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Allan Lichtman
I get that. And that's very brilliant. And you've done an excellent job of explicating it. But the one difference that I see that still baffles me is, I get it with the WWE. But rooting for the villain doesn't affect your life. Electing Donald Trump means California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, are going to burn up. Our coastal cities are going to be underwater. The pandemic is going to rage out of control. Our economy will continue to lurch along.
The rich will continue to get richer, and all of you are going to pay the price. So it's not as if you can just watch your TV and feel you feel something about the good versus evil. This affects your life and your kid's life.
Paul Jay
I never drank the Obama Kool-Aid, in the sense that I always thought that he was a normal centrist Democrat, and I didn't have much hope that he'd be any more transformative than that, which means I didn't have hope he would be transformative at all, really.
But, yeah, I preferred him to the Republican candidates.
But he knew how to play the face. He knew how to play the smile, that everyone could read something into what they really thought he meant. And so progressives read all kinds of things into that smile. And I think a lot of the same things are happening with a lot of people who like Trump. They don't listen to the policy issues. It's all about belief, and he's a vehicle. You can kind of believe what you want in him.
Allan Lichtman
Yeah, I got that in 2016. I don't get it now when the reality of Donald Trump is upon us all. That's what baffles me. Sure, you can read into him anything you wanted in 2016.
He had no record. Now he's got a record. And do you really want, as I said, you know, the West Coast to burn, the southwest to be destroyed by hurricanes, our coastal cities to be underwater, a pandemic in which he has doesn't care about, has no clue how to solve. And there are going to be others. I mean, this is your life. This isn't reading something into an empty vessel. This is what we know is happening in America today.
Paul Jay
Is there anything that can move a key in Trump's favor before the election, for example, a provocation with Iran, an incident in the South China Sea, a terrorist attack of some kind that conveniently shows up just before the election?
Allan Lichtman
You know, you put your finger on something, Trump will stop at nothing. If he thinks starting a war will help him get re-elected, he'll start a war. He doesn't care about 200,000 dead from the pandemic, seven million infected, maybe with long term implications on your health.
And he won't care about those who might die in a war. But unless it's, you know, a lightning-quick, you know, like a seven-day war between Israel and Egypt back then, it won't turn a key. It's got to be a foreign policy success to turn the key. And they tried. You know, I don't think Trump understands the keys, but I think Jared Kushner does. And I think with this UAE-Bahrain-Israel treaty, he tried to turn a key. Didn't work, you know, no one cares about that treaty right now. You know, it's not even made a ripple in this country. But he's tried, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Anything Trump does, nothing will surprise me, you know, declaring martial law, starting a war with Iran. Nothing but nothing will surprise me.
Paul Jay
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