Blanche Said DOJ Would Never Block a Certification. Then He Filed the Suit.
That wasn’t a contradiction. That was the loyalty test, passed on camera.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,065: Saturday, October 24th, 2026.
Every time Donald Trump does something outrageous, the same chorus starts up within the hour.
“He can’t do that.”
“That’s illegal.”
“He’ll lose in court.”
And here’s the thing. They’re usually right. On the law…they’re right.
They’re also missing the entire point. Which is why they keep losing while being right.
Take the latest. Trump had his Attorney General, Todd Blanche, sue to stop Alaska from certifying its Senate race if the Democrat wins.
The stated excuse…is a second candidate with the same name as the Republican…one Alaska’s Supreme Court already ruled could stay on the ballot. Not fraud. Not evidence. And…the suit only kicks in if the Democrat wins. The trigger is simply the wrong candidate winning.
Now watch the chorus. “No standing.” “Frivolous.” “Any judge will toss it in a week.”
Probably true. And…completely irrelevant. Because the lawsuit was never the product. The lawsuit is the packaging.
Let me show you what’s actually being sold.
The Illegality Is the Feature, Not the Bug
I spent a career studying how people are moved to act.
Not how they should be moved. How they actually are. And the single most expensive mistake smart people make…is assuming their opponent is playing the same game they are.
The lawyers are playing “Will this hold up?”
Trump is playing “What happens in the heads of 330 million people between the filing and the ruling?”
Those are different games with different scoreboards. He is not trying to win yours. Stop checking yours…and announcing you’re ahead.
Here are the psychological levers being pulled, one at a time.
Lever #1: Repetition Manufactures Legitimacy
It’s called the illusory truth effect. Hear a claim enough times…and your brain starts filing it under “familiar,” and familiar gets quietly confused with “true.”
It doesn’t matter if the claim is refuted. The refutation simply does not travel as far as the claim…and it never repeats as often. It just doesn’t.
So the sentence “Alaska’s election results are in question” gets said by the President…the Attorney General…a court filing…a cable panel…and ten thousand accounts. The sentence “the court dismissed it” gets said once…on a Tuesday…by a clerk.
Which one lives in the public mind in six months? You already know.
Lever #2: Anchoring the Absurd
Drop a wild number first…and every number that follows gets judged against it.
Negotiators do this on purpose. So does Trump.
Suing to block certification of an election that hasn’t even happened is absurd. That’s the anchor. Once it’s on the table…merely “questioning” results, “pausing” for review…or demanding a “signature audit” feels moderate…by comparison.
The Overton window doesn’t shift because the extreme wins. It shifts…because the extreme makes the merely-bad…look reasonable.
Lever #3: Learned Helplessness by Exhaustion
Here’s one the “he’ll lose in court” crowd really needs to hear.
Martin Seligman put dogs through shocks they couldn’t escape. Later, when escape was easy, they didn’t even try. The lesson wasn’t about dogs.
Every unconstitutional action forces an institution…a state…a court…a journalist…a citizen to respond. Respond, respond, respond. Thirty actions a week.
You cannot sustain outrage at that frequency. Nobody can. So you triage. And “it’ll get thrown out anyway” becomes the permission slip to stop paying attention.
That’s not him losing. That’s you…being trained.
Lever #4: Flooding the Zone
Steve Bannon said it out loud years ago:
The method is to overwhelm the system with so much that nothing can be processed. Volume isn’t a side effect. Volume is the strategy. A court can rule on one case at a time. A news cycle holds one story at a time. A human mind holds about three or four.
Launch fifty. Win four. Lose forty-six. The forty-six losses are forgotten by Friday. The four wins are permanent.
Lever #5: Loyalty Tests and Institutional Capture
Ask yourself why Blanche specifically. Why a personal defense lawyer in the AG’s chair.
Because the ask isn’t “find a legal theory.” The ask is “show me you’ll file it anyway.”
Watch the timeline. Thursday afternoon…Blanche stands in front of reporters in Virginia and says DOJ would never improperly interfere with a state’s certification process. Blocking a certification, he says, is a “doomsday scenario.” Unlikely.
Thursday night…his department files the Alaska suit.
Friday, Trump lands in Florida…and tells the press he’s the one who ordered it.
That’s not a contradiction. That’s the test being passed in public. The Attorney General said the right thing, got the call…and filed anyway.
Every institution Trump touches gets the same damn exam. Will you do the thing you just said you wouldn’t do, because I asked? The people who say no get replaced. The people who say yes…get promoted.
Run that filter for four years…and you don’t need to win court cases. You’ve changed who is standing in the courtroom.
Lever #6: Normalizing the Precondition
The most dangerous move in that Alaska plan isn’t the lawsuit. It’s the sentence before it. “If the Democrat wins.”
The announced position…is that one party’s victory is itself…the grounds for federal action. Not fraud. Not irregularity. The outcome.
Once a sitting administration says that out loud…and the sky doesn’t fall, the sky not falling becomes the new floor. The next guy starts there.
Now Zoom Out to 30,000 Feet
Laws are not self-enforcing.
They are enforced…by people who believe the law matters more than the man. That belief is the entire load-bearing wall of a democracy…and it is made of nothing but habit…and expectation.
Every “illegal but he’ll lose” moment is a hammer blow on that wall. Not because the blow goes through. Because…every blow teaches everyone watching…that the wall is something you hit…not something you respect.
A country doesn’t stop being a democracy on the day a court rules against it. It stops…when enough people conclude the ruling doesn’t matter. When the Attorney General files because he was told to.
When a state official hesitates to certify…because he’s not sure who’ll protect him. When voters start wondering if their vote counts…only if the right side wins. When you…the smart person with the law on your side…shrug and say “it’ll get thrown out” and go back to your day.
That’s the entire play. Not winning in court. Making the court beside the point.
So What Do You Do With This?
Stop grading him on legality. He isn’t competing for that trophy.
Grade him on what each action is designed to do to the public mind. Then respond to that. Name the lever while he’s pulling it. Repeat the truth with the same frequency he repeats the lie. Refuse the exhaustion. Keep the wall in frame.
Because “he can’t do that” has never once stopped a man whose entire strategy…is doing it anyway. And that’s ALWAYS been Trump’s strategy.
He can. He is. And whether he loses in court…is the least important thing about it.
Steel Your Mind
Here’s the discipline, and it is a discipline.
Every time you feel the pull to say “he’ll lose in court,” catch yourself and ask one question instead: what is this action supposed to make me feel, think, or stop doing?
Then refuse to feel it…think it…or stop doing it. Fatigue is the goal. Cynicism is the goal. The quiet little “whatever” that slips out when the fortieth outrage lands…is not a sign you’ve gotten wise. It’s a sign the training took.
So…decide now…before the next one hits…that you will not be anchored…you will not be exhausted…and you will not confuse familiar…with true.
Hold the line on the boring stuff: certification is certification…a vote is a vote…a loss in court is still a loss…even when nobody’s watching. Say it plainly. Say it again tomorrow.
The man is counting on you to get tired of being right. Don’t give him that. A mind that can’t be worn down…is the one thing in this whole fight that no lawsuit can touch.
#HoldFast
Back Soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. Mark the date. The suit was filed eleven days before the election…before a single Alaska vote was counted.
There was no fraud to allege because nothing had happened yet. They didn’t wait for a problem. They filed the solution first…and left a blank where the problem goes.
If you take one thing from this article…take that: a man who sues over an outcome before the outcome exists…isn’t asking a court anything. He’s telling you what he plans to do…with the answer.
Sources
The Alaska lawsuit
Trump says he ordered the Justice Department’s lawsuit over Alaska’s US Senate race — AP via Yahoo. Trump: “I’m the one that said do it.” Includes Blanche’s “doomsday scenario” comment and Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller saying the statute doesn’t allow DOJ to enjoin certification.
Trump administration files lawsuit to block possible Democratic win in Alaska Senate race — PBS NewsHour.
Trump administration sues to block Alaska’s US Senate election result if Peltola wins — Alaska Beacon. Local reporting on the complaint; notes legal experts dismissed the federal argument.
DOJ preemptively challenges Alaska election results if Democrat wins Senate race — Democracy Docket. Details on the NVRA theory and the consequence of non-certification (empty seat).
Trump’s administration sues to block a possible Democratic win in the Alaska U.S. Senate race — Alaska Public Media.
Blanche as Attorney General
Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general in 50-49 Senate vote — Newsweek.
Trump DOJ showers GOP state with settlements amid Todd Blanche confirmation battle — Raw Story, summarizing Politico’s reporting on Alaska settlements during the confirmation fight.
Lever #1: Illusory truth effect
The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth effect — Hassan & Barber, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2021. Up to 27 repetitions; truth ratings keep climbing.
Repetition increases perceived truth equally for plausible and implausible statements — Fazio, Rand & Pennycook, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2019.
The trajectory of truth: a longitudinal study of the illusory truth effect — Henderson, Simons & Barr, Journal of Cognition, 2021. Effect persists at one day, one week, one month.
Lever #2: Anchoring
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases — Harvard Program on Negotiation summary of Tversky & Kahneman’s 1974 roulette-wheel experiment.
Anchoring, Information, Expertise, and Negotiation: New Insights from Meta-Analysis — Guthrie & Orr, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 2005. Even unreasonable anchors move outcomes.
Lever #3: Learned helplessness
Learned Helplessness — Seligman, Annual Review of Medicine, 1972. The primary-source overview of the dog experiments.
Learned helplessness — Wikipedia, for the Seligman & Maier 1967 study and later human research.
Lever #4: Flooding the zone
This infamous Steve Bannon quote is key to understanding America’s crazy politics — Brian Stelter, CNN, on Bannon’s 2018 remark to Michael Lewis.
‘Almost like surrender’: Steve Bannon on the media in Trump’s ‘Days of Thunder’ — Semafor via Yahoo. Bannon confirming the strategy is deliberate and “it’s worked.”
Just a way to cause people to not vote. Hopefully there is no issue with who wins!
Excellent essay, Jack! AWESOMELY EXCELLENT!