THE PERFECT COMBINATION OF DELUSION AND LAZINESS

National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke confirms Maggie Haberman's scoop:

I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” to office this summer after “audits” of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia, and a handful of other states have been completed. I can attest, too, that Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact.

Jim Acosta confirms it, too:

Trump has asked advisers whether he could reassume the presidency this year, a well-placed source familiar with the conversations confirms to CNN. “What do you think of this theory," Trump has asked. I’ll discuss on @ErinBurnett shortly. Confirming NYT.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 3, 2021

It's not surprising that Trump believes the audits will demonstrate that there was voter fraud in 2020 sufficient to deprive him of what's rightfully his -- the vast majority of Republicans believe Trump was robbed, and believe that evidence of the fraud is hiding in plain sight, because that's what their favorite media sources tell them (and because Republicans have been telling them for decades that Democrats cheat in every election). What's amusing is what Trump thinks will happen after the great deception is revealed.

Trump doesn't know, of course, that there's no mechanism for the reinstatement of a defeated president under U.S. law. And of course he wouldn't know -- he was the least-informed president we've ever elected, and he made no effort to learn on the job.

But his assumption, apparently, is that he can just waltz back into the White House without having to do anything. He doesn't have to organize a military coup, or another storming of government buildings by his MAGA irregulars; he doesn't have to barnstorm the country claiming that he was deprived of what he's owed, in order to send the populace out into the streets demanding his restoration; he doesn't have to pursue another round of legal battles in response to the revelations of mass fraud. He just has to be given the presidency back, the way his caddy hands him a nine-iron.

The delusion is Trumpy, but so is the laziness.