People have theories about Trump's election day "secret" and they're all terrifying - INTO
Secrets

People have theories about Trump’s election day “secret” and they’re all terrifying

We’re exactly one week away from the election, and things are getting tense. If you’re a liberal and you haven’t yet developed an eye twitch, clearly you haven’t heard about Trump and Mike Johnson’s “secret” plans to steal the vote.

At least, that’s what several astute commentators noticed after Trump’s rally in New York on Sunday, when he intimated that he and Johnson have something of a coup prepared for the election.

Obviously it could be any kind of secret, but the fact that it’s held between Trump and House Speaker Johnson led people to wonder if they’re already working on finding certain legal loopholes that could place Trump in power on a technicality.

Which, to be clear, would be horrifying.

According to attorney Andrew L. Seidel, who first noticed that Trump seemed to be nodding to Johnson when he mentioned the “secret,” Trump could be planning on his MAGA loyalists in the House to win the election in case the race ends up being too close to call.

We already knew that the Electoral College is the devil: we’ve been trying to abolish it since the 70s for a reason. Without the Electoral College, an outdated way of tallying votes by state and county that increasingly counteracts the popular vote and puts people like Trump in the White House.

But in terms of what Seidel suggests—that Trump and Republicans backing him could “mess around” with the Electoral College—what does that actually mean?

There are theories that Johnson could try to stop the House from certifying a Harris win, but this feels especially brazen even for Johnson.

Johnson did respond to the “secret” allegations in a New York Times piece posted last night, but his response is a classic “I know you are but what am I” move straight out of the Kindergarten playbook.

So what’s the secret, and will it turn out to be bigger than we think? Or is it simply a shared tip about horse racing? We don’t know yet, but we’re terrified to find out.

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Henry Giardina (he/they) is the editor of INTO. He lives in Los Angeles. Past publications include the New York Times, The Believer, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic, Film Comment, and Gizmodo. He is @punkgroucho on Twitter.