Lately, it seems like the only person who still believes that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump is Donald Trump. So, the question we have to ask is this: Did Trump ever really believe that there was election ‘fraud?’
Let’s remember that the idea of a stolen election was first cooked up by Roger Stone. And Stone’s whole shtick as a political consultant was based on spreading lies. Wasn’t Stone the one who first told Trump to promote the idea that Obama wasn’t born in the United States?
To me, it would make a lot more sense if it turned out that Trump didn’t actually believe in election ‘fraud’ because if he did, what would this say about the fact that someone sat behind the Resolute desk for four years who was so far removed from reality? To quote Grandpa: ‘oy vay’ (read: uh-oh.)
You can gain some perspective on this issue by reading a new book by Andrew Lownie, Traitor King – The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, which covers in detail how Edward VIII and his wife, Wallis Simpson, consciously tried to promote the aims and goals of the Nazi government before and during World War II.
This is the reason Edward was booted off the throne in 1936, and this is the reason he was never able to reconcile with the Royal Family for the rest of his life. The book references reports both from British Intelligence and the FBI about the numerous contacts between the former Monarch, his wife and various Nazi officials which evidently continued even after England declared war on Germany in 1939.
Why was Edward so enamored of a country’s political leadership that he was willing to continue talking to representatives of a government that was now at war with the country he wanted to lead? Because he believed that supporting the Nazis was the most effective way to deal with the threat of Communism, as well as to keep Western Europe in the forefront of world political affairs.
Edward’s dream was that there would be a peaceful relationship between Nazi Germany and the Fascist governments of the West including Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Together these four countries would unite and force Britain to put Edward back on the throne. Together they would also provide financial and industrial support for Germany’s assault on the Soviet Union, a harbinger of this strategy had been successful in helping Franco extinguish the Communist 2nd Republic government in Spain.
Behind Edward’s attempt to promote this grand scheme was a racism which knew no bounds. He believed that the entire ‘Negro race’ had the intelligence and psychological maturity of ‘children’ and could only be governed with a ‘strong hand.’ His anti-Semitic feelings were just as negative and just as strong.
Think that Trump’s comment about ‘shithole countries’ was all that extreme? Edward returned from a trip to Australia and described the indigenous colonial population as being no better than ‘little monkeys’ and ‘the most revolting form of human beings that I have ever seen.’
Where his world view collapsed, however, was in his inability to understand that by 1940, the entire balance of power was basically determined by the strategy being pursued by the United States, and if Roosevelt wasn’t about to make a deal with Hitler, neither was anyone else.
How did an educated and literate individual wind up as an adult who held such crazy and ridiculously stupid views? Better yet, what made Edward believe that anyone in England would accept such nonsense and reinstall him on the throne? Didn’t it ever occur to him that it was his loony beliefs about political and social affairs which got him booted off the throne I the first place?
I think the answers to those questions are simple: from the time Edward began growing up, he was surrounded only by people who told him not what they knew or believed, but what they thought he wanted to hear.
Know what? If one theme runs through the book, Divided, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser (which I reviewed earlier this week), it’s that this is exactly what went on in the Oval Office under Trump.
Want to promote your career in public life? Stay as close to the President as you can.
Want to stay close to President Trump? Tell him what he wants to hear.