Next time Trump says there won’t be a need to vote in 2028, the media should be ready

If he repeats it without any kind of disclaimer then this time it’s not just safe, it’s obligatory for the press corps to conclude that he means it.

One thing you can generally count on Donald Trump to do is to repeat himself.

So the next time Trump tells his audience there will be no need for them to vote four years from now, our major news organizations should be ready to respond appropriately.

And that appropriate response is a top-of-the-news banner headline announcing that Trump Is threatening to call off the 2028 elections if he wins in 2024.

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure that’s what Trump meant on Friday when he told a right-wing Christian group “Christians, get out and vote, just this time.… In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

Conceivably, he was suggesting that things would be so much better in four years, these Christians wouldn’t have to worry anymore. Conceivably, he meant he didn’t care how they’d vote in four years because he wouldn’t be on the ticket.

But it was undeniably weird. And creepy. And not funny.

And coming from the guy who tried to steal the 2020 election by deceit and by force, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that he was saying there would be no need for elections anymore after he is returned to office.

Immediately after his Friday speech,  the mainstream-media press corps barely noted his comments about voting, choosing to focus instead on his latest slurs against his new rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. The New York Times’s Michael Gold whitewashed the comment, interpreting it to mean that Trump was “suggesting that if elected he would address [conservative Christian] concerns sufficiently enough that they would no longer need to be politically active.”

Later on, after Trump’s comments went crazy viral on social media, the Washington Post’s Maegan Vazquez and Sarah Ellison weighed in with a piece quoting the online criticism – and the campaign’s comically useless statement that the comments were “about uniting this country.”

The Times’s Gold filed another story, in which he did mention what "some" think:

Some argued that it was a threat that the 2024 election could be the nation’s last if he were to win and claimed it was further evidence of an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent he has displayed throughout his political candidacy.

Then Trump surrogates successfully waved off Sunday show hosts.

But the press corps is now on the record demanding some sort of credible alternate explanation. And if Trump doesn’t deliver one -- if he doesn't deny that he’s overtly  threatening democracy, and then says the same thing again -- the press corps should reach the obvious conclusion and break out the giant headlines.

Because if he repeats it without any kind of disclaimer then this time it’s not just safe, it’s obligatory for them to conclude that he means it.