Donald Trump just blew it

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The first rule of having an evil secret plan is that you need to maintain the element of surprise to work in your favor. Donald Trump, either through psychological defect or cognitive failure, simply doesn’t seem to understand this.

Days ago, the news broke that Donald Trump was planning to falsely declare victory on election night even if he was losing. Then Trump all but confirmed it on Twitter. This was incredibly stupid on his part, because it gave everyone from the media to Democratic Party lawyers an opportunity to get out ahead of it and strategize for it.

Sure enough, when Trump went on Twitter at 12:49am and falsely claimed “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” Twitter quickly plastered over his tweet with a warning label. And when Trump went to the podium at 2:21am and falsely declared victory, the TV networks promptly blasted him for it and disputed his claims.

We don’t know what impact, if any, Donald Trump might have been able to have if he’d pulled this on us out of the blue tonight. But because he telegraphed it, Trump unwittingly ensured that his speech tonight had no impact at all, other than to embarrass him.

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