The Elites' Plan To Keep Trump From Winning

 In December 2019, Pres. Trump had tweeted this meme:

This is a theme that has been brought up over and over: that the elites hate, and fear, those whom they have labeled "deplorables" (or worse). Michael Anton's July 2022 analysis, "They Can't Let Him Back In," at Compact is one of the better explorations of this topic. He reminds us that back in the summer of 2020, two mouthpieces for the elites published a letter in Defense One magazine urging the military to remove Trump should he somehow win the election and comments: "If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine how they feel now. But you don’t have to imagine. They tell you every day. Liz Cheney, Trump’s personal Javert, has said that the 45th president is literally the greatest threat facing America today—greater than China, than our crashing economy, than our unraveling civil society."

    But, as he continues, it isn't really anything about Trump's policies, per se, that the elites should hate. He notes that, for the most part, Trump gave the elites what they wanted in terms of economic and foreign policies:

Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him.

So what is the elite's beef with Trump?

    Anton concludes that the elites hatred of Trump has more to do with his supporters than with Trump, himself. Anton explains:

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want.

And what they want (or, in most cases, don't want) does not align with what the elites and their useful idiots on the Left want. 

    And so they attack Trump. Anton lays out the steps or plans that the elites will take to keep Trump from winning a second term. Remember, that Anton wrote this in 2022, so we are already deep into the elites' plans. 

    Plan A was the January 6 "show trials" to make it impossible for Trump to run--or win--again. Much of the impact of this was blunted by the Tucker's public showing of surveillance tapes from inside the Capital earlier this year, so it is on to Plan B.

    Plan B, as Anton envisioned it, was "for the Jan. 6 committee to lay the groundwork for an indictment of Trump," and he noted that the DoJ was already leaking the possibility of charges of "seditious conspiracy." Anton writes in this regard:

    Moreover, if the regime goes forward with this, it’s going to try him in the District of Columbia’s 77 percent Democratic and 92 percent virulently anti-Trump jury pool, which lately has been acquitting obvious Democratic miscreants and convicting Republicans on silly charges that never used to have been brought in the first place.

    It’s just a fact—perhaps, to many, a baleful fact—but nevertheless a fact that somewhere between a third and half the country is going to find this totally illegitimate and be outraged by it.

    I know what some of our masters are thinking because they are already saying it: Justice must be done, come what may. We must stand on principle, consequences be damned. This sounds noble in the abstract.

    “What if, somehow, Trump is acquitted or gets his case tossed out?”

    Is it? I suspect some of them are thinking: This is win-win for us. If we convict him, or damage him enough that he can’t run, and there isn’t a huge backlash, then mission accomplished. Or if there is, well, those people were already, or soon-to-be, insurrectionists and so we will be justified in unleashing the security state against them. Indeed, there are benefits to flushing them out now, before they are fully organized for the “Second Civil War” we know the insurrectionists are already plotting.

    At any rate, a conviction would all but ensure a Senate vote under Article I, Section 3, making Trump constitutionally ineligible to run (at least half the Republicans would sign on).

    But what if, somehow, Trump is acquitted or gets his case tossed out? Then I think you will see the same indignant reaction, but from the other side. Suddenly it will be Blue America declaring all our institutions, and especially the courts, illegitimate. You might even see some attempts at blue secession, e.g., “Calexit.”

Again, Anton wrote this in 2022. Here we are a year later and it appears that at least some of the elites thought about the possibility of Trump getting an acquittal if it was limited to a single case in a single court. Thus, we now have a situation where Trump is facing numerous charges in multiple jurisdictions--the metaphorical spaghetti thrown on the wall to see what sticks. As Politico notes:

In New York, he faces 34 felony counts in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. In Florida, he faces 40 felony counts for hoarding classified documents and impeding efforts to retrieve them. In Washington, D.C., he faces four felony counts for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And in Georgia, he faces 13 felony counts for his election interference in that state.

Related: It's not just Trump they are going after:

• "Director of Black Voices for Trump is held in jail WITHOUT bond: Harrison Floyd becomes first MAGA ally to be booked behind bars in the Georgia election fraud case"--Daily Mail. 
• "Angry Mark Meadows poses for his MUGSHOT: Trump's chief of staff glares into the camera as he is arrested in Atlanta and set a $100,000 bond"--Daily Mail.

    "Plan C, if none of this works, is to have Trump declared ineligible under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment." Anton thinks this is a riskier plan simply because Trump's base is even less likely to accept an adverse decision on this issue than on criminal charges. 

    However, this plan has already been set into motion with numerous medial outlets discussing this option in just the last couples of weeks, prompted by an argument made by two law professors--William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, from the University of Chicago and the University of St. Thomas respectively--claiming that "Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election amount to 'insurrection' thus making it unconstitutional for him to run for the White House again under the 14th Amendment, unless he receives permission from two-thirds of both the Senate and House of Representatives." They also argue that the 14th Amendment clause is self-executing--that it doesn't need an Congress to pass a law to enforce it--and so individual states could determine that Trump is ineligible to run. Meaning that Trump would be bogged down by an endless round of additional lawsuits just to get on (and stay on) the ballets in numerous states. 

    I would also note that Professors Baude and Paulsen are members of the Federalist Society and ostensibly conservative or libertarian. This highlights the main issue, as is being pointed out more and more, that the political divide is less ideological and more one between the elites (and their lackeys) and the rest of us.

    Plan D is to try and beat Trump at the ballot box, which is problematic because Biden is both unhealthy and unpopular, while Harris--the natural shoo-in should Biden be unable to run--is even less popular than Biden. But, as Anton notes, replacing Harris with someone else--Gov. Newsom of California, for instance--brings its own problems. 

    Biden is enormously unpopular. Harris is spectacularly unpopular. Getting rid of one of them will be hard. Getting rid of both? The first black, South-Asian, and female vice president and heir apparent? Does anyone think the race-and-sex-obsessed Democratic base of 2024 is going to tolerate that?

    And then who do they replace them with? Gavin Newsom? A ciswhite male? Even if they can get past that non-trivial problem, which they can’t, Newsom has no appeal outside deep-blue America. I’m not saying he would certainly lose, but it’s dicey as hell, especially with a demoralized base and the very strong likelihood that the state he governs will be deep in recession by election time.

    Plan E is simply cheat ... again. Anton explains:

    ... I’m not talking about Dominion voting machines. I mean the kind of “pre-cheating” that the regime boasts about as “election fortification”: change the rules in advance in ways that favor Democrats and hurt Republicans, especially in swing states. There is no question that they will do this. Why wouldn’t they? It worked last time, and the more overt cheating they can avoid, the better.

    They are already using the federal government to thumb the scale in favor of Democrats. Biden’s Executive Order 14019, “Promoting Access to Voting,” requires “every federal agency to submit a plan to register voters and encourage voter participation. It also required agencies to form strategies to invite nongovernmental third parties to register voters.” That is to say, a federal takeover of state elections by the Biden administration. This is a replay, with federal power, of the $400 million in “Zuckerbucks”—money donated by the tech-oligarch founder of Facebook—that pre-rigged the last election, but this time with taxpayer dollars, a White House aide (Susan Rice) coordinating, and cabinet agencies like Housing and Urban Development implementing, in conjunction with leftwing NGOs. That combination will be hard to beat.

And there is already talk of re-imposing Covid measures because of a new strain of Covid beginning to make the rounds. Although the AP claims that it is all a conspiracy theory, Will Witt writing at The Telegraph observes:

Just this week, an Atlanta college announced that they will reinstate mask mandates for students and faculty at their university. The Lionsgate film studio in Los Angeles has told their crews to wear masks again. The Biden administration is buying Covid equipment and hiring pandemic “safety protocol” officers. And the federal government is also sending $1.4 billion to defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies for more Covid “countermeasures” and vaccines. 

Meanwhile, other outlets are reporting that the Royal Society in the UK determined that "[s]peedy implementation of a combination of measures such as face masks, lockdowns and international border controls, 'unequivocally' reduced COVID-19 infections[.]" And lockdowns were the most effective, according to the elites:

    The report could have significant implications for decision-making in future outbreaks, with Mark Walport, chair of the report’s expert working group and foreign secretary of the Royal Society, saying that “having protocols in advance is really important." He said what policymakers should take from the research is “there is evidence that non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective, but ... they have to be applied as packages, and they have to be applied as early as possible.”

    The most effective measure, according to the review, was one of the most controversial — restrictions on movement and social interactions through lockdowns, distancing and rules around the size of gatherings. These were repeatedly found to be associated with a “significant reduction” in transmission of the virus, with the more stringent the measure, the greater the effect.

And from The Guardian:

    The review found social distancing and lockdowns were the most effective category of NPIs. Stay-at-home orders, physical distancing and restrictions on gathering size were repeatedly found to be associated with significant reduction in Sars-CoV-2 transmission. The more stringent the measures were the greater the effect they had, the experts found.

    In care homes, measures such as cohorting and visitor restrictions were associated with reduced transmission and reduced outbreaks.

    Additionally, the report found that in school settings, closures and other distancing measures were associated with reduced Covid-19 cases, but the effectiveness varied depending on a range of factors, including adherence and pupils’ ages.

    When looking at the use of face masks and mask mandates, studies consistently reported the measures were an effective approach to reduce infection. The evidence further indicates higher-quality respirator masks – such as N95 masks – were more effective than surgical-type masks.

So the groundwork is being laid for another round of lockdowns and social distancing just in time for another election and another surge of mail-in voting.

VIDEO: "Surely not"--Paul Joseph Watson (8 min.)

Discussing the return of Covid mandates.

    And, if despite all of that, Trump should actually win again? 

    Which leaves Plan F, which they have already sketched in broad outlines. I don’t know exactly what form it will take, but they have made clear that “under no circumstance” can Trump be allowed to take office again. Among the “circumstances” covered by the word “no” would seem to be an Electoral College majority, or a tie followed by a House vote in Trump’s favor.

    What happens then? Well, in the words of the “Transition Integrity Project,” a Soros-network-linked collection of regime hacks who in 2020 gamed out their strategy for preventing a Trump second term, the contest would become “a street fight, not a legal battle.” Again, their words, not mine. But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House.