Perhaps He Really Did Win the 2020 Election
Prior to November 3, 2020, 35% of Republican voters believed the election was going to be unfair. President Donald Trump had told them so. In July, he claimed that “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.” And at a Wisconsin campaign event in August, Trump warned his supporters that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
These statements coincide with hundreds of others that Trump has made since losing the popular vote (by nearly 3 million votes) to Hillary Clinton. That four-year campaign culminated in Trump’s announcement, at 2 AM on November 4, 2020, that he intended to remain in office regardless of the vote:
“This is a fraud on the American public,” he stated. “Frankly, we did win this election [and] we want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.” With these words, Trump attempted to stop state election officials from counting lawfully cast ballots within the existing deadlines.
After all the major news networks had called the election for Joe Biden, Trump Tweeted I WON THE ELECTION and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the world, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
By that same time, the percentage of Republicans questioning the fairness of the vote had doubled. According to a Politico/Morning Consult Poll, 70% of Republican voters deny that Biden and Harris won a “free and fair election.” A survey by the Economist and YouGov puts the percentage even higher, at 86%. That figure dovetails with polls indicating that the percentage of conservatives who trust the mainstream media declined to 13% during Trump’s first term.