If there are two things that any American who has been within three feet of a news source over the past seven years can identify as central to Donald Trump’s worldview, they are these:

1. Russia did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election — or maybe it did, or maybe someone else did — but regardless, it didn’t matter, and Trump won on the strength of his own personal skills, and
2. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election was not a function of his personal failures but, instead, of systems rigged against him in the abstract or directly altered to his detriment.

It’s very much in keeping with his view of Republican results in the 2022 midterms, articulated to NewsNation last year: “I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.” The 2016 election was all him, all his success; 2020 was all a function of the deep state or elites or whoever constructing a fraudulent simulacrum of democracy.

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There’s just one problem. Trump’s incessant, false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him — the claims that led his allies to try to subvert the electoral college vote and sparked angry rioters to storm the Capitol — triggered a federal indictment obtained by special counsel Jack Smith centered on his attempt to subvert his loss.

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So in a court filing this week, his attorneys tried a novel argument. It wasn’t really Trump’s fault...

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