I'll wait.
Okay, if you've read it as I suggested, you know agents of the Russian government attempted (and probably succeeded) to influence the results of the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. You know that this interference took the form of "fake news", i.e. made-up stories about Trump's opponent, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as very real information "hacked" from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server. You know that the Trump campaign, while not actively coordinating with these efforts, was happy to accept the help and take full advantage of the information that was spread. You know that the campaign declined to notify the FBI when approached by Russian agents.
Donald Trump won that election, no doubt assisted by the disinformation about Clinton, but there is no evidence that the Russian interference took the form of changing vote totals, hacking voting machines, fake ballots or other election fraud. Many people thought Trump and his campaign benefitted from lies and was therefore an illegitimate president. But that was not an opinion that resulted in accusations that the votes themselves were in any way "rigged" or that the election results should be overturned. At worst, it was a comment on the gullibility, and stupidity of much of the American electorate.
Fast forward to the 2020 election. President Trump had redefined the term "fake news", which originally applied to stories that were fabricated to elicit a reaction or to smear a candidate, to mean all the mainstream media, or more narrowly, any news source that didn't support him wholeheartedly. He tarred mainstream media as "the enemy of the people". Months before the election he began claiming that it would be "rigged" against him (a claim that he made in the runup to the 2016 election as well) and alleged all that manner of voter fraud would occur. He lost. The vote totals were overwhelmingly against him, while the electoral vote totals were a mirror of his 2016 win. (Which he claimed was a landslide). Due to (1) Most states requiring that mail-in and early ballots not be counted until election day after the vote-in-person ballots were counted, and (2) The fact that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to vote early or vote by mail, Trump's early leads in some toss-up states began to disappear late into the night. There was no question that Trump lost the election. The electoral vote margin were not as decisive as total vote margin, but there was no question that Biden won and Trump lost.
Unlike most losers, who admit defeat when they lose, and gracefully give a concession speech and call to congratulate the winner, Trump refused to believe that he lost. Or at least said that he refused to believe that he lost. On election night he suggested to aides that he simply announce that he had won, even though votes were still being counted in close races. When it was clear that there was no path to victory, he began clogging the courts with challenges to the results, focusing on the so-called battleground states, but only those where he lost. Interestingly, while claiming publicly that there as "massive" election fraud on the part of the Democrats, and that he had actually won (not only won, but won by a landslide) none of his court cases alleged fraud, but claimed that large swaths of votes should be thrown out based on spurious challenges to the election laws of various states and their implementation by local election officials. Over 60 cases were brought and none were successful. (Trump supporters like to claim that these cases were dismissed due to lack of standing, when in fact it was only one or two that were dismissed for this reason - one was from the State of Texas, which was challenging the election laws of Pennsylvania and other "battleground" states. In most cases Trump or his allies did not present evidence, only "theories" about how fraud could have been perpetrated). He even made phone calls to at least one state election official, asking him to "find" enough votes to change the outcome. Trump's cult leader-like sway over many of his followers resulted in widespread belief in his accusations that the election was rigged against him, that he won, only to see it stolen from him. His allies in Congress hatched a plan to throw out inconvenient electoral votes and tried to persuade the Vice President to do the same. All this rhetoric culminated in a crowd of his supporters invading the Capitol and disrupting the largely ceremonial counting and certification of the electoral votes by Congress.
Trump never backed down on his claims that his "landslide win" was stolen from him and in polls, a majority of Republicans believe him. And in the Bizzaro World that MAGA Republicans inhabit, any attempt to hold Trump accountable for his crimes is called election interference. His civil trial for defamation, where he was held liable for defaming an accuser, was called election interference; the investigation into his hoarding and hiding government documents is called election interference; the possible indictment in Georgia for...election interfemale is called - you guessed it: election interference. Anyone who publicly points out any possible crimes or unethical actions by Trump is accused by his cult of election interference. Meanwhile, the Republicans in the House of Representatives, when they aren't holding our debt obligations hostage, hold hearing after hearing trying to smear President Biden with fantasies and imaginings attempting to smear him as the head of a vast "crime family". The Durham Report, which claims that the FBI didn't follow all the rules when investigating Trump, but emphatically did not suggest that any of the findings in the Mueller Report were wrong (or even addressed them) is now being held up as another faux-exoneration of Trump, with the Republicans calling for investigations and even arrests of people where there is no actual allegation of any crime. As if that mattered to the Republican Trump cult.
Throw enough shit against the wall and some of it will (hopefully) stick - that seems to be the plan.
The big concern is that with so many Republicans convinced that the election was stolen, how many of them will feel justified in stealing the next one? Most of the election deniers were defeated in last year's elections, but a few of them made it in. Kari Lake, who lost in her run for governor of Arizona, is pursuing serial legal challenges to her loss and styles herself the "rightful governor of Arizona" and claims to have won in a landslide, despite all evidence to the contrary. She has also suggested that in the next election her supporters flood the election offices with mail-in ballots, presumably fake ones, since she has consistently alleged that thousands of them in the previous election were fake. As close as a lot of these states are, it would take many instances of election results being overturned, or ballots thrown out, or any number of shady actions, for an election to be really stolen.
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