Trump & His Election Deniers Are Setting The Stage To Steal 2024
Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | September 15, 2022
The damage former President Donald Trump has done to our democracy is catastrophic. The further damage he would do if ever returned to the presidency is incalculable.
Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election being stolen, the culmination of more than 30,000 false and misleading statements during his presidency, has had an enormous and destructive impact on our democracy.
Tens of millions of Americans, including more than 70 percent of Republicans, continue to believe that Joe Biden is not the legitimate President.
Election deniers believe Trump won the 2020 election without a shred of evidence. That alone illustrates just how much Trump has devalued truth and facts in our society.
The bulk of Republican officeholders in Congress either agree with Trump’s false claims or, in many cases, go along with Trump because they are afraid of losing support from Trump followers. The unpatriotic performance of most congressional Republicans today earns a special place in the Hall of Shame.
Faith in the fairness and honesty of our elections has been severely undermined for untold numbers of Americans.
The Trump Big Lie has resulted in Republican election deniers across the country running for statewide offices where they would be in a position to help ensure that Trump or a Trump-like candidate is elected in 2024, regardless of the actual election results.
In 27 states, a new report from States United Action finds, at least one Republican candidate on the November ballot for governor, attorney general, or secretary of state – positions with responsibilities for overseeing or administering elections – is a Trump-supporting election denier.
In Arizona, for example, a key battleground state that Biden narrowly but clearly won in 2020, the Republican candidates for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state are all election deniers and, should they win, they can be expected to do whatever it takes to ensure the Republican presidential nominee wins Arizona in 2024.
What Trump has been doing, with malice aforethought, is using his nonstop demagogic Big Lie to set the stage for Trump and his allies to actually steal the 2024 election, if he runs and loses again.
There must be accountability for Trump and his collaborators for their attempted coup to steal the 2020 presidential election that Biden fairly won.
There must be accountability for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
There must be accountability for the participants in the 2020 fake electors scheme designed to corrupt the way we choose a President.
There must be accountability for the lawyers who, using meritless and baseless claims, worked to pervert the election process and the presidential election.
If there is no accountability for the first attempted coup in the nation’s history, this failure will serve as an open invitation to repeat the effort again.
Every conceivable effort, at the federal, state, and local levels, must be pursued to prevent the election deniers from stealing elections in 2024 and beyond.
Concerned public officials and citizens must do all we can to win this battle if we are to protect our democracy from devolving into an autocracy on the way to a dictatorship.
________________________
Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
