The New Yorker:

We already knew that this fall’s campaign, with Donald Trump fighting for his political survival, would be crazy, overwhelming, and exhausting. But, no matter how much we’ve come to expect the worst, it’s still a shock when it happens. At least it should be. On Wednesday, Trump was asked what should have been a simple question: “Do you commit to a peaceful transfer of power?” There is only one answer to this question in America. The answer is yes. But not for Trump. “Well, we’re gonna have to see what happens,” he responded. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster.” Further pressed, he added, “We’ll want to have—get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very—we’ll have a very peaceful . . . There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”

No wonder, then, that Washington has been in a full uproar for weeks over the constitutional crisis that may ensue after the vote, if the results are too close to call or if there is a winner and Trump doesn’t like who it is. In the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, a week ago, Trump said he wants to make sure that a ninth, presumably loyal, Justice is in place before the election, in case the Court is where the outcome of the election ends up. And he appears to have the Republican votes in the Senate to make it happen.

So, yes, the prospect of the upcoming election should—and does—inspire dread. But so does the prospect of what tomorrow might bring from the President—and the next day, and the day after that. The election is still forty days from now. How will we get through the rest of this week? This month? Consider that the following are things that Trump has done in the course of this long, enervating, and not-yet-over September, every single one worthy of front-page scandal, of career-ending political damage for an American elected official:

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