Trump’s Definition of a “Rigged” Election: Any Election that Doesn’t Go His Way
To Donald Trump, the only valid election is one in which his side wins.
Following a presidential election, Donald J. Trump said “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” Trump made these comments after the 2012 presidential election, won easily by Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million popular votes.
Eight years later, this time as President, he was singing the same song. Trump described the 2020 presidential election as stolen from him and a “corrupt” election. There is still not a shred of evidence, however, that Trump won the 2020 election.
Five years later, he is still at it.
On Sunday, Trump called on the Justice Department to investigate the “rigged and stolen” 2020 presidential election, which he falsely claimed was the “biggest scandal in American history.”
Also, on Sunday, Trump claimed, again without providing any evidence, that the current voting for the California redistricting initiative is “totally dishonest.” He further claimed that millions of ballots are being “shipped” into the state.
Trump’s favorite Big Lie, apparently, is that he does not lose elections. When an election doesn’t turn out the way Trump wants, he inevitably yells: “They stole the election. They rigged the election. I won the election.”
He has been using this Big Lie unceasingly for more than a decade for elections that do not turn out the way he wants. Trump’s Big Lie has multiple purposes.
Trump undermined confidence in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and in future ones by persuading tens of millions of his supporters, in essence, that elections are not legitimate unless he says so.
Trump also manipulated voters into believing the 2020 election was stolen from him as a prelude to taking other steps to hold power: namely his failed presidential coup and the vicious January 6 attack he instigated on the Capitol that injured 140 police officers.
Ominously, making sure that Republicans keep winning elections, starting with keeping control of Congress in the 2026 election, may be what Trump has had in mind for some time.
In March, Trump issued an executive order which would have had his administration take control of key parts of our elections. Under the Constitution, however, it is the states and Congress who are empowered to administer federal and state elections, not the executive branch, which is not given any role.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “The illegal [executive] order risks preventing millions of eligible citizens from voting.” That may well be the point. Federal courts have issued temporary injunctions that have slowed down the order.
At the same time, Trump may well be trying to condition citizens, particularly in blue cities, to get used to the military patrolling their streets – possibly to desensitize them to authoritarian interference in elections.
There are cases pending in the federal courts that challenge the administration’s efforts to federalize national guard units and deploy them in blue cities, including a case pending before the Supreme Court on the Emergency Docket.
Trump also has been threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, which empowers the President to use the military to suppress civil disorder, insurrection or armed rebellion – none of which are happening. This could be used next year as a false excuse to place the military in key election districts and states.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing to dramatically expand the National Guard’s role in domestic “civil unrest” operations with up to 25,000 troops across all 50 states ordered to complete riot control by early 2026.
Critics warn that this is a further and dangerous attempt to normalize the use of National Guard forces for civil law enforcement under the control of Trump, not governors. And it opens the door to the Trump administration’s potential use of the military to interfere with the 2026 congressional elections.
Thanks to a disastrous opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts in Trump v. United States, Trump also has a license to use the Justice Department and FBI any way he wants, as long as he can cloak the activities as “official acts.”
The stakes in preventing any effort by Trump to steal the 2026 congressional elections are enormous. Whether the United States reaches its 250th anniversary as a republic and a democracy will depend on whether citizens, the courts and institutions prevail over Trump’s apparent desire to be an unaccountable, autocratic ruler.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
