President Donald Trump is losing badly, and he knows it. At the MAGA rally billed as the Republican midterm convention on September 9-10, he mounted yet another brazen attack on the democratic process that threatens to hold him accountable. He tried to buy votes, imbue personal loyalty to him over allegiance to democracy, and encourage voter fraud.

Most of the media dismissed the episode as just another bizarre Trump moment.

Eight minutes into his second keynote speech on Day Two of the rally, the president promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to every US adult citizen if Republicans retained control of Congress in November. That would add more than $1 trillion to the burgeoning federal deficit and fuel persistent inflation.

“Outside historical norms”? Trump’s actions are so far beyond the pale that it’s inappropriate to describe them in such sanitized terms.

Some observers dismissed it as a campaign promise. But federal law provides:

Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; andWhoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (18 U.S.C. Sec. 597—“Expenditures to Influence Voting”)

Of course, the Trump Justice Department that is prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey for posting a photograph of seashells on a beach will never investigate or prosecute Trump for anything. And Trump’s position will always be that Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in Trump v. United States effectively gave him a permanent “get-out-of-jail-free” card for anything he does as president.

Even so, Trump’s promise of money in exchange for Republican votes was blatantly anti-democratic; the loyalty oath that he then asked his audience to take was worse.

Ten minutes after his $5,000 promise, Trump asked attendees to raise their right hands and swear—not to defend democracy, but to undermine it as an act of personal loyalty to him: “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe.”

The audience repeated his words. Ignoring the evidence that voter fraud is virtually non-existent, Trump continued:

That I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do. They never, there’s never been bigger cheaters. They don’t care. I am gonna go out and I'm gonna get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3 or we are going to vote before that.Ready? To finish the pledge? So we swear [Audience responded: “We swear.”] on November 3,........

© Common Dreams