Giovannino Guareschi, the wry Italian writer who created the Don Camillo series, lived by a personal credo under Nazi persecution – I will not die even if they kill me, he said. Donald Trump seems to be following a similar line – I will not lose even if I am defeated.
Clearly he does not want to read the writing on the wall. First, it is well known that he does not like to read and secondly, he does not like walls: they remind him either of China, or of the “big, beautiful Wall” he promised to build to keep out Mexicans or the Blue Wall that Joe Biden has resurrected across Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
To be fair, we were warned that the moment Trump started losing there would be a tweet storm alleging “electoral fraud.” Legal challenges, demands for recounts and even white supremacist violence have been clear possibilities. Even the appointment to the Supreme Court, with an eye on such a scenario, was done in unholy, unmasked haste.