by Noel Holston

Disingenuous or not, Donald Trump continues to maintain that he couldn’t have lost his re-election bid. After all, his rallies were so big and his supporters love him so much. The supporters agree because, well, the rallies were so big and they love him so much.

Nonsense. Anybody who applies simple common sense to this question will understand how he could — and did — lose.

Start with the 2016 Presidential election. Trump did win that one. No question. Hillary Clinton got more popular votes — 65,844,954 (48.2%) to Trump’s 62,979,879 (46.1%) — but Trump won more states and triumphed in the Electoral College.

In 2020, the election went the other way, with Biden getting 81,282,916 popular votes to Trump’s 74,223,369 and flipping enough “battleground” states to win the Electoral College. That’s a margin of just over seven million votes, which is pretty freakin’ emphatic and impossible to fake.

To which Trump and his flock still say, “No way, not possible.”

But it was more than possible. It was entirely predictable.

Think about it. Trump lost at the ballot box in 2016 by almost three million votes to a former First Lady who is despised, vilified and mocked by right-wing Americans and isn’t exactly beloved by members of her own party (including me).

So why should it be shocking that a far less polarizing, avuncular Democrat could beat him in 2020? Especially after Trump had had four years to outrage Democrats, disgust traditional Republicans and sour independents with his endless, inescapable displays of pettiness, deceit, egomania, meanness and willful ignorance. Millions may love him, but millions more were sick of the sight and sound of him.

True, some of these very characteristics endeared him to his faithful — or were possible for them to ignore given his Supreme Court appointees. He got more than 11 million more votes in 2020 than he got on 2016.

But Biden’s getting 15 million more votes than Clinton did and seven million more than Trump, far from impossible, was inevitable — a tribute to Trump’s unparalleled ability to annoy, sicken and motivate the liberals and moderates he thought he was “owning.”

It’s time for MAGAs from Trump on down to cool it with the absurd claims of theft and get on with tapping Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis or Archery Terror-Alert Greed to continue their plans to transform the USA into Gilead or Oceania or Hungary. There was no steal. Trump gave the election away.

And here’s the kicker. He has probably given away 2024 as well. If he had just submitted to an orderly transfer of power like 44 Presidents before him and kept his mouth shut, he’d be in a better position to retake the Oval Office in two years. But he couldn’t help himself, and he still can’t. As it stands now, he may be wearing a jumpsuit that matches his face.

Trump does have many enemies, but none worse than himself.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.