Trump: What you do is you go and vote. You do a solicited ballot, and that’s okay—
Wallace: No. No. I know your complaint [crosstalk]. I’m asking you about the fact that millions of people have received—
Trump: You go and vote. You go and vote—
Wallace: No. But what I’m saying is [crosstalk], what are you going to do about the fact that millions of people—
Trump: You either do, Chris, a solicited ballot, where you’re sending it in, they’re sending it back, and you’re sending. They have mailmen with lots of it. Did you see what’s going on? Take a look at West Virginia, mailmen selling the ballots. They’re being sold. They’re being dumped in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country.
Biden: There is no [crosstalk]… There is no evidence of that—
Trump: This is not going to end well.
Biden: There is no evidence of that—
Trump: This is not going to end well—
Wallace: Okay. Vice President Biden, in fact, go ahead, sir—
Biden: Five states have had mail-in ballots for the last decade or more. Five, including two Republican states. And you don’t have to solicit the ballot. It’s sent to you. It’s sent to your home. What they’re saying is that it has to be a postmark by Election Day. If it doesn’t get in until the seventh, eighth, ninth, it still should be counted. He’s just afraid of counting the votes—
Trump: You’re wrong, you’re wrong. I love counting votes!
More totally normal talk from the president of the United States, all but declaring any election he loses invalid. He’s been doing this for years, but with an election slightly more than a month away, it is getting a bit, how do you say…troubling? “This isn’t going to end well,” he says, words that don’t at all sound like a threat.
My favorite bit here is Trump’s rambling story about postal workers (he’s still not a fan of the USPS) selling ballots and people throwing them into rivers (which rivers exactly?), which leads to another artillery barrage of crosstalk in which Biden says Trump is afraid of counting votes. This launches Trump into full child-king mode, with a Joffrey-like protest of “I love counting votes!,” which is objectively just a weird thing to say/love. Sounds boring as hell, Donald.
This takes us to the endgame, in which Biden addresses the camera again with as much gravitas as he can muster and assures us that Trump can’t stay in power if he loses, that it won’t happen, that it couldn’t happen. That this has to be said at all is extremely discomforting.