Former president Donald Trump is back to leading Republicans in cries of election “fraud,” but what he is referring to has almost entirely changed.
When Trump suggested in an online post earlier this month that the Constitution could be terminated to redo the 2020 election or declare him the winner, the “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD” that he said required this “UNPRECEDENTED CURE” was no longer a conspiracy involving counterfeit mail ballots or sabotaged voting machines. Those claims have been thoroughly debunked in audits, litigation and outside reviews.
Instead, Trump was now advancing a new theory of how the election was “stolen” from him: a supposed scheme among social media companies, the FBI and the Democrats to suppress information that might have helped Trump’s campaign.The claim is fueled in part by new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s decision to release internal documents about the platform’s brief suppression of a 2020 news story about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son amid concerns it might be the result of disinformation efforts.
“The biggest thing to come out of the Twitter Targeting Hoax is that the Presidential Election was RIGGED — And that’s as big as it can get!!!” Trump said in another post on his Truth Social platform on Dec. 9.
This new spin has quickly won the backing of many Republicans and right-wing media sources. Those reinforcements come at a critical time for Trump, as he attempts a political comeback amid increasing isolation from other party leaders. Several recent surveys show Trump trailing Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in early presidential primary polling.
Many Republicans have faulted Trump for dragging down the party’s midterm election results with his focus on election denial, and his 2024 campaign announcement speech on Nov. 15 conspicuously lacked his usual false claims of fraud in the 2020 election results. But now, seizing on the recent Twitter disclosures, Trump is pounding away at 2020 again. And though some Republican leaders denounced the suggestion of suspending the Constitution, many Republicans have joined Trump in demanding investigations into the Twitter controversy or alleging election manipulation….
Jordan referenced surveys “where thousands and thousands of voters across this country say that might have impacted their decision in the election in 2020.” His spokesman provided a poll by a right-leaning outfit published in the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, claiming that more than half of 501 adults following the story said knowing the material was “real and not ‘disinformation’” would probably have changed their vote.
Another survey shortly after the election by a right-wing organization claimed to find that “full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal” would have flipped the electoral college. The group posed the question in a way that misrepresented the facts of the case.
Notwithstanding Twitter’s actions, the Hunter Biden story was well publicized before the election, as demonstrated by Google search traffic. Trump also raised the claims during the first debate, viewed by an estimated 73.1 million people.