has any grounds, that MAGA somehow knew which people hadn't yet voted and used those votes. Of course, overall voting was down, wasn't it, so maybe I'm wrong.... But, still, we need to vote early and check to make sure our vote was received to ensure no one else takes our vote!
I always vote early at the town office, as I leave the country in mid-October. I used to qualify as a U.S. resident living overseas and could vote online, but they've killed that.
In California it would be illegal for them to be within 100 yards of a polling place, but what's to stop ICE from patrolling outside that perimeter stopping brow and black people to check IDs and threatening talk?
In 2024 in places the police had to chase away individual trumpers with their trump flags in pickup trucks.
Congress is voting on the DHS/ICE funding Friday. Tell them to vote NO unless they reign in ICE including no ICE at polling places- that's a sensitive location. Here's a link to call with a script included!
https://indivisible.org/campaigns/halt-ice-terror/
And here's the list of the 10 demands Democrats want for a yes vote to fund ICE. But NO to any increase.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/05/democrats-ice-reforms-funding-bill
Question: Does anyone have numbers on how many of the newly recruited ICE “soldiers” are Jan. 6 pardonees or members of right wing paramilitaries, eg Oath Keepers, Proud Boys etc., who were ordered to “stand down and standby”?
Paradocs. NH
I’d be interested in seeing those numbers. I’m sure the administration doesn’t want us to see that information.
Rep.Jamie Raskin of Md, asked DOJ and has not yet gotten a response. We should let him and our reps know that lots of people are wondering about that.
No matter what, Adam, I will vote, and it will never be for any Republican. That party is now gone.
Great piece Adam. Can you provide references for the voting audit statistics you cited? That would be most helpful in fighting back against this MAGA nonsense.
That image is treasonous. It is a call-to-action to his supporters to burn down the election polls and burn down the American democracy. It is a call-to-action for civil war with Trump as the leader of the pack. He should be impeached for posting this dangerous image.