2016 Trump’s most dangerous gambit Is the GOP candidate trying to win anymore, or just intent on destroying the presidency?

LAS VEGAS — There are three weeks left until the election, but who knows how many more before Donald Trump would concede, should he lose. And clearly, there’s no end date in his quest to undermine Hillary Clinton’s increasingly likely presidency.

He wasn’t cute or coy about it Wednesday night. Asked by moderator Chris Wallace whether he’d hold true to the basic principles that have guided American elections for 240 years and the peaceful transfer of power every four to eight years, Trump said no.


“I will tell you at the time,” Trump said. “I’ll keep you in suspense.”

There’s no suspense. Donald Trump is ready to undermine American democracy to protest a loss that even his own team now privately predicts.

His team says he’s blameless, no matter what he has said. But Democrats are warning that the GOP nominee will be to blame if his refusal to accept defeat and his insistence — without any evidence — that the election is being rigged against him stokes violence.

“If Donald Trump engages in a behavior that is against our democratic norms — says the election’s rigged and then people act violently on it — he will bear some of the responsibility,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.).

If there’s violence, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said after the debate, “I do believe that’s on him, because he’s the one that’s creating the doubt in people’s minds.”

To the Clinton campaign, Trump doesn’t look like he’s trying to win anymore. And its frightening them as her aides start shifting toward a transition mind-set and thinking about how to govern in the aftermath of the ugliest, most divisive election in modern presidential politics.

Her team worries: Is the next step protests, or even riots? Or is it an extended resistance to Clinton if she’s sworn in as president?

It could be all of the above.

“The fact that it's even a question is disturbing enough,” said Mo Elleithee, a top aide to Clinton’s 2008 campaign who’s now the executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service. “If he questions the legitimacy of the results, he will have to bear some of the responsibility for any sort of unrest.”

What Trump’s doing runs so deep, said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, that everyone should be on edge, and everyone should be turning to Republican leaders to shut Trump down.

“This country is not a monarchy. We’re not ruled by despots. We’re not ruled by dictators. We’re ruled by the will of the people,” Mook said. “And it’s incumbent on every candidate to accept the will of the people.”

The Trump campaign seems to believe there’s no reason to take Trump’s rhetoric seriously, except for all the parts about the rigged, rigged, rigged system that they agree with. But nothing bad that might happen when other people take his words seriously could possibly be on Trump, his team insists, arguing that the only people who might think that are part of the rigged system themselves.

“Why would it be on him?” said retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a senior Trump adviser. “The media blames everything on Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton tried to blame WikiLeaks on Donald Trump.”

And after the debate, some of Trump’s most vocal supporters simply pretended he hadn’t said anything concerning at all — even as Republicans nationwide expressed shock at their candidate’s refusal to commit to accepting the results.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he didn’t hear Trump say he wouldn’t concede. “Maybe you understood it differently,” he said. And former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said that if Clinton wins, she thinks Trump will concede: “I would hope that would take place if that happens,” she said. Then she tried to explain what she meant: “I believe he would not transfer the power relentlessly, I mean withhold it; I think he’s going to abide by people’s wishes.”

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has said repeatedly she’s not on board with the rigged-election talk, came into the post-debate spin room claiming victory, insisting that the media was ignoring a video from conservative provocateur James O’Keefe that appears to show an operative connected to the Clinton campaign encouraging violence outside a March rally for Trump in Chicago that did eventually descend into chaos.

She deflected questions about the people at Trump rallies in recent days threatening violence and rebellion if Clinton wins.

“I love democracy and I love freedom,” Conway said, “and I want people to respect the process, and I want people to recognize that the best way they can help Donald Trump right now if they support him is to go knock on their neighbors’ doors, get the absentee ballots out, drive seniors to the polls and make sure that everybody knows when Election Day is and what their polling places are.”

Clinton called Trump’s rigged claims “horrifying,” and her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, echoed that. But Palmieri was hesitant to get into real-world consequences, insisting violence isn’t on her mind. Maybe, she jabbed, this is all another show, and the Republican Party is maybe taking its first steps to stop him.

“He talks a big game sometimes and doesn’t deliver on his threats,” Palmieri said. “I don’t think that he’s going to find a lot of quarter even in the Republican Party for continuing beyond the election.”

Mark Cuban, the flashy billionaire who’s turned himself into a top Clinton surrogate and Trump attacker, said he’s not so much worried about violence — “never say never, because there are some crazies out there, but I don’t think there’s a movement.”

But he called Trump’s comments “the most un-American thing that any candidate in a presidential election has ever said,” adding: “Imagine if Vladimir Putin said you cannot trust the outcome of an American election. The uproar in this country would be overwhelming.”

This is dangerous, said Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon, but at least to Brooklyn, this isn’t what winning looks like.

“At this point, there’s a clear strategy, to the extent you can call it that, to really try to enliven and enthuse this 40 percent that has been solidly and consistently behind him,” Fallon said. “That is a strategy for really ginning people up; it’s a strategy for winning the primary. It’s not a strategy for winning the general.”

There’s an alternative, Fallon said: “Maybe it’s a strategy for creating a nice base of customers for monetizing your television station in a couple months.”