Donald Trump claims that he and House Speaker Mike Johnson are hiding a “little secret” that is going to have a “big impact” in the election.
The former president told supporters at his MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden: “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House.”
Trump said he will only reveal the secret “when the race is over” but his cloak-and-dagger act had Washington guessing over what the GOP presidential nominee and the Republican House Speaker are cooking up between them.
ADVERTISEMENT
D.C.’s home of morning gossip—the Politico Playbook email—speculated that it might have been a nod to stitching up the election via an antiquated procedure in Congress: “he made some potentially more sinister comments that could be a reference to the House settling a contested election”
In this scenario, Trump and Johnson could be laying the ground for a possible contingent election should the presidential race end up too close to call. That would allow Trump to lose the electoral vote and the popular vote and still legally end up back in the White House.
If neither candidate reaches the 270 votes required to take the Electoral College, the outcome could be decided on Capitol Hill. In a contingent election, each state delegation in the House of Representatives gets a single vote for president and each state delegation in the Senate gets a vote for vice president, irrespective of the size of the states. For example, California with its 52 House representatives gets the same say as Vermont, which has one.
As things stand, more states lean Republican than Democratic.
In her ‘Letters from an American’ newsletter published after Trump discussed his secret pact with Johnson in front of a packed Madison Square Garden, Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson, wrote: “It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.
“Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan.
“But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him,” she added.
Others saw Trump’s remark as a clue that he isn’t confident of winning the election fair and square–and that he might be plotting to “override” the Electoral College.
Speaker Johnson didn’t mention the secret in his speech at the MSG rally, but he seemed confident of the eventual outcome. “I am convinced that in nine days, we are going to grow the House majority, we’re going to take back the Senate and send Donald Trump back to the White House,” he said.
