President Donald Trump essentially announced last week that he would plunge America into constitutional crisis rather than concede defeat in his reelection bid. Breaking more than two centuries of precedent, he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, declaring the only legitimate outcome is "a continuation" of his presidency.

Trump, of course, says shockingly irresponsible things all the time, but this crosses new lines. Anyone who thinks this election is still about policy hasn't been paying attention. The overwhelming electoral defeat of this aspiring despot has become an existential imperative for American democracy.

Trump was asked Wednesday if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power whatever the election outcome. "We're going to have to see what happens," he answered, alleging in now-typical fashion that mail-in ballots "are a disaster." In fact, mail-in voting has been done for years without a single proven instance of mass or even significant fraud. Every time Trump claims otherwise, he is lying.

The lie has a purpose, as illustrated, chillingly, in the second part of his comment Wednesday. When pressed by reporters about a peaceful transfer of power, Trump said: "Get rid of the [mail-in] ballots and you'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation."

Think about that. A sitting president announces that the only way Americans can expect a peaceful election outcome is if the ballots of millions of voters are discarded so he can have "a continuation" of power.

This isn't just Trumpian bluster. Trump previously held up Postal Service funding, saying plainly he did it to hamper voting. He has said he wants to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death before the election in case the results end up before the court. The Atlantic reported last week that if Joe Biden wins in key Republican-held battleground states, Trump's campaign is considering a strategy of getting those GOP statehouses to bypass the voters and seat Republican electors.

None of this should be surprising after four years of a narcissistic president who demonstrates almost weekly that he cares not one whit about democracy, the Constitution or America itself. But Trump's brazenness now in basically scheduling a constitutional crisis (pencil in Nov. 3) has rattled even the sycophants of the GOP Senate, who issued a series of rare if milquetoast statements pushing back and vowing a peaceful transition. The entire Senate passed a resolution to that effect, without objection, on Thursday.

But resolutions aren't going to stop a lawless president who trumpets in advance his intention to keep power no matter what the voters say. Just this once, Americans should take Trump at his word — and turn him out of office with such overwhelming numbers that his inevitable resistance to leaving will be rendered pathetic rather than dangerous.

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