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I don't think Trump "believes" things, in the same way you or I might. He simply doesn't think truth matters. He says things he imagines will help him, and rejects things he thinks won't help him. There is no reality outside of his self-interest. https://twitter.com/MelissaRyan/status/1345856648976465922
It's hard for normal people — especially those of us with post-Enlightenment liberal educations — to imagine evaluating claims without including some semblance of concern over whether it's true. But Trump simply doesn't care about truth, at all. So he doesn't think about it.
What I got from that call is not that Trump "believes" the votes exist. He hasn't really given that a moment's thought. His belief is in power — and the ability of those who have it to create "reality". As Michael Cohen said, Trump speaks in code.
So "find the votes" means "make them up if you have to". Belief has nothing to do with it. Trump's business acumen was invented by TV producers and by Roy Cohn. He has existed his whole life on lies. So he simply doesn't understand being hamstrung by empirical facts.
This is where the hatred so many have for postmodernism is misplaced. Postmodernists didn't will into being the idea that reality is socially constructed. They just identified a phenomenon that was already true in the world. And some people, like Trump, are maximal examples.
What is a "successful" businessman? Well, success is a social construction — enough people believe in it, and the difference between "true" success and the one constructed of belief collapses entirely. Which is what literally happened for Trump.
So *of course* Trump thinks an election can simply be rewritten, so long as everyone just agrees to commit to a new truth, where he "won". And that is what he's trying to get Raffensperger to do: Make him the winner, in the same way Mark Burnett made him a successful businessman.
It probably does help to be a sociopath in these instances. The lack of empathy for other people shuts the sociopath off from understanding why others have attachment to empirical reality. All he does is see that as another obstacle between him and his goal.
Most of us would struggle to bully a person into denying reality, because imposing the pain of cognitive dissonance is tough for those with human empathy. Trump thinks nothing of it — likely doesn't even think about what the person he's bullying is thinking.
Gaslighting is a breeze when you have no feeling for others. You are unconcerned with their feelings. All you know is that the words coming out of their mouth aren't what you want to hear, and you will continue to bully until that changes. That is what I hear on that call.
I do think, in the weird and unconnected way Trump "believes" things, that he believes that someone in the GOP has the secret path to steal this election. But his lack of curiosity around what that looks like is another indication that empirical reality is not important to him.
The only other thing I'll add is that one reason much of the right wing base goes along with this is that they simply don't prioritize empirical reality the way the rest of us do. It's a lot like the concept of "faith", and the valorizing of believing things that aren't true.
This didn't start with Trump. Remember this quote?Literally about how empirical truth matters less than power. This is true to an extent, since power is powerful. But as Bush learned and Trump is failing to learn, sometimes power doesn't trump facts. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
I'm probably hitting the limits of Twitter and also my own ability to articulate philosophical concepts, but what is helpful here to understand that some folks simply don't see truth as important and don't factor it into their discourse in the way you or I might.
