Stop The Steal

Don’t Vote

I’ve been writing essays for “Our America” for four and a half years.  I’ve written about politics and life, national crises and local foibles, and somewhere north of a million words. But you’ve never heard me say this before:  Donald Trump is absolutely right. 

The ex-President is banned from most social media platforms, so he issues “old fashioned” press releases to get his opinions out.  Wednesday, he said;

Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the United States of America (as if we forgot)

 If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24.  It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do (Twitter).

When it Began

In the 2016 Presidential debates, Donald Trump was asked if he would accept the election results should he lose to Hillary Clinton.  From that moment, October 19th, the fraudulent claim of a stolen election was born (YouTube).   He refused.  To his, and the world’s surprise, Trump won the electoral vote in 2016, despite losing the popular vote.  So, of course there was “no election fraud”.  He won.

But the groundwork was already established.  Trump’s buddy Roger Stone actually coined an internet phrase explaining the idea in the 2016 primaries.  Stone was concerned that the other Republican candidates would find a way to combine and prevent Trump’s nomination.  So he started the “Stop the Steal” slogan.

But the plan was made apparent right there, in front of Chris Wallace, the American people and God.  Unlike every other Presidential candidate since the first hotly contested election in 1800, Donald Trump made it clear that he would only accept the results if he won.  From his position it actually made perfect sense.  If he, as expected, had lost in 2016, he needed to have some ongoing issue in order to monetize his political career.  In short, he needed to have a “cause” that he could cling to, and one that he could convince “the masses” to fund.

Four Dark Years

So we entered the four years of the Trump Presidency ending, perhaps appropriately, in a world-wide pandemic.  And the “election fraud farce” plan was shelved until 2020, one of the most difficult national elections held in U.S. history.  States scrambled to find ways to vote without creating viral “super-spreader” events, in an era when many big cities already turned to massive single polling places, a perfect viral soup.  Election officials found creative ways to fulfill their duty to the people:  making the vote accessible and safe.

And more people voted in the 2020 election than ever before, over 158 million Americans, two-thirds of the eligible voters (Pew 1).  Forty-six percent voted by mail, twenty-seven percent voted in early voting, and twenty-seven percent voted on election day (Pew 2).   We avoided increased viral infection, and managed to narrowly elect a President, Joe Biden.  Trump received the second most popular votes of any candidate in US history – but Biden got the most.

The Biggest Election

The “Stop the Steal” farce came off the shelf early, back in the spring of 2020.  As states scrambled to find ways for folks to vote, Trump began to question to security of the election process. He questioned mail-in ballots, drive-up ballots, and any other form of balloting short of lining up on election day itself.  This, in spite of the fact that he voted absentee in his “home state” of Florida, and depended on Florida’s strong mail-in balloting to win the state.  His Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, instituted a series of postal “reforms” slowing mail processing and raising issues about whether mail-in voting would actually work. (DeJoy continues to claim that slowing the mail was a result of cost-cutting measures to make the Postal Service more profitable, and had nothing to do with the election.  And he’s still the Postmaster General).

Every legitimate investigation, including Trump’s own Attorney General and even the illegitimate “Cyber Ninja” count in Arizona, all agree on one thing – the 2020 election was accurate.  But “Stop the Steal” is raising money for Donald Trump.  It brings the crowd to the rallies, and keeps those online donations pouring into the MAGA websites.  

Democracy at Risk

But the impact of “Stop the Steal” isn’t just about money.  It created the Insurrection of January 6th.  It has put American Democracy at risk.  And it’s made a nation faced with a pandemic unwilling to accept reasonable scientific advice.  If we can’t trust the results of the election, we can’t trust anything the government, or media, says.

So after all of that, how can I say that Donald Trump is absolutely right?  Well, it’s really self-serving.  I am a Democrat, and I believe, as many of my former-Republicans friends do, that the current Republican Party is full corrupted by authoritarian-Trumpism.  The only way out is to keep Trumpism out of power.  It worked in the Georgia Special Election in January.  Trump told voters not to trust the vote, Democrats showed up and Trumpers didn’t, and two Democrats were elected Senators.   It’s the easiest way to win – if the Republicans to do exactly what the ex-President says:  don’t vote.