One of America’s two parties no longer believes in peaceful transfer of power

I n all the chatter about what’s underway at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin coronation of Donald Trump, here’s a key development that is mostly missed.

With this event, mistakenly called the Republican National Convention when it is, in fact, the Trump National Convention, one of America’s two main political parties makes clear it is no longer committed to the peaceful transfer of power.

With this convention, the Republican Party’s mythology, legend and articles of faith have been codified.

If Mr Trump and his vice-presidential pick J. D. Vance win the November 5 election, America will be ordered to believe something totally different to what the whole world saw happen in 2020: it will have to unsee the vote tallies, unhear the roll call of results, unbelieve the reality that Joe Biden was lawfully and properly elected president of the United States of America.

The flock correspondents at the Milwaukee convention are reporting back that now the Republican Party — like its base and like its presidential nominee — is entirely certain that it did not lose the 2020 election and that it never can lose an election. Now, the Party will challenge any future reverses should they occur.

From Mr Trump, through to Mr Vance, to disgraced personal lawyer Rudi Guiliani, the rhetoric is all about the “stolen” election, the crooked Democrats and the call for jail time and vengeance.

Mr Vance, in fact, has gone so far as to suggest that had he been vice-president instead of Mike Pence on January 6, 2021, he would’ve made sure that Mr Trump was certified the winner of the presidential election rather than Joe Biden.

The Republican Party is no longer peddling “alternative facts”, as Mr Trump’s former aide Kellyanne Conway once classified lies in those long-ago days after Mr Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory. That was a relatively innocent moment. Then, Ms Conway and other Trump flunkies still knew the difference between truth and lies and relied on semantics to toggle between.

Now, it is not about semantics and juggling. There is no need for that. The approved reality is the only version on offer.

It is not inconceivable that should Mr Trump legitimately win the 2024 election, he will seek to amend the history books and the records to erase Mr Biden’s presidency.

Will America’s history be said to have begun on January 21, 2025?

Will 2025 be presented as America’s Year Zero?

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▪ This piece was first published in Medium and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 18 July 2024 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Adobe.