On Friday’s Boston Public Radio, journalist Barton Gellman was blunt in his prediction about the likelihood of a contested November election.
“Trump will never concede,” he said. “If you take that seriously, it has huge, cascading effects on the election and its aftermath.”
The conversation followed Gellman’s extensive Atlantic piece, published this week, called “ The Election That Could Break America .” In it, he warns of several starkly undemocratic strategies being deployed by the president and his allies to ensure victory in November. Those strategies including sowing doubt about ballot legitimacy, intimidating voters, and — potentially — using a combination of public confusion and loopholes in the electoral college to disregard the will of voters in key swing states.
"My piece is not intended to be doomsday,” he said, noting that elections "cannot be stolen, ultimately, without the acquiescence of the American people.”
"Everyone really needs to take seriously, right now, that this is not going to be a normal election. Very unusual things are likely to happen. Extraconstitutional behavior is likely to happen.”
Barton Gellman is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency .
