IT has been just over a year since Donald Trump put himself forward as a candidate to become holder of arguably the most powerful title in world politics – President of the United States of America – but in that short time he has been guilty of many truly terrible transgressions.
Not only has he dragged America to the deepest depths of gutter politics, he has outraged an entire religion when he called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the US, insulted all 120 million Mexicans with threats of a border wall, has been labelled a misogynist and stands accused of sexually assaulting a number of women.
However, as our US Correspondent Andrew Purcell reports in today’s paper, Trump’s ramping up of conspiracy theories about the Presidential election being rigged could be his most dangerous deception yet.
America is no stranger to political scandal and even rigged elections. The legacy of Richard Nixon’s 1972 Watergate cover-up has meant that, more than 40 years later, American is still susceptible to notions of electoral fraud. That is despite the fact that countless attempts to uncover any wrongdoing in the decades since have failed to produce any meaningful evidence.
Even so, facing a slide in the polls and, hopefully, inevitable defeat, Trump's rhetoric that the election is being stolen from him by nameless corporations and the mainstream media reveals what we on this side of the Atlantic have known for a long time, he is a loser – and a bad one at that.
However, for a man who at times struggles to string a coherent sentence together, he has one very powerful skill – his ability to make many millions of Americans believe in his hyperbole.
That is why, as we reveal today, there are genuine fears of bloodshed on American streets if, as expected, Trump loses the race to the White House.
Trump is a joke and we have all been guilty of writing him off as such. We can only hope that America isn’t the punchline.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here