Debunking Trump’s Big Lie: Part 1
Donald Trump’s Big Lie About the 2020 Election, What it means for 2026, and Why We Should Study His Long History of Election Denialism.
This will be a looooong post that cobbles together several disparate topics that will help you understand WHY it is necessary to debunk Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and WHY it is necessary to convince as many people as possible that Trump and the Republicans have been lying to them. You will find very little actual debunking in this post. If you are only interested in a good debunking, then you can skip most of this post and start reading the next post. I will, however, ask you to read the short summary of this post, scan this post’s Table of Contents, and read the section the Trump Denialism Three-Step.
Short Summary of this Post
Healthy democracies can only thrive if the people believe their elections are free and fair. Undermining confidence in the election system weakens democracies and can lead to political violence. It sows mistrust and instability and ripens the ground for takeover by an authoritarian leader, just as weakening the immune system ripens the body for takeover by disease. The United States has a 220-year-old-tradition of peaceful transitions between old and new presidential administrations. Donald Trump broke that tradition after the 2020 election and has poisoned millions of people with skepticism, if not downright election denialism.
Donald Trump’s election denialism started before the 2020 election, and he will use that denialism as the basis to try to sabotage the midterms and illegally help Republicans maintain control of Congress. The Trump Administration has given us at least 11 reasons to doubt that they will play fair, and he will likely use ICE officers or members of a private army of loyalists to intimidate minority voters under the guise of enforcing election security. At the very least, Trump is using his claims about election rigging to severely limit the use of vote-by-mail and to pass legislation like the SAVE AMERICA Act that would disenfranchise tens, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans.
Trump is also using the guise of enforcing election laws to try to build a database of citizens eligible to vote. He is trying to get this data by hook or by crook, even though the Constitution gives the president no role in running elections, and this information only rightfully belong to the states. Why does he need this data? I can’t say for sure, but given the Trump Justice Department’s record of abuses, we there is reason to suspect they will be up to no good.
The best way to inoculate ourselves against the poison of Trump’s election denialism is to learn about his history of his denialism—a history that is longer than most people realize. And studying his many claims of election fraud related to the 2020 election will help us inoculate ourselves when he cries election fraud in 2026 and beyond.
Table of Contents
Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Denial Breaks a 220-Year-Old Tradition.
Trump’s 2020 Election Denialism Started Before Election Day.
Trump’s 2020 Election Denialism Wasn’t a One-Off. They Plan to Repeat It.
How Will Trump and Friends Try to Steal the Midterms for Republicans?
On Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, Memory Holes, and Slush Funds
The Trump Administration Is Desperate to Get Its Hands on Voter Data.
Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Denial Breaks a 220-Year-Old Tradition.
I guess it was too good to last. The United States was the envy of the world with a history of peaceful presidential transfers of power lasting 220 years. No candidate ever likes losing, but we have had a long string of losing presidential candidates who have accepted defeat with dignity for the good of the nation.1 Sure, some demanded recounts when the elections were close. And George Bush and Al Gore even fought it out in the Supreme Court in an election where less than 600 votes separated the two candidates in the deciding state of Florida. Gore graciously conceded when the Court ruled in favor of Bush, saying:
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
The tradition of losers respecting the outcome of elections died immediately after the 2020 election when Trump and his supporters rolled out claim after claim “proving” that Democrats had stolen the election from Trump. These claims ran the gamut from armies of zombies rising from the dead to vote for Biden, to Italian satellites being used to switch votes from Trump to Biden, to Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Machines flipping votes from Biden to Trump with vote-flipping software that was used by Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro to steal elections in Venezuela. It did not matter how wild the conspiracy theory was—Trump latched onto it like Gollum latching on to his Precious. And he is still obsessing about his election loss, as is evidenced by this post on Truth Social.
Reuters reported in May that Donald Trump had claimed 107 times in the previous six months that the 2020 election was stolen. And an April poll by Reuters shows that 82% of Republicans believe that non-citizens cast a large number of fraudulent ballots and that 63% of Republicans believe Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him
Trump’s 2020 Election Denialism Started Before Election Day.
If you think Trump’s election denialism started after the 2020 election, then think again. Former White House advisor Steve Bannon was caught on a leaked audio from October 31, 2020 revealing that seeds for Trump’s election denialism were planted before the election. Political analysts had predicted before the election that votes counted early on election night would favor Trump, and votes counted later would favor Biden because Biden voters tended to vote by mail whereas Trump voters voted in person at the polls, and the mail-in votes for several states would be counted only after the in-person votes had been tallied. This, they predicted, would create a red mirage in which Trump would look like he was winning early election night, but Biden would narrow the lead and possibly surpass him later in the night and into the next day as the final votes were counted.
Here is the audio of Bannon revealing Trump’s plan to steal the election by pronouncing himself the winner before all the Biden-heavy votes were counted.
And sure enough, Trump didn’t even wait a full hour after polls closed in Alaska at 12:00 am Eastern time before claiming that the Democrats were trying to steal the election from him.
Trump declared himself the winner of the election shortly after 2 am on November 4. —before the votes in Arizona, Maine, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada were announced. Biden was not declared the winner until November 7.
Trump’s 2020 Election Denialism Wasn’t a One-Off. They Plan to Repeat It.
The 2020 election wasn’t a one-off. Trump and friends are going to do everything they can to subvert the midterm elections because the stakes are so high. The Democrats are likely to win the House, and they might win the Senate in the 2026 elections—if the elections are fair and all the votes are counted. If the Democrats take control of the House, it will mean countless investigations into the Trump regime’s corruption and the impeachment of numerous members of his Administration. And it will mean the near-certain impeachment of Trump himself. And if they take control of the Senate, then both chambers of Congress will conduct hearings, and Senate Democrats will have the power to block Trump from appointing judges and high-level administration officials they deem unqualified.
Trump and his allies have already indicated that they will try to help steal midterm elections for congressional Republicans. Trump has “joked” about cancelling the 2026 election, but this is a joke that reveals what he would genuinely like to do if he had the power to do it. Trump also went on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast in February and said:
The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.
Fortunately, the Constitution does not give the President any role in running the elections. Instead, the Constitution leaves it up to the states to run elections while giving Congress the power to override or change state election laws.
Of course, Trump and friends aren’t going to let this get in their way of trying to subvert the elections in order to help Republicans maintain control of Congress. They are going to try to interfere with the elections under the guise of the president’s authority to enforce the law.
How Will Trump and Friends Try to Steal the Midterms for Republicans.
And just like he did right before the 2020 election, Steve Bannon gave the game away for 2026 by calling for Trump to militarize the election in a way that is calculated to suppress turnout in minority communities.
We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.
Using ICE to scare minority voters away from the polls is but one prong of their attack to disenfranchise voters. This step alone would not have much impact if voters who might be intimidated by ICE’s presence could send in their votes by mail. It shouldn’t be surprising then to learn that Trump is obsessed with getting rid of vote-by-mail. As you will see in this post, Trump claims that states are merely agents of the federal government, and they must do what the president tells them to do. This is not just wrong; it is the ravings of a would-be dictator who hates the restraints put on him by the Constitution.
You would think from listening to Trump speak or reading his posts that mail-in voting was especially susceptible to fraud. However, a Brookings Institute study of U.S. general elections between 2016 and 2022 found that just 0.000043% of mail-in votes were fraudulent.
On Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, Memory Holes, and Slush Funds
I admit it. This section may seem a little out of place in a discussion about stealing elections, but please bear with me. I’ll reveal why I am discussing the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers shortly.
Donald Trump has given a full pardon to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, but he has only commuted the sentences of the rest of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. His commutations freed them from prison, but their felony records remained on the books. However, Trump’s Justice Department did something unusual on April 15—it asked a federal appeals court to throw out the seditious conspiracy convictions of the rest of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. In addition, the Justice Department has scrubbed its website of news releases announcing the convictions of most of the January 6ers, including news releases announcing seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. (Fortunately, Aaron Parnas has made backup copies of some of those files.) The Trump Administration is trying to rewrite history by flushing their doubleplusungood behavior down an Orwellian memory hole.
But it gets worse. Much worse. Charles Littlejohn, a contractor for the IRS, leaked Donald Trump’s tax returns and the tax returns of over 400,000 other taxpayers to ProPublica and the New York Times between 2018 and 2020. Trump used that leak as the basis for a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. There was just one problem with his lawsuit—the judge presiding over the lawsuit started asking uncomfortable questions, indicating that she was aware that the lawsuit was a sham and that she was likely to soon dismiss it. So Trump pulled a switcheroo and announced that he and the Justice Department (which he controls) agreed to settle his claim out of court by establishing a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” which would be used to compensate anyone who claimed that they were unfairly investigated or prosecuted by the Biden Justice Department. In other words, Trump is trying to enrich the roughly 1600 January 6th rioters at taxpayer expense—and acting Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche has refused to rule out enriching even the thugs who had beaten police officers to within an inch of their lives. (See this memo for the terms of the anti-weaponization fund.)
Well, that is the Reader’s Digest explanation of Trump’s slush fund for criminals. I might write about it in more detail in a future column. In the meantime, I highly recommend this video by Anna Bower, a senior editor for Lawfare, for a more complete explanation.
So this raises the question Why is Trump doing this? And why now? Why is it so important to him to clear the names of the seditious conspirator Oath Keepers, and why does he want to make them, the Proud Boys, and other January 6ers rich with taxpayer dollars?
Officer Daniel Hodges has the answer. You probably remember Officer Hodges. He’s the one who is screaming in the first half minute of the following video as January 6ers crush him in a doorway.
Now, watch Chris Hayes interview Officer Hodges in the following video. Officer Hodges nails it when he says:
I don’t want to see these people to be rewarded for their crimes. And if they are rewarded then it would just encourage them to commit more violence. . . . Trump has pardoned them and made it clear that he has their backs, no matter what they do. . . . So it seems like we are just setting ourselves up for more further terrible political violence if these payments actually go through.
There are several lawsuits, including a lawsuit by Officer Hodges and Officer Harry Dunn, against the anti-weaponization slush fund. There is also a bill before the House to kill the fund. And most importantly, 35 former federal judges wrote a letter to Judge Kathleen Williams, the judge from the Southern District of Florida who had dismissed Trump’s original lawsuit against the IRS after Trump and the Justice Department announced that they were settling the case out of court by establishing the slush fund. The 35 former judges asked Judge Williams to set aside the settlement and investigate whether Trump had perpetrated a fraud on the court. Judge Williams responded to their letter on May 29 by issuing an order that demanded Trump’s attorney’s file a response proving that the initial lawsuit wasn’t frivolous and fraudulent. And Judge Leonie Brinkema from the Eastern District of Virginia issued an order the same day that temporarily halted funds from being deposited into or dispersed out of the slush fund. The Justice Department responded to this one-two punch by announcing that it would comply with the temporary halt.
This announcement did not seem to faze former Proud Boy leader, Enrique Tarrio.
Tarrio also retweeted the following tweet.
It seems that Tarrio isn’t the only Proud Boy who thinks he’s about to get rich. He retweeted this tweet from Ethan Nordean, one of the Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
However, the pushback against the slush fund was so fierce that Todd Blanche testified before the House the next day that “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period.”
You might be breathing a sigh of relief at this point thinking that the fund is dead. But is it really dead? Or is it, in the words of Miracle Max of the Princess Bride, mostly dead?
Despite Blanche’s statement, Tarrio thought the fund was only mostly dead and that it could either be revived one day in one form or another or that Trump would find another way to shovel over a billion taxpayer dollars into the pockets of January 6ers and other Trump allies.
And finally, Tarrio told us HOW Trump and the January 6ers would try to get around this slush fund roadblock when he retweeted a post by Anarc-y Princess.
Let’s expand Anarc-y princess’s tweet and see Tarrio’s response to it.
It seems that Tarrio’s optimism that Donald Trump is going to find a way to shovel money into his pockets is justified. Sarah Fitzpatrick reports in The Atlantic that Donald Trump still wants to implement the slush fund or something like it, but Team Trump is keeping a low profile on the issue until after the Senate confirms Todd Blanche as Attorney General.
Behind the scenes, Justice Department and other Trump-administration officials have quietly assured allies that plans for some form of payout remain on track. I spoke with eight people familiar with the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund—including current and former Justice Department officials, current and former members of Congress, a defense attorney, and political operatives close to the administration. All said that Justice Department officials and people close to the White House have indicated that the payout idea has not actually been scrapped. Rather, they say, officials are exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated while also examining alternative arrangements to make sure loyalists get compensated. Across the administration, and even within the Justice Department, officials have differing perspectives on whether the fund itself will ultimately be restored. But either way, officials see a path forward for the government to pay those who say they are victims of supposed government “weaponization.”
So there you have it. Trump is buying the undying loyalty of his own personal army of insurrectionists with taxpayer funds. Even if courts block this new scheme to enrich the January 6ers, Trump’s EFFORT to enrich them sends a message—”I’ve got your back.” And they will also receive the implied message, “I may call on you one day to do me a favor—and if you don’t look after me, I will stop looking after you.
And what might Trump do with his own personal army? My GUESS is that he is going to try to use them as backup to disrupt the midterm election if he cannot get enough ICE agents to do the job. Let’s hope they are smart enough to realize that though Trump can pardon them for federal crimes, he cannot pardon them for any state crimes they commit.
The Trump Administration Is Desperate to Get Its Hands on Voter Data.
Trump and his supporters have at least three other closely related tricks up their sleeves to subvert the midterms. The first involves passage of the SAVE America Act. This Act would, among other things, require states to hand over voter rolls to the federal government. The federal government will then run these voter rolls through its own database to kick those who aren’t citizens off the rolls. This seems like a good idea at first glance. Unfortunately, the government’s system is not ready for prime time and has had up to 14% (or more) error rate. Citizens who are eligible to vote will be disenfranchised because the government’s database has mistakenly categorized them as non-citizens. Worse yet, hundreds of thousands of American citizens could be disenfranchised because they would be required to pay what is essentially an unconstitutional poll tax to get the ID required by the Act. I discuss this in more detail here. [As of this writing, it looks like the Save America Act is effectively dead—at least for now.]
The second trick involves an FBI raid and confiscation of ballots, voter rolls, tabulator tapes and other election materials from the 2020 Fulton County, Georgia election based on a search warrant that was built on debunked claims from shady election deniers.2 The Trump Administration has also seized 2020 election materials from Maricopa County, Arizona.3
The third trick involves a rule proposed by the United States Postal Service that would prevent the USPS from sending ballots to states that do not send the Postal Service their voting lists. The USPS is part of the executive branch, and its Board of Governors is likely to be pressured by Trump to send copies of these lists to the Justice Department. And once the lists are in the hands of the Justice Department, there is every reason to believe the Administration will abuse them to either try to interfere with the election or to make bogus claims after the election that Democrats had stolen elections from Republicans running for Congress. I will provide 11 reasons distrust Trump and his Justice Department in the next section.
Update: July 2, 2026: Two federal district court decisions written after I wrote this article seem to have killed the Trump Administration’s ability to assemble a federal list of eligible voters and its ability to use the Postal System to force states to give up their voter rolls.4 This IS LIKELY to render some of the following discussion irrelevant. However, there is a small possibility that their rulings could be overturned on appeal, so continued vigilance is appropriate.
Why is Trump so desperate to get this voter data? Trump claims that he wants this data to catch noncitizens who have voted illegally and to help states purge their voter rolls of illegal voters. If this is what Trump really wants the data for, then he is making a big fuss over a nearly non-existent problem. Studies have shown again and again that voting by noncitizens in federal elections is exceedingly rare.
But never mind that. Trump insists he wants the data to prevent non-citizens from voting and he has signed an executive order mandating the federal government to compile lists of U.S. citizens who are over 18 for each state. The federal government will then mail a copy of each state’s list to the chief election official responsible for that state’s election. Though the federal government has no legal authority to compel state election officials to use the citizenship lists that they are sent by the federal government to remove noncitizens from those registered to vote, state officials will be under tremendous pressure to do just that. The Executive Order states:
The Attorney General shall prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials or any others involved in the administration of Federal elections who issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election . . . the Attorney General shall prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of individuals and public or private entities engaged in, or aiding and abetting, the printing, production, shipment, or distribution of ballots to individuals who are not eligible to vote in a Federal election.
If even one noncitizen slips through the system and votes, state election officials can expect the Justice Department to open a Grand Inquisition against them. And the first question their inquisitors will ask is, “Did you use the citizenship list the federal government sent you to prevent non-citizens from voting?” And if the answer to that question is “No”, then they will have fight like hell against the feds to stay out of prison.
This Executive Order is being challenged in court because several of the its provisions appear to be unconstitutional, and the part requiring the compilation of citizenship lists by the federal government appears to violate the federal Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a.
Trump Claims He Wants Voter Data to Prevent Non-citizens From Voting. Is That the Only Reason Why He Wants It? Should We Trust the Administration Not to Abuse This Data?
Let’s put aside the question of whether Trump’s Executive Order will survive court challenges and ask the really important question. Is preventing noncitizens from voting the only reason why he wants this data? Is this the real reason why he wants it? Or does he want it for hidden and possibly nefarious reasons? I can think of three other reasons why he would want this data. The first reason is certain and relatively benign. The second reason is likely, and the third and fourth reasons are somewhat speculative. All three of the latter reasons are exceedingly nefarious.
The first, and relatively benign reason involves Donald Trump’s obsession. Trump is OBSESSED by the 2020 election. It has been more than five years and he is still posting and reposting claims that the election was rigged against him. He has even said that those who stole the 2020 elections will soon be prosecuted. I would not be surprised if he addresses the nation from the Oval Office to announce that
We have recounted all the ballots, and they prove once again that Trump was right—as he is right about everything else. The treasonous Dumbocrats stole the election from me—they stole it from YOU. And now it is time to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
And what evidence will he present to prove the ballots were correctly counted this time? So far, there is no reason to believe his evidence will amount to anything more than “Trust me, bro.” The Administration wants us to trust them despite the fact that:
The Georgia ballots have been through a risk limiting audit and one full hand-recount with Biden winning both.
Trump made over 30,000 false or misleading statements, some of them pants-on-fire lies, during his first term.
Stephen Miller called Alex Pretti a “would-be assassin” and Kristi Noem called him a domestic terrorist. Clearly, Trump does not consider a compulsion to tell the truth to the American people as a requirement for hiring high-level officials.
The Trump Justice Department investigated Renee Good’s widow and blocked an investigation by Minneapolis police into Good’s death, thus proving that the Justice Department is acting in bad faith against Trump’s opponents.
Donald Trump accidentally posted a message to Pam Bondi that he meant to send privately asking her to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.
The Justice Department has gutted its Public Integrity Section. This section was set up to ensure that corruption cases against public officials were based on law and not on political motivation.
The Justice Department has indeed been used to improperly go after Trump’s critics and enemies, including six members of Congress who made a video telling members of the military not to obey illegal orders, New York State Attorney General Tish James, former FBI Director James Comey, and many others. Actually, the Justice Department indicted Comey a second time, and the second indictment looks especially suspect.
Former federal prosecutor, Joyce Vance, compared the way Trump’s Justice Department has helped his allies and targeted his opponents and concluded:
This isn’t about one case or a handful of defendants. It’s about whether the rule of law still has meaning, whether Trump will succeed in eroding it into yet another political tool; applying it differently to people depending on who they are—and whose side they’re on. When a president can make convictions disappear for his allies while leaning on prosecutors to go after his critics, the damage isn’t just theoretical, it’s already happening in front of our eyes.
Six activists were indicted last October for felony conspiracy charges for blocking an ICE vehicle outside the Broadview, Illinois ICE facility. However, the U.S. Attorney for Chicago, Andrew Boutros, unexpectedly dropped the charges in May after Judge April Perry looked at the unredacted transcript of the grand jury proceeding. To say that she was shocked by the prosecutorial misconduct would be an understatement. A prosecutor had conversations with two jurors about the case outside the courtroom. That’s a Bozo no-no. But the prosecutor did something even worse. She dismissed grand jurors who thought the case was “crock of shit.” That defeats the whole point of a grand jury. The grand jury is a safeguard to prevent the government from indicting someone unless it shows it has probable cause to believe the person being investigated has committed a felony. A grand jury protects people from malicious prosecutors putting their targets through the ringer of having to defend themselves from frivolous prosecutions. Prosecutors are not allowed to dismiss grand jurors simply for showing skepticism about their case. If they could do that, then they could dismiss juror after juror and replace them with alternate jurors until they got a grand jury that would rubber stamp an indictment. Judge Perry was so outraged by the prosecutorial misconduct that she said, “I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”
I have presented a somewhat simplified summary of this case. Watch this video by attorney Liz Dye for a more detailed explanation.
The prosecutors vigorously deny that their misconduct was motivated by political considerations. They called suspicions that they were playing dirty to screw Trump’s enemies “reckless”. And maybe they are telling the truth. But it sure looks like that is what they were doing to me. By itself, this case may mean nothing. However, it raises the question of whether the indictment against former FBI Director James Comey for posting seashells spelling out 8647 was also obtained by improperly manipulating the grand jury.
Trump caught a lot of flak after he posted an image of himself as Jesus Christ on Truth Social—so much flak that he took the image down and said that he thought it made him look like a doctor. We’ve reached the point where Trump isn’t even trying to make his lies look believable.
In her under-oath testimony before Congress about the Epstein files, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that:
There is NO evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. Everyone knows that. This has been THE most transparent presidency. HE’S the one that asked that those files be released.
Yet, Marjorie Taylor Greene says that Trump told her that he didn’t want the Epstein files released BECAUSE IT COULD HURT HIS FRIENDS!
So much for Trump being the most transparent president in history.
Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would start no new wars. We now know how that is going in Iran. And we might go to war with Cuba.
So, SUUUUUURE. Donald Trump and his lackeys have earned our trust. We should put our brains in cold storage and believe Trump and his underlings when they suddenly proclaim, “EUREKA! WE HAVE FOUND PROOF! WE RECOUNTED THE VOTES AND TRUMP REALLY DID WIN THE 2020 ELECTION.” Or, as the Brennan Center For Justice states, “The public should approach such reports [of Trump winning the 2020 election] with extreme skepticism.”
Trump stroking his ego by proclaiming that the voter data proves he won the election is relatively benign. However, it will quickly become nefarious if he misuses the data to maliciously prosecute his Democratic enemies for stealing the 2020 election from him. And it looks like he is planning to do just that. FBI Director Kash Patel said in April that arrests for 2020 election fraud are coming, and they are coming soon.
Two Ways the Trump Administration Could Use Voter Data to Steal the 2026 Election for the Republicans
Is there anything else the Trump Administration could do with this data? Anything really sinister and dirty and highly illegal? I’m not saying they will do something illegal, but remember—this Administration has played fast and loose with the law, and they have many secrets they want to hide from the inevitable inquiries that will occur if Democrats take control of Congress. They do not want their corruption, much less their potentially illegal activities exposed. They certainly have a motive to pull out every dirty trick in the book. So what is the worst thing they could do with this data?
I can think of two other ways the Trump Administration could use this data to steal the election—but I’m not going to tell you what they are. There is a chance—a small chance—that someone close to the Trump Administration might read this column and convince someone on Team Trump to put my ideas into action. I’m not going to publish my ideas here because I don’t want to take the chance of giving them any new ideas. Of course, there is a good chance that they are already thinking along the lines that I am—in which case measures need to be taken to stop them if possible. So here is what I’m going to do. I’m going to write my ideas down and send them privately to people who need to know and who might be in a position to take preventative measures. And as far as everyone else—how can I convince you that I really do see a way that Trump could abuse the data to steal the elections?
All I can say is TRUST ME, Bro!
And here is where you can fall out of your chair laughing at me for saying, “TRUST ME, Bro.” Hell, you’ve read this far. You’ve earned that right. I only ask that you do not use my “Trust me, Bro” trick as an excuse to avoid reading the rest of the articles in this series. I will not be pulling it again.
The Trump Denialism Three-Step.
Trump’s election denialism has followed a three-step process.
Prepare the ground ahead of time. Start by complaining months in advance that your opponents will rig the election. Complain that the only way they will win is by cheating. Make up stuff if you have to, and exploit the narrative for your advantage. For example, whine and whine and whine that there will be more noncitizens voting than locusts in a Biblical plague. It doesn’t matter that there is not a scintilla of evidence of mass voter fraud. The key is to get your message out over and over and over again and let the right-wing echo chamber amplify your claim a thousand-fold. And of course, emphasize that THEY will all be voting for your opponent. If you tell your lie often enough and if it is echoed by enough of your allies, some people will believe it.
This first step helps Trump achieve two important goals. First, by telling his base before the election that his opponent will cheat against him, he is preparing them to accept the message that he will tell them after the election. If he wins, he gets to say his victory was even bigger than it appeared because he won despite the cheaters. And if he loses, it was because he was the victim of cheaters. They stole the election from him. And then he will add his killer line, “They didn’t just steal the election from me. They stole the election from YOU, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.!”
And that brings us to Trump’s second goal. Trump HATES to lose, and he HATES to admit that he had lost. His niece, Mary Trump, who earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Adelphi University, says that he is psychologically incapable of admitting to being a loser. Trump avoids the psychological pain of admitting defeat by telling his base ahead of time that his opponent will cheat. Then, when he loses, the loss wasn’t HIS fault. He ran his campaign perfectly. He was the perfect candidate. But even a perfect candidate can’t win against the dirty cheaters.
Use the time before the election to pull out every dirty trick in the book to win the election. Use the lies that you spread in step 1 as justification for your actions. If you think preventing mail-in voting will help your campaign, then say you must limit mail-in voting to stop the illegals. If you think passing the SAVE America act will disenfranchise more of your opponent’s voters than your voters, push for the SAVE America Act. Threaten to station ICE officers at polling places to discourage Hispanic voters from showing up. Gage how much push-back you will receive by floating a trial balloon about cancelling the election. When you get too much push-back, say it was all a joke.
Bask in glory if you win the election. Make excuses if you lose. Then contest the hell out of the result by nearly any means necessary. Trump’s refusal to concede the election led to the events of January 6. What might his refusal look like in 2026/2027? Trump thought about having the National Guard seize voting machines after the 2020 election to prove that he really had won, but he ultimately rejected that idea. He later said that he regretted that decision, and his seizure of voting materials from Georgia and Arizona shows that he will try to get away with it in close elections that have been lost by Republicans in 2026.
Why Look Backward? Why Study the Past?
Donald Trump has spent the last five years doing everything he could to undermine confidence in our election system. Confidence in our election system is essential for a healthy democracy. Millions of people still believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, despite the overwhelming evidence that Joe Biden really won the election. Those who believe that the Democrats stole the 2020 election will be predisposed to believe Republicans when they tell them that the Democrats have stolen the elections in 2026. Millions of people believing a lie are easily manipulated. They were manipulated in early 2021 to storm the Capitol, and they can be manipulated again to do dangerous things—IF we don’t kill the Big Lie.
And that is what I have set out to do. I have gathered evidence from many different sources to prove in many different ways, that Trump lost the 2020 election, and he knew it. He not only knew it, he had plans in the works before the election to steal the election from Biden if Biden had won. Had the January 6 rioters known the evidence that I will present in this six-post series, there would not have been a January 6 riot. That is why I will present 25 pieces of evidence which, taken together, provides overwhelming proof that Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. I will present that evidence in part 5 of this 6-part series. Parts 3 and 4 provide a detailed analysis of two of the pieces of evidence that I will present in part 5. And part 6 explores why people still believe Trump’s Big Lie despite all the evidence against it.
But first we must explore some history. What most people don’t know is that the 2020 election was not Trump’s first bout with election denialism. Trump’s history of denialism may be one of the most criminally underreported stories of the last 20 years. Knowing this history might not be enough on its own to convince those who believe Trump’s Big Lie that Trump was lying about the 2020 election, but it should make them question Trump when he cries “RIGGED ELECTION” in 2026. It is one of the most important pieces of evidence, and the historical trail is longer and more detailed than you think. I will present that evidence in my next column.
Teaser: When did Trump first call his followers to D.C. to overturn the presidential election result? It’s earlier than you think. Way earlier.
Table of Contents For This Series
Part 2: Donald Trump’s History Of Crying “Rigged Election”
There was some sporadic violence in the aftermath of the 1876 election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes, and Hayes was secretly sworn in early in order to avoid further violence. However, this violence was not encouraged by either presidential candidate, and Tilden accepted his defeat with dignity.
You can read the affidavit that was the basis of the Georgia search warrant here. For background information about the dubious claims in the affidavit, read
New York Times: Georgia Ballot Inquiry Originated with Election Denier in Trump White House
Fulton County: What’s in the Warrant? by law professor and former federal prosecutor, Joyce Vance.
Democracy Docket: FBI’s Fulton County raid was based on reams of debunked 2020 fraud claims from election deniers, records show
ProPublica: The Conservative Researcher Being Linked to the FBI’s Seizure of Election Records in Georgia
On March 9, 2026, the FBI seized more than three dozen hard drives and servers containing data from the highly partisan Cyber Ninja audit of the 2020 Maricopa County, Arizona election. They could not seize paper ballots because the ballots had been destroyed after two years, as required by Arizona law. Pro Publica published an article explaining why claims arising from the sloppy data from this audit are likely to be unreliable.
Massachusetts District Court Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the Constitution authorized only the States and Congress to regulate voting requirements and that the President’s executive order was therefor unconstitutional. Washington D.C. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that the scheme to use the Postal Service to deny ballots to eligible voters violated a previously negotiated agreement between the Postal Service and the N.A.A.C.P. to ensure the timely delivery of election mail.