A consistent message from the Republican primaries is that most Republican voters don’t believe Joe Biden won the presidential election in 2020.
According to a CNN poll of Iowa Republican caucus participants, about 66% say they don’t believe Biden legitimately won the election over Donald Trump, and only 30% say they do. (Two-thirds of Iowa GOP caucusgoers don’t believe Biden won in 2020 from 15 January 2024)
In New Hampshire, about 80% of people who voted for Donald Trump deny that Joe Biden won in 2020. (New Hampshire exit poll by Ariel Edwards-Levy, 23 January 2024)
One of the most important things Democrats can do, and specifically the President Biden re-election campaign can do, is to stamp out this false belief. It is the driving force behind the MAGA movement and the core motivating factor for people to support Donald Trump’s election campaign.
It also fuels Republican fundraising efforts. (See The Con Man). According to the January 6 Select Committee, Donald Trump had raised over $250 million as of their public hearings in June 2022. “The Big Lie was also a big rip-off,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren said.
According to The Daily Beast, his election lies may have raised around a half-billion dollars. (Election Lies Help Trump and RNC Rake in Half a Billion, by Lachlan Mackay, 3 December 2020)
We need public efforts that specifically address this fraud. We need good presentations that show how we know that the official election results reflect the will of the people. We need to show the public how they are being deceived and defrauded to bilk them out of money to support Donald Trump’s campaign. And the campaigns of other Republicans.
We should use this as an attack to stop Republicans down ballot from winning elections. Finding out your candidate is lying to you to con you out of your money is demotivating.
There was actually an attempt by Rep. Liz Cheney to get Fox News to air a study of the election, showing that the election was not fraudulent and that Joe Biden actually won. In her book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, (c) 2023, she wrote (pp 144-145):
Trump’s lies about the election had led to the violent assault on the Capitol. People had died. His ongoing attacks against the integrity of our elections were undermining our democracy and could lead to still more violence. We had to find a way to defeat these fake stolen-election claims that had captured so much of the Republican Party…. The power and reach of Fox News, especially among conservative audiences, made it the obvious place to begin if we were going to refute Trump’s lies. I thought Fox management might now realize how dangerous Trump was.… I picked up the phone and called Paul Ryan.
Ryan…was now serving on the board of Fox Corporation, parent of the Fox News Channel. I had known Paul for many years, and I respected both his judgment and his commitment to substance and conservative principles.… I asked for his help.
We talked about having Fox put together a one-hour show, or perhaps a series of shows, to debunk the election lies. The show could track the outcomes of the election-related lawsuits and examine the allegations one by one—focusing on objective details and the truth. This would be an important step in starting to reverse the damage that Donald Trump’s election lies had done over the past several months.
I did not see how the Republican Party, or our country, could move forward without first rejecting the stolen-election fraud and embracing the truth. Paul agreed it was important and promised to see what he could do. Later that afternoon, he called back to say he had talked to Fox management. They liked the idea and planned to start working on it.
Several months later, I heard the show had been in the final stages of production when it was shut down. Someone at Fox had apparently decided not to finish it. The show never aired.
You can see the outline of what we need right there. We need a compelling video piece that lays out in terms conservatives can understand that (1) the election was legitimate, and (2) Donald Trump lost. Big time.
Really, Fox Fake New should be forced to air this. In fact, I wonder if there is a way to compel them to cough up the show they were working on and explain why that show never aired. I think that would be fascinating, and perhaps there’s a lawsuit that could cause them to divulge this.
A key part of this is: “The show could track the outcomes of the election-related lawsuits and examine the allegations one by one—focusing on objective details and the truth.” Going over the evidence in forensic detail is necessary to convince people of the truth. I doubt this will actually change minds of many committed liars in the Republican Party, but it is a key step in convincing the convincible (the so-called independent voters) that Donald Trump lost and he’s been lying about it to raise money.
I think our show should go on to look into how much money Republicans have raised off the lie. As I suggested in The Con Man, it would be very valuable to have a lawsuit based on wire fraud that could force these Republican campaigns to give that money back. They well might get it again with a “legitimate” appeal, but at least it would inform their contributors the degree to which they are being played for fools.
Liz Cheney says, “I did not see how the Republican Party, or our country, could move forward without first rejecting the stolen-election fraud and embracing the truth.” I’m not particularly interested in saving the Republican Party. But I’m keen on protecting our country.
I think the Biden campaign should take the lead on producing this kind of content and getting it out.