I’ve held off offering up my take on special counsel Jack Smith’s latest filing concerning Donald Trump’s behavior during and after the 2020 election for one simple reason: I wanted to go through the filing — and the coverage of it — before drawing conclusions!
Now that I’ve done that, I wanted to highlight one take from it — by the New York Times Jess Bidgood — that I think NAILS something I have long been mulling about Trump.
Of the filing, Bidgood writes:
The filing was a step in the effort by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to prove that Trump is not immune from prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
But, one month before Trump is on the ballot again, it also offered new details that paint a chilling picture of the way the former president and current candidate seems to think about elections: as an exercise in which the vote total is entirely beside the point. In his world, adverse election results were an obstacle, not an outcome.
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump told family members at one point, according to the filing. “You still have to fight like hell.”
That’s it exactly.
Trump views the entire world — business, politics, life — as one big negotiation. There are no facts. No hard and fast numbers. No truth. Just spin.
It’s that worldview that informed how Trump behaved after he lost the 2020 election. In reading Bidgood’s piece, I was reminded of the infamous call Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger looking for votes.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump told Raffensperger at one point. “Because we won the state.”
At another, Trump said: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”
To which Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Which, of course, makes total sense. Unless you are someone who doesn’t really believe in data. Unless you are someone who thinks everything is up for debate — and can be spun. Unless you are someone like Donald Trump.
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The Morning: What the Jack Smith filing tells us about Trump