Trump’s Election Trutherism
- OPINION By LEN GELLER–
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, various conspiracy theories arose challenging the official government account that the twin towers of the World Trade Center were brought down by planes hijacked by al-Qaeda. Some suggested that the government had foreknowledge of the attacks but did nothing to prevent them or made sure that the hijacked flights were not intercepted by U.S. defenses. Some claimed that dark elements within the U.S. government itself actually planned and carried out the attacks. Others claimed that explosives planted inside the towers (Controlled Demolition Theory) brought them down. Other conspiracy theories also challenged the official accounts of the Pentagon attack and the Flight 93 crash. All of these theories have come to be known as part of the 9/11 Truth Movement, and those advancing the theories as 9/11 Truthers.
Fast forward to December 2020, and we are witnessing another truther conspiracy theory, this time being advanced by the outgoing President of the United States with the support of the right-wing media and his minions on social media. The central allegation of this new truther theory is that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election by millions of votes, but the election was stolen from him by means of a nefarious plot involving the Democratic Party in possible cahoots with Venezuelan and Chinese communists and even certain Republican officials. Sound crazy? Well, it is, but this truther conspiracy theory is different. Its purpose has nothing to do with truth and evidence but instead has one single overriding aim: to advance the political aims of Trump and his followers. To put it bluntly, it’s a political weapon in the service of power. In what follows, “election trutherism” refers not only to this deranged conspiracy theory but also to the larger power play of which it is an essential tool.
Diving deeper into the election truther conspiracy theory, the first thing to notice is that this is a strategy months in the making when the Trump White House began to see steady poll numbers showing that he might lose his re-election bid. Of all the Democratic candidates vying for the nomnation, Trump feared Joe Biden the most, and this was confirmed by his attempt to bribe the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden, hoping to smear his father, a bribery scheme for which he was eventually impeached. For months prior to the election, Trump claimed repeatedly that if he did not win, the election had to be rigged, since there was no way he could lose to an old man like Biden suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. Throughout this period, Trump and his supporters on right-wing news networks and social media tried to portray Biden as mentally challenged with one foot in the grave. But this gaslighting fell flat on its face when Biden won the Democratic primary, appeared perfectly lucid, coherent, and rational in all his public appearances (despite some gaffes), and ended up trouncing Trump in the first debate, as Trump made a fool of himself with constant interruptions and incoherent rants. While a portion of Trump’s base may have been hoodwinked by this gaslighting, most Americans were not.
How are we to understand Trump’s pre-election prediction of a rigged election if he were to lose? Did Trump have a precognitive ability to know the future? Of course not. Trump’s pre-election statements about a possible rigged election were not meant to be truth claims at all, since he certainly had no evidence to back them up, but a message to his base that he would contest a lost election no matter what. And that’s exactly what he has done, despite the fact that he lost 306-232 in the Electoral College, by over seven million votes in the popular vote, and five key states that he won in 2016. What this shows is that Trump’s allegations of a stolen election are not concerned at all with truth and evidence but with trying to delegitimize the incoming Biden administration and stay politically relevant by retaining power over his base, the right-wing media, and the GOP. From Trump’s win-at-all-cost point of view, he had nothing to lose by contesting the election, regardless of how fair it was and by how much he lost. Not only would his base not perceive him as a loser, but he would remain politically relevant, continue to control the news cycle until he leaves the White House, and possibly overturn the election if state legislatures and the courts went along with his attempts to undermine the law.
The downside of this strategy for us but not for him is that contesting a free and fair election and never conceding defeat will further divide the nation, undermine the legitimacy of our democratic election system, and encourage political violence among those supporters who don’t understand the grift but are true believers in the conspiracy. That’s the problem with false and deceitful conspiracy theories: there are always some poor souls who not only believe the false claims but feel it is their patriotic duty to act on them. Remember Edgar Maddison Welch, the guy who fell for the Pizzagate conspiracy hoax and shot up Comet Ping Pong in Washington D.C. with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in order to break up an alleged pedophilia ring and rescue its fake victims? Well, it can certainly happen again, especially if a true believer feels the election has been stolen and his or her country is under attack.
If pushing a stolen election conspiracy theory isn’t bad enough, some truthers are also calling for violence against specific individuals, the imposition of martial law, and the suspension of the constitution to overturn a free and fair election. Cases in point include: Joe diGenova, an attorney for Trump’s campaign, who says that Chris Krebs, former head of cybersecurity under Trump, “should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot” after Krebs publicly denied any widespread election fraud; Sidney Powell, former member of Trump’s legal team, who retweets a call by “We the People” for the use of the Insurrection Act to suspend the December Electoral College vote in Congress and set up military tribunals to resolve the election dispute; newly pardoned Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, who endorses a manifesto urging Trump to declare martial law and suspend the constitution and civilian control of federal elections in order to have the military oversee a national revote; and an armed crowd that shows up at the home of Michigan’s Secretary of State threatening violence while she is inside with her child. Moreover, Donald Trump and his minions are trying to pressure state officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona to refuse to certify the election results, and if that doesn’t work, to overthrow the duly certified results by appointing new sets of electors who would vote for Trump in the Electoral College. I’m not a legal expert, but all of these partisan efforts to undermine the constitution and violate state and federal law to overthrow a free and fair election look like sedition to me. These truthers may be crackpots, but they’re dangerous crackpots.
It’s impossible in this short article to consider the dozens if not hundreds of false allegations of election fraud voiced by Trump and his truther brigade on right-wing news outlets and social media. Suffice it to say that where the rubber meets the road and the Trump legal teams are called upon in court to provide evidence of fraud, they have come up empty. According to the Associated Press, as of December 4, fifty post-election lawsuits claiming election fraud have been filed by the truthers, and thirty have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn, while twelve are active and pending. Except for one insignificant Trump victory in Pennsylvania, none of the lawsuits filed in the six key states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have been successful, and all six have certified the Biden victory. All of the major election officials in these states, Republicans and Democrats alike, have confirmed the absence of any election fraud, and in the two states where there was a recount (Wisconsin and Georgia), the difference was only a handful of votes, hardly enough to change the outcome. Moreover, Attorney General William Barr, head of the Justice Department and a Trump loyalist, has said explicitly that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud.
And finally, the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected a Texas lawsuit asking the Court to overturn the election results and disenfranchise millions of voters in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In that same week, the Court also threw out a lawsuit by Pennsylvania Republicans to do the same to millions of voters in that state. Unless all of these officials are also part of the conspiracy, which is clearly absurd, what more evidence does one need to put election denialism to rest?
Despite losing the election, Trump and this conspiracy theory are not going away. As he leaves office, he will still be in control of the GOP and the right-wing media because he still has a very loyal if not cult-like following among his base, and it’s very likely that going forward, he will use election denialism as a loyalty test for GOP candidates and office holders. Trump’s base does not see him as a pathetic sore loser who is trying to hijack the election, but as a courageous victim fighting back against the dark forces of a deep state bent on stealing their country. It’s also very likely that the right-wing news media will continue to act as propaganda vehicles for Trump and election trutherism, where there is already fierce competition for the millions of viewers eager to consume this fake news.
The problem is not just Donald Trump or the right-wing propaganda machine but the millions of Trump supporters who have become election truthers. Of these, I suspect that only a fraction are true believers (but even 20% of 70 million is still a whopping 14 million people), but that’s all you need to fundraise millions of dollars to support dozens of bogus election legal challenges, future legal defenses against lawsuits and criminal charges, and an ongoing campaign for the presidency in 2024. Only one month out from the election, Trump has received $207 million from his supporters by using the stolen election conspiracy theory as bait, only 25% of which has gone for legal expenses to overturn the election. By early January, it may be around $300 million, most of which will probably go to “Save America,” Trump’s new political action committee.
As for the rest of the truthers, some are cynical nonbelievers who don’t want to cross Donald Trump because it’s either political suicide or advantageous to their careers, but I suspect many have gone along with the ruse not out of conviction or careerism but as a badge of loyalty to a movement and cause they believe in. Barring unforeseen events like death or imprisonment, it is still very likely that once Trump is out of office, much of MAGA world, true believers and nonbelievers alike, will remain loyal to their leader as he launches a vendetta tour against Republican officials and Supreme Court justices who refused to help him overturn the election, plays the victim card to the hilt as he deals with civil lawsuits and criminal charges, and revs up his followers with a politics of grievance that will fester for years. Election trutherism will be used as a Republican loyalty test, and the assault on truth will continue unabated. And if that’s not enough to divide our country, expect the anti-vaxxer movement and its debunked theories to join the conspiracy train in 2021. But that’s another story.