'Trump always says the quiet part out loud': Expert warns about ex-president's next step

Donald Trump is already setting up a potential 2024 loss to be met with "bedlam" and misinformation about voter fraud, and we will fall into his trap if we don't learn from 2016 and 2020, a former federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

Joyce Vance, a frequent mainstay on MSNBC as a legal analyst, wrote in her Substack that Trump "always says the quiet part out loud." In this instance, she said, he has been telling us how he will handle a loss since before the 2016 election.

"It was clear by October 2016 that Donald Trump would not accept the outcome of an election if he lost. And let’s be precise: Trump’s position was that if he won, as he did, everything was fine. It was only if he lost an election that it should be considered 'rigged,'" Vance rote. "No evidence. No data. Just a spoiled child, a bully, insisting that if he lost, it wasn’t fair."

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She continued:

"Everything that followed was predictable. The Big Lie in 2020 was inevitable."

Now, he's setting the same stage, she says.

"Last weekend, Trump returned to his old tricks. He told an audience, 'The only way they're going to win, in my opinion, is if they cheat.' Trump always says the quiet part out loud," the ex-prosecutor added. "As I’ve said, the only real question is whether the country is listening... But far too many people, for whatever reason, do not understand that Trump will do it again. And that this time, the consequences may be worse."

However, Vance says, there is an option to take action. In 2020, she noted, "every elected Republican should have been asked by the media if they would support him if he refused to abide by the results of the election."

"But that didn’t happen ahead of the 2020 election. It has to happen now," she said. "We already have a good picture of the Trump sycophants who will stick with him through electoral loss, illegal schemes, and full on insurrection. But the press has this responsibility, and we should encourage them to fulfill it. And if they don’t, we should ask our elected officials ourselves in town meetings or other interactions. Proof is only a cell phone away, as is the conclusion we can draw from someone who ducks the question."