Trump Refuses to Affirm That the Winner of the Election Will Be President

In Donald Trump’s telling of it, the result of the 2020 election, which has not been held yet—and he might even win—is not legitimate. It’s a note Trump struck in 2016, when it looked like he almost certainly would not win, and it’s a scorched earth approach to democracy that he’s only made more extreme this time around. There’s no way to frame Trump’s approach to the upcoming vote as anything other than the stuff of strongmen and authoritarians. This is how elections are treated in Ankara and Moscow.