On the final episode of “Fox News Sunday” before Election Day, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona offered an important criticism of Donald Trump: the former president, the Arizona senator saidis trying to “create the conditions in which he can do what he did in 2020”.

Host Shannon Bream quickly interrupted say that Trump, at the end of his term, “is gone in 2020”. It fell to Kelly to remind the host and viewers that the Republican left office “after sending a mob to the Capitol,” adding, “There were people who died that day because Donald Trump refused to accept the election. »

The exchange was remarkable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the familiarity of Bream’s argument. This is also the line that the defenders of the former president have been defending for almost four years.

Yes, Trump rejected the legitimate election results because he disapproved of the voters’ verdict. Yes, he tried to overturn the result in a way that federal prosecutors say is patently illegal. Yes, he filled his radicalized supporters with lies, incited a riot, and deployed an armed mob to attack the U.S. Capitol, part of a plot to seize illegitimate power by force.

But by the time his successor was inaugurated, Republicans say, Trump at least left the White House when he was supposed to.

It was against this backdrop that the GOP nominee, just hours after Bream’s observation, expressed regret for leaving the White House when he was supposed to. NBC News reported:

He I didn’t seem to be joking.

In other words, with just two days until Election Day, as undecided voters made their decisions, the Republican nominee for the nation’s highest office reminded the public of his increasingly open hostility toward democracy.

It was, by all accounts, a speech summarizing his closing message, focused on the issues of the 2024 race. True to form, Trump strayed from his script and focused again on his post-2020 defeat grievances. The New York Times report on the rally summarized: “With these remarks, Mr. Trump used the final days of his campaign to offer voters a stark reminder of the violence that took place at the end of his term when, after weeks of false claims After the election he lost, a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory.

A Political reportmeanwhile, described Trump’s “shouldn’t have gone” rhetoric as “a remarkable admission from a former president whose attempts to cling to power led to a deadly riot at the Capitol.”

Welcome to election week 2024.