Trump leans into voter fraud playbook,
preparing to cry foul if he loses expected Biden
rematch
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While Trump generally refrains from claiming voter fraud in elections he wins, he spends plenty of time laying the groundwork to cry fraud should he lose an upcoming vote. He’s already been doing that with an eye toward November’s general election.
“They used COVID to cheat. And they did a lot of other things, too. We’re not going to let that happen,” Trump said of Democrats in his Tuesday night speech to supporters in New Hampshire. “You can never forget history, because if you forget, you never, you never recover from it. And you repeat.”
For months, Trump has been alleging that he could be the victim of fraud in November...the same sort of explosive, groundless allegations that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack ...and have continued to spark a wave of threats against election workers nationwide. Trump made similar allegations before the 2020 election, predicting for months there would be widespread fraud that November and contending he could only lose if the election was stolen from him.
“He’s doing it out in full view,” said David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and coauthor of “The Big Truth,” about Trump’s 2020 election lies. “If he is the Republican nominee, he has made clear that he’ll lie about an election that he’s lost.”
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His continued false claims about the 2020 election have resonated with Republican voters, a majority of whom believe Biden was not legitimately elected despite all evidence to the contrary. ...
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Iowa’s Republican caucuses illustrate Trump’s playbook. In 2016, he was narrowly defeated in the state by Sen. Ted Cruz and immediately — and without evidence — alleged that fraud was the reason. Last week, Trump won Iowa by a record margin and made no such allegations.
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[In his New Hampshire victory speech] Trump then claimed he won in 2020, perpetuating his falsehoods about that election. He also said he “won” in 2016, and it wasn’t clear whether he was repeating prior false claims about winning New Hampshire in that year’s general election, even though he lost it.
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On Tuesday, Trump also continued his use of explosive, sometimes authoritarian rhetoric about his rivals. He’s previously described Biden as the real threat to democracy because the Justice Department is prosecuting Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for illegally keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. In New Hampshire, Trump said Biden and his administration were “evil.”
“They are so bad at what they are doing and so evil, and they’re destroying our country,” Trump said.
If he loses in November, Trump told his supporters, “I think our country is finished.”
Steven Levitsky, a professor at Harvard and coauthor of “How Democracies Die,” said Trump’s refusal to admit defeat in elections combined with demonizing the other side is a textbook authoritarian tactic.
“When you convince your followers that your opponents represent an existential threat, you legitimize, you justify authoritarian measures,” Levitsky said. “And that’s what authoritarians do.”
