“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the 2nd Amendment,” Trump told the crowd in Wilmington, N.C. “By the way, and if she gets to pick if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the 2nd Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.”  LA Times/ August 10/ 2016

As his poll numbers drop (and Trump feeds on polls), the candidate is speaking recklessly and provocatively.  And the more dangerous Trump becomes, the more dangerous his more unhinged supporters become.

Trump and his spokespeople have bristled at the injustice the media has shown in suggesting that Trump’s remarks were anything more than a call to gun advocates to get out the vote.  Jason Miller, a senior advisor in the Trump campaign, called the media “dishonest”, and Trump himself happily told Sean Hannity that the flap is actually good for him, as it further identifies him as a champion of the Second Amendment.

Too easily lost in the (terrifying) reality of a presidential candidate playing fast and loose in prodding gun advocates to “action” is the further threat accompanying Trump’s familiar charge that the election is rigged.  The primaries, we recall were rigged, the convention was rigged and now, should the Trump candidacy not prevail, the entire electoral process is rigged.

In the face of devastating polling predicting the election of Hillary Rodham Clinton by a huge margin, after a week of grotesque blunders, and after the defection of many notable Republicans from Trump’s candidacy, Donald Trump has begun telling his audiences that he “hears” more and more that the election will be rigged and the Presidency stolen from the people and the Republican Party.  It will come as no surprise to any who have watched Donald Trump that he might seek to play the martyr and agent provocateur.  Equally unsurprising that he his team is even more willing to jettison the Constitution (except the Second Amendment).

What’s left to say as the poll numbers continue to slide, and the reality of imminent defeat become increasingly likely?  How about asserting that the only proper response to an election Trump factions consider illegitimate is civil disobedience and the recognition that the government no longer has the ability to maintain the rule of law?

 “The election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”

That remark and some of the nastiest suggestions are coming from Roger Stone, a professional disrupter of political civility and increasingly a voice Trump hears clearly.

Roger Stone is one scary guy.  Even before he attached himself to the Trump campaign, Stone was known in political circles as a “seasoned practitioner of hard-edged politics.”  Stone has used a less restrained moniker in describing himself as a hit man for the G.O.P.  Faced with the overwhelmingly critical reaction to Trump’s petulant rant following the televised speech of Khirz Kahn, it was Stone who tweeted the outrageous assertion that Kahn was an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood working in league with Hillary Clinton, and directed attention to a website purporting to prove that his son, decorated captain, Humayan Kahn, may have been a terrorist.

Roger Stone @RogerJStoneJr

Stone’s involvement with Trump goes back well before the campaign began; he had been behind a series of ads smearing a competitor in the casino business, ads and has been a Trump advisor for years.  Stone’s first political hatchet jobs were in aid of the committee to reelect Richard Nixon; he’s been playing political hardball since.  How far is Stone willing to go?

“If you can’t have an honest election, nothing else counts,” Stone said. “I think he’s gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical, and when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath… We will not stand for it.”

Stone’s rhetoric is more than enough to worry the casual observer; his personal attacks on opponents have been so vile that he has been banned from CNN and MSNBC.  Stone admits that his tweet identifying journalist Roland Martin as “a fat negro” was a two martini tweet; he has been less apologetic to others he has defamed.  Recent reports have surfaced that Stone is in contact with Julian Assange, hoping to coordinate the next leak damaging to the Clinton campaign.  Whatever Assange leaks, it is believed, will be delivered by hackers operating in Russia, perhaps with the knowledge of Vladimir Putin.

Stone is also a partner in a powerful lobbying and consulting firm, Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly.  Paul Manafort, the founding partner of that firm, is the chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign committee.  The group has advised Republican presidential candidates; Manafort has personally advised Jonas Savimbi, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Victor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych, former President of Ukraine, was ousted after rejecting  an agreement with regard to membership in the European Union in favor of a bailout loan from Russia and closer ties with Russia.  Popular protests against Yanukovych were met with force which quickly escalated to a virtual civil war.  Accused of murdering civilians, Yanukovych fled to Russia where it is believed he was granted  emergency citizenship by Vladimir Putin.

Keeping track of Donald Trump is tough enough; add the powers behind the throne and the campaign’s early abandonment of political probity, and the stakes just keep getting higher.