Donald Trump may strike back if he 'falls off the horse'

If he fails in the race to the White House, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could counterattack with measures that would shake up US politics.

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump. Photo: AP.

By hiring Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart news site, to run the campaign and accepting his resignationPaulManafort, Donald Trump's campaign chairman, appears to be signaling that in the more than two months remaining in the race for the White House, he will"wholeheartedly" pursues the aggressive, incendiary approach that the New York tycoon has used so successfully, helping him win overwhelmingly in the primaries and caucuses, according to Politico.

Breitbart has shown its unwavering loyalty to the Republican candidate in recent months by criticizing anti-Trump voices. Breitbart has also actively published a series of conspiracy theories aimed at discrediting Mrs. Clinton.

The New York tycoon once asserted that the only thing that could cause him to lose was a "rigged" election. Experts said that this "bold" statement showed that Trump was completely confident in his victory and that if he lost, he would certainly fight back with extremely drastic moves.

"If he loses, Trump will say, 'This was a rigged election.' If he wins, Trump will say, 'It was shady, but he beat everyone. That's how it ends, regardless of the outcome," said a longtime ally of the American billionaire. "If he loses, Donald Trump will blame the media and even the Republican Party. I don't think Trump wants to compromise."

“He does the same thing when he looks at the polls,” another close Trump adviser added. “If the polls show Trump ahead, he likes it. But if the polls show Trump up, he thinks it’s rigged.”

Trump began suggesting the election could be "rigged" last month as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton surged ahead of him in the polls after both parties' national conventions.

“The only thing that will lose me in Pennsylvania is fraud,” Trump said at a rally in Altoona. Days earlier, in Wilmington, North Carolina, he warned that without stricter voter verification rules, people would “vote Hillary 15 times.”

The New York tycoon’s comments have had some initial impact. Thirty-eight percent of Trump supporters are confident their votes will be counted accurately, and just 49 percent of registered voters are “very confident” that the vote count will be error-free, according to a Pew Research Center poll last week.

Politico writer Eli Stokols assessed that Mr. Trump's comments about the accuracy of the US election process will have serious impacts both in the short and long term.

According to many senior Republican officials, the prospect of Donald Trump using all available resources to attack and undermine democratic values ​​not only threatens the party's survival but also potentially destabilizes the national political system.

“We’ve never had a president who has questioned the legitimacy of the results of a national election,” said policy expert Dan Senor. “A presidential candidate who genuinely questions the electoral process is moving us into a new world. And the damage to democracy is significant.”

In addition, some Republicans are worried that if he fails, Mr. Trump will take advantage of the mainstream media to attack voters' beliefs about the fairness and legitimacy of the election process as well as the political apparatus.

“How do you restore public perception after all this?” asked Charlie Sykes, a prominent Trump-bashing radio host, who said the New York tycoon was clearly seeking to invalidate all American institutions.

Sykes said it was "very dangerous" for Mr Trump's statements about a "rigged" political system to be widely disseminated and amplified by news sites like Breitbart.

“A significant number of Trump supporters will believe these things, and that is toxic to democracy,” Sykes asserted. “Donald Trump legitimizes them and weaponizes them. That’s something we’ve never had to deal with.”

According to VNE