Miraculously, Donald Trump’s accusations of voter fraud stopped when he was declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
Of course, before results came in, Trump was preemptively making claims of “cheating” in order to lay the groundwork for his election challenges had he lost to Vice President Kamala Harris.
In two posts on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed there was fraud in both Philadelphia and Detroit—two heavily Democratic cities in critical swing states.
“A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social just before 5 PM ET on Election Day, before the state’s polls had closed.
He followed up with another post, writing, “Philadelphia and Detroit! Heavy Law Enforcement is there!!!”
Of course, there was never any cheating.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, said Trump was lying. “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation,” Bluestein wrote on X. “It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.”
So did Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who wrote in a post on X: “There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation. We have invited complaints and allegations of improprieties all day. If Donald J. Trump has any facts to support his wild allegations, we want them now. Right now. We are not holding our breath.”
But now that he won, the fact that Trump is all of a sudden silent about voter fraud is yet more proof that his voter-fraud claims in 2020 were deliberate lies. His claims of fraud were merely a ruse he needed to use in his sore-loser quest to explain away his loss and try to overturn it.
But his lies have had negative consequences.
Aside from helping incite an insurrection that left hundreds of law enforcement officers injured, it also helped make Republican voters distrustful of any results they don’t like.
A Civiqs poll from October found that an overwhelming majority of people who watch Fox News—a right-wing propaganda network that amplifies Trump’s lies—said they were concerned about fraud in the 2024 election.
The poll found that 95% of people who watch Fox News said they were either “somewhat” or “very” concerned about fraud.
But now, just like Trump, those Fox News viewers also appear to be miraculously unconcerned about fraud after Trump was declared the winner.
It goes without saying that voter fraud shouldn’t “exist” only when your candidate loses.
But we’re not holding our breath that this election has cured that cognitive dissonance for Trump and his supporters.
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