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Michelle Goldberg

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

When Donald Trump says something ludicrous and unhinged, it is often difficult to tell if he is acting out of feral political calculation or narcissistic injury. We saw this on Sunday, when he claimed that Kamala Harris had used A.I. to fake an image of an enthusiastic crowd greeting her when she arrived in Michigan.

“There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!,” Trump wrote on his vanity website Truth Social.

His argument, such as it was, was based on a conspiracy theory floating around febrile corners of the internet that purported to find evidence of Harris’s deception in her plane’s reflection. “Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches,” Trump added. “This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING — And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”

One way to read this post is that Trump is delusional. He can’t cope with Harris besting him on the metric he’s long valued the most — the size of his audience — and so is denying reality and having a tantrum. But however disordered Trump’s mind might be, I suspect there’s also a sort of strategy at work here. He is helping his supporters build a rationale for rejecting the election results if Harris wins.

Those who refuse to believe that Joe........

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