The tweet was notable in that it rekindled a long-dormant feud between Trump and Ryan, who made a habit of toeing the Trump line or at least ignoring Trump’s controversies for the past two years. But contained within it was a not-so-subtle bit of foreshadowing: The idea that, if Republicans lose the House, Trump might just blame Ryan.

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Trump has made it abundantly clear that one person won’t be accepting that blame: himself. While he previously agreed that the election was a “referendum” on his presidency — which is the overwhelming consensus on how midterm elections are decided — two weeks ago, he suggested he could have only a positive impact. “No, I think I’m helping people,” Trump said, running through some fancifully false stats about his primary endorsement record. “And I will say that we have a very big impact. I don’t believe anybody’s ever had this kind of an impact.”

But with the GOP staring down the barrel of a likely loss of the House, simply shirking blame doesn’t cut it; Trump also needs to find some scapegoats. Just as he spent days and weeks warning that his apparently looming loss in the 2016 election would be due to rampant voter fraud, he has spent the last few weeks of the 2018 election run-up designating some things he might blame.

In addition to Ryan, this includes the postal bombs authorities say were sent by Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc. Trump assured us in a tweet last week that Republican fortunes were on the rise before the attempted terrorist attacks took over the news cycle (even though things appeared largely static, if not already improving for Democrats).

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“Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls,” Trump said, “and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows — news not talking politics.”

Like the Ryan tweet, he slipped the preemptive blaming into a tweet that would be publicized for other reasons — specifically, his apparent flirtation with the idea that the bombs were hoaxes or a false flag. But it’s not difficult to see the seed he was planting.

Trump has also spent weeks blaming the Federal Reserve for the apparent arrest in economic momentum. Trump has called the central bank “my biggest threat.”

“Every time we do something great, he raises the interest rates,” Trump said of Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powell. He added: “He was supposed to be a low-interest-rate guy. It’s turned out that he’s not.”

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Also looming large on this list is China. Trump has assured us Chinese interference in the 2018 election makes Russian interference in 2016 look like child’s play. He’s also assured us that this time the hostile foreign actor is working against him. Never mind that there have been no specific claims of actual electoral interference.

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