Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is now a little behind in the polls after Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. He now claims that it's "unconstitutional" for her to be this position, without elaboration.
"This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn't want to leave, and they said, 'We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,'" Trumpclaimed.
He also criticized Democrats in a news conference last week, stating that Harris taking over from Biden "seems to me, actually, unconstitutional. Perhaps it's not."
House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly claimed that Harris would face legal hurdles that have not materialized.
In reality, Biden passed on the torch long before any state party formalized party nominations; Dems haven't even held their convention yet, let alone seen any ballots printed. And there are no constitutional barriers to Harris becoming president: Johnson refused to say what laws he thought nominating Harris would break and party leaders have since cooled on the racist implications of the suggestion.
The more ominous implication is that Trump is making clear he won't accept defeat.
"I don't think he knows exactly what his theory is going to be this time to explain how he was denied winning the election, so he's trotting out a number of things," [former Trump national security advisor John] Bolton said. "And I think this is why people need to start thinking more now about how to deny Trump the ability, the day after the election, if he loses, to try and throw the process into chaos again."
Even Nikki Haley is begging Trump to quit whining.
"But the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It's not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It's not going to win talking about whether she is dumb. You can't win on those things."
Popularity, race, sexism: interesting things for Haley to claim Trump can't win on.
