John Hendrickson writes:

Tucker Carlson’s eyes narrowed as he conjured the image. A Donald Trump victory, he said at a campaign event in Gwinnett County, Georgia, last night, “will be a middle finger wagging in the face of the worst people in the English-speaking world.”

Trump maintains that he’s running for president a third time to restore and unite the country. But many Democrats and even some Republicans have expressed profound concern for democracy and overall safety if the former president wins this election. Last night at the Gwinnett County event, sponsored by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, I asked Trump’s supporters to consider the inverse: What do you think will happen if Trump loses?

The more Trump rallies I attended, the more this question had been gnawing at me. He has framed this presidential contest as a “final battle,” and he may well win. But if he doesn’t, I wanted to know if he and his supporters would really go quietly. I heard a range of answers last night, from promises to accept the outcome to predictions of a new Civil War.

I approached the former Trump-administration official Peter Navarro, who was signing copies of his book The New MAGA Deal: The Unofficial Deplorables Guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Policy Platform. Earlier this year, Navarro spent four months in prison. Like another Trump ally, Steve Bannon, Navarro had been found in contempt of Congress after failing to comply with subpoenas from the House Select Committee on January 6. If Trump loses the election, Navarro told me that “the country will disintegrate,” and he warned of “very hard times.” I asked him if he thought something akin to another January 6 might occur. “By asking that question you’re trying to stir up shit, man,” he said. He told me that my query would be better suited for President Joe Biden and the Democrats. “Those assholes put me in prison,” he said. “Do you hear me?”

Another former Trump-administration official, Ben Carson, took a more conciliatory approach to my question. “I think we’ll have to regroup and try to figure out how we can save our country,” Carson said. He told me he doubted that another event like the storming of the Capitol would take place. “I think regardless of who wins or loses, we’ve got to tone down the dissension and the hatred that’s going on in our country, or it’s going to be destroyed,” Carson said.

Rank-and-file Trump supporters had varying opinions on the matter. I chatted with one attendee, Joshua Barnes, while he waited in line to buy strawberry smoothies for himself and his wife at a food truck outside the arena. The couple had driven four hours that morning from their home in Alabama to hear Trump speak live for the first time. “If she does become president, as much as I would hate it, you kind of do have to accept it,” Barnes said, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. He told me he did not want another insurrection to occur, but he acknowledged the possibility of something worse: a period of postelection unrest, or even civil war. (He pointed me to a Rasmussen survey from the spring that had shown a distressingly high percentage of respondents saying the same thing.)

A man from Gwinnett County named Rich who works in construction told me that this was his fourth Trump rally. “I’m a pretty good judge of character, and when people are trying to shovel me a load of garbage, it’s like, No, it stinks, okay?” he said of Harris and the Democrats. He predicted protests no matter who loses, but did not anticipate another January 6, which he referred to as a “situation” and not an insurrection. As for something closer to a civil war? “I think anything’s possible; I don’t think it’s out of the question, and I really can’t elaborate on that,” he said, adding only that he was hoping it wouldn’t happen. [Continue reading…]