He was looking to distract

Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room.  His only goal at all times is to keep the focus on himself and off reality.

President Donald Trump’s go-it-alone presidency crested on Thursday with a suggestion that the country delay the November election.

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[I]t forced Trump’s supporters either to defend the president’s musings as a savvy attempt to troll and distract his critics, or to insist it was just the president playing thoughtless pundit.

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On Thursday night, Trump himself explained the tweet as an attempt to focus the country on the prospect of massive mail-in voter fraud, a phenomenon that researchers say does not exist and could be guarded against with more funding. At a news briefing, Trump flashed article after article for the cameras about anecdotal problems with absentee votes during the primaries.

“I don’t want to delay,” he claimed. “I want to have the election. But I also don’t want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election means nothing.”

“That’s what’s going to happen,” he added, predicting that with “litigation” the results could be unknown for “years,” perhaps forever. “Smart people may know it. Stupid people may not.”

  Politico

Signaling his intention to file lawsuits when he loses.

But what he really wanted was to step on the news that had just come out about the tanking economy.

“That’s what’s going to happen,” he added, predicting that with “litigation” the results could be unknown for “years,” perhaps forever. “Smart people may know it. Stupid people may not.”As is often the case, Trump dashed off his attention-hoovering tweet at an opportune moment Thursday morning. The worst economic decline ever recorded in U.S. history had just been announced. An aid package to save tens of millions of consumers was stuck in a deadlock. The rampant pandemic at the core of the problem was spiraling further out of control. And his poll numbers were floundering just three months away from the election.

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Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, even raised alarm in liberal circles in May when he told Time magazine that he could not “commit one way or the other” to holding the election on Nov. 3, the date that is set by law. “Right now that’s the plan,” he said, later clarifying that there had not been any “discussions” inside the White House about changing Election Day.

Indeed, each time Trump or anyone in his circle walks up to the line of saying the election may be delayed or that the president may refuse to leave office — nightmare scenarios frequently bandied about in progressive circles and joked about on late-night shows — they always back off.

“Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win,” Trump told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in a June interview. “You go on, do other things.”

I think the only time he's ever said anything like that.

During one stretch earlier this year, the president would often make playful suggestions about staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms, sarcastically tweeting and joking about it at rallies.

And then he said he doesn't kid. He's just sucking up oxygen and trying to stay afloat.

Any time one of Trump’s critics has suggested that the president might be serious about these authoritarian ponderings, MAGA world has attacked. The reaction was most pronounced in April, when Biden, Trump’s presumptive 2020 Democratic rival, predicted Trump would try to find a way to push back the November election.

“Mark my words,” Biden said at a fundraiser. “I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow; come up with some rationale why it can't be held."

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh lashed out at the time, calling the remarks “the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality. President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on November 3rd.”

No he hasn't.

On Fox News that night, anchors and guests castigated and mocked Biden for the remarks, saying he was deranged and trying to instill fear in the electorate.

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Three days later, Trump himself explicitly shot down the prospect: “I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that?”

Yet Thursday’s tweet appeared to put the concept back in the realm of possibility — despite the fact that Trump can’t unilaterally move the election.

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Trump himself Thursday night even disavowed any desire to delay the election, describing a desired image of himself on election night “standing, hopefully hand held high, big victory.”

It’s “not real.” said a former Trump adviser who remains close to the campaign, claiming no one has spoken about it. The person described it as Trump just tweeting something without giving it much thought or discussion.

Which is exactly what he's been doing all his life, only now it fucking matters, because he's the president of the United States of America, ffs.

[A] former Trump adviser heard an administration official had contacted an outside attorney to see whether Trump could halt the U.S. Postal Service from sending out mail-in ballots, citing attempted fraud or foreign interference.

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The point, said Stephen L. Miller, conservative media critic and contributor to The Spectator, is “to get you and an entire media apparatus to write about it instead of GDP crashing, or John Lewis’ funeral, which Trump should be attending instead of tweeting, and like usual, it worked.”

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And Trump had doused yet another media cycle with his own narrative — rinse, repeat.

Bingo.