On November 6, 2012, Ann Coulter, the Right-wing activist and propagandist, was devastated by the re-election of President Barack Obama.   

In lamenting the defeat of Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, she unintentionally explained why Republicans would soon engage in voter suppression and even violence to secure and/or maintain absolute power:

“Mitt Romney was the president we needed right now, and I think it is so sad that we are going to be deprived of his brain power, of his skills in turning companies around, turning the Olympics around, his idea and his kindness for being able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts.”

Mitt Romney

In short: America was now “a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas.”

When you can’t win with better ideas, you try to win with deceit and violence.  

Donald Trump was another Republican who unintentionally previewed the methods he would employ eight years later on losing the 2020 Presidential election.

In 2012, he was a real estate mogul and host of the “reality show” The Apprentice.  

Donald Trump

When it became clear that Romney was not going to be America’s 45th President, Trump went ballistic on Twitter. Among his tweets:

• More votes equals a loss…revolution!
• Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!  The world is laughing at us.
• We can’t let this happen.  We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!
• The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation.  The loser one!
• He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country! 

To put Trump’s rants into real-world perspective:

• According to Trump, the electoral process works when a Republican wins the Presidency.  
• It only doesn’t work when a Democrat wins.
• “We should march on Washington” conjures up images of another Fascist—Benito Mussolini—marching on Rome at the head of his Blackshirts to seize power. Which, in a democracy, is treason. 
• “The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!”

Ironically, the 2012 Republican Platform had fully embraced preserving the Electoral College: “We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College.

“We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose ‘national popular vote’ would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency.”

And the loser didn’t win: He lost.

Obama got 60,652,238 votes. Romney got 57,810,407. 

Fast forward to November 9, 2016, with returns clearly projecting a win for Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Although Clinton got almost 2.9 million more popular votes, he swamped her in the Electoral College—-304 votes to Clinton’s 227. 

Suddenly, for Trump, the Electoral College wasn’t “phoney.”  

Similarly, Coulter no longer felt dismayed. She felt rejuvenated—for she had found her perfect Presidential candidate. 

Appearing on the Right-wing radio program, “The Eric Metaxes Show,” she had said: “What is the point of talking about abortion or anything else unless you get Donald Trump in to build the wall, deport illegals, end this ‘anchor baby’ nonsense, stop importing 100,000 Muslims a year, in addition to two million Third Worlders per year. It’s madness what this country has been doing.” 

Ann Coulter

Four years later, on November 4, 2020, Trump found himself facing defeat at the hands of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden. Suddenly he reverted to the sore loser of 2012:

“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it, we will not stand for it.”

“We were getting ready for a big celebration, we were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. The results tonight have been phenomenal…I mean literally we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good, such a vote such a success.” 

Immediately after the election, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.

From November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.

After running out of legal options to remain as “President-for-Life,” Trump played his final card: On January 6, 2021, he incited a violent attack on the Capitol Building to stop the counting of Electoral College votes. 

But by May, 2017, four months after Trump had taken office as President, Ann Coulter had abandoned him. Her chief complaint: He hadn’t built the wall along the United States-Mexican border he had promised to erect.

“We want the ruthless businessman we were promised,” she told the conservative website, The Daily Caller.

“This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues.”

In short: She had backed a monster to wreak destruction on those she hated—and he failed her.