In the middle of a pandemic and a presidential campaign, no claim about President Trump’s use or potential abuse of power is too outlandish to print, complain some media critics, legal analysts, and allies of the White House.
The latest example is former Vice President Joe Biden’s prediction that Trump will postpone the presidential election. “Mark my words, I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said at a fundraiser last week. He also floated this possibility earlier in April, saying, “We cannot delay or postpone” November voting due to the coronavirus. And Biden has suggested Trump would disrupt voting by threatening to defund post offices.
Few media outlets have endorsed Biden’s claims, but neither have many subjected them to the same kind of fact-checking headlines that have greeted comparable Trump assertions. “Biden steps up warnings of possible Trump disruption of election,” declared the New York Times. “Biden says he thinks Trump will try to delay the November election,” read an NBC News headline. “Biden predicts Trump will try to delay November election,” said Politico. “Biden predicts Trump will try to cancel the election, collude with Russia,” was the header for Forbes.
There’s just one problem: There is no mechanism for the president to cancel or delay the election unilaterally, as some of the above outlets acknowledged in subsequently published analysis pieces. Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley calls the idea the “ultimate conspiracy theory” and “little more than constitutional mythology, used for political advantage.”
Election Day is set by statute and would have to be changed by Congress; Democrats currently control the House. Trump’s term expires on Jan. 20, 2021. That could only change with a constitutional amendment, which would have to be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or an unprecedented constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures. All amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Elections are also largely administered at the state level, outside of Trump’s purview.
This hasn’t stopped the speculation. “Notably, this Sunday, one of the front-runners for the vice president slot, Stacey Abrams, insisted it is ‘not a conspiracy theory’ and repeated the nebulous connection to the postal service,” said Turley. “It is a conspiracy theory, and passing around the tinfoil hats is hardly a recommendation for vice president. Most striking is that, after she bizarrely insisted that this was a credible theory on CNN, NBC's Chuck Todd did not even ask her about it in a low-impact interview.”
The contrast with media coverage of Trump talk about “rigged” elections has some observers seeing a double standard. “The liberal media insist that they make news based on facts, but in the Trump era, so much of their news product is heavy on speculation and soothsaying,” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. “In the last election cycle, they all freaked out over Trump sounding noncommittal about accepting the election results, and since then, they have demonstrated they are the ones that can't accept the election results.”
“They warned us that Trump acts like a dictator,” Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman said of the media. Graham concurred that major outlets “routinely suggest Trump is a budding authoritarian eroding democracy.” And yet, far from seizing power, Trump is now being criticized for his restrained approach to the Defense Production Act instead of more aggressively pressing the private sector into service, as the act allows.
Similarly, Trump has alternately faced critical questions for declining to order a national lockdown, a power he does not have, while also facing hostile coverage for asserting the authority to make states reopen their economies — a power he also does not possess. Instead, Trump has generally deferred to the states, even when he publicly disagrees, and his scientific advisers.
“Trump often backs down or moves on,” conceded CNN’s Joan Biskupic in a story, saying, “Trump pushes the limits of presidential power.” One example was Trump potentially invoking Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution on congressional adjournment, possible only in the event of a disagreement between the House and Senate that does not exist.
The propensity to believe unfounded claims could actually undermine presidential accountability.
“Many of us have been critical of the failure of some Trump supporters to call out the president over such indefensible statements as his disinfectant comments and later clearly untrue denial,” Turley said. “The same is true for Democrats who ignore bizarre or untrue statements like this one from their presumptive nominee.”
