Heads I Win Tails You Cheated
Trump just had a press conference.
Some snippets:
"If you count the legal votes I easily win, if you count the illegal votes they can try to steal the election from us”
“It’s amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided”
"[Mail-in voting] really destroyed our system, it's a corrupt system...They want to find out how many votes they need and they seem being able to find them. They wait, they wait, and then they find them."
His beliefs are entirely unfalsifiable. The only explanation for his loss that he will entertain is widespread massive voter fraud on an scale never before seen in the history of mankind and supported by no evidence. I expected him to grumble if he lost, but I didn't expect this.
Scott Alexander recently posted a fictionalized account of Trump’s internal monologue and it’s too close for comfort:
You are Donald J. Trump. You sit in the White House. Someone asks if you are nervous. You are not. You are a winner. You have smart ideas and you hire the best people to implement them and they go well. Sometimes people say they don’t go well, but that’s because those people are frauds and liars. Everyone said you would lose in 2016 and you won because you are great and you are a winner. You love America and America loves you and you are a winner and you will win and if you don’t win it’s fraud but you will fight the fraud and you will win that fight because you’re a winner. You built the biggest hotels and hosted the most exciting TV shows and beat ISIS and Made America Great Again and now you are going to win re-election. It is Election Day 2020, and you can’t wait to see where winning takes you next.