The Big Lie That Oils the Whole Machine

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Jonathan Z. Larsen, a storied and brilliant editor now serving as a board member of Real News Project, the nonprofit parent of WhoWhatWhy, regularly sends me thought-provoking and often — as befits our times — outraged emails. One I got recently said:

It is fascinating how tenaciously Trump has to cling to the Stolen-Election theme of January 6.

Any break at all could bring the whole edifice down. 

Best,
Jon

I asked Jon to elaborate and he responded with these thoughts. 

The answer to that question — Was the 2020 election “stolen”? — is central to whether someone gets into Trump’s cabinet; gets his endorsement for congressional office; gets favored sycophant status; gets invited into the ongoing scams. 

Without espousing this essential lie, one is persona non grata in Washington, DC. 

It was central in Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearings, and in many others. I recall Tulsi Gabbard having to duck the question in a congressional hearing convened because she was looking into ballot boxes at Trump’s direction. Was she trying to confirm 2020 interference, or setting up a 2026 midterm narrative, a 2028 narrative, or all of the above?

Needless to say, his obsession with keeping “Stop the Steal” alive was why he pardoned all the January Sixers; and why he wanted to pay them money for their “injuries.” He says he has not given up on that idea, courts and Congress be damned.

The same motive is behind his repeated defamations of President Biden, because if the election was stolen, Biden had to be the one to steal it.

Of course, we all remember that Trump had set up the stolen election lie in advance of the 2016 election, believing he was going to lose it to Hillary.

Very recently, I believe he claimed on TruthSocial that he won all 50 states. I believe he was referring to the 2024 election, but even so, that implies an attempt to steal the most recent one.

In other words, if you look closely, he has claimed that the Democrats tried to steal the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections. All of them — succeeding once.

Behind all despots, it seems, there needs to be a very large lie, a tent-pole lie under whose cover all other malfeasance can take place.

The new MAGA notion is that the 2020 stolen election was just the beginning. All of the lawsuits, indictments, settlements involving Trump following 2020 were also fixed, and in fact most lawyers, judges, and journalists have been involved in this giant conspiracy to deny Trump his rightful due as the most important president in history, worthy of Nobel Prizes, Arch de Triumphs, a place on Mt. Rushmore.

I am currently watching the last day of the Memorial Tournament at Jack Nicklaus’s Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, OH. Nicklaus is an ardent fan of the biggest cheat in the history of golf. Next to the stolen elections lie, Trump’s phony golf scores might seem a minor offense, but not to all of us who thought it was a “gentleman’s sport” with its own honor code. 

*** 

I believe Jon nailed something very important. 

You already know that Trump et al. lie about the 2020 election being rigged, so what else is new? Jon’s point may be obvious, but not to MAGAs: When dangerously incompetent people pretend to believe the lie (or actually believe it), they obtain positions of extraordinary power, power they abuse in all sorts of ways, resulting in damage, some of which is tragically irreversible.

So it is urgent that journalists, and the public, make it much more untenable, embarrassing even, to publicly accept the lie. We need to make it much more conspicuous that it is indeed a lie. 

Politicians need to feel threatened by the loss of credibility and, ultimately, loss of votes, if they continue to give Trump what he wants. Does your senator know you believe the lie is obvious?

Few journalists feel the need to make the lie viscerally obvious. Though they now add a standard disclaimer about his election claims being “baseless,” the legacy media do not seem able to acknowledge, as arguably the core reality of our time, the devastating blast radius of Trump’s Big Lie on our electoral and political landscape, his weaponization of election “integrity” with bad and purely self-serving intent. Instead, they’ve been treating it as a mere footnote.

And the colorless language they use — “baseless claims,” “exhaustively investigated,” “nothing found” — is demonstrably not effective in making it clear that it is a reality, let alone the core reality. It seems so abstract, maybe even questionable, to people who have no desire to grapple with it. And very few journalists challenge the ways in which the lie is sold. 

FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that he has information that backs Trump’s allegations of a stolen election, and that “arrests are on the way.” And he hinted that those arrests may take place “this week.” When pressed on the subject, he said he can’t talk about it “because it’s an ongoing prosecution/investigation, I can’t get ahead of the DOJ or the president.” That was in April. (In May, Todd Blanche made similarly vague — clearly empty — assertions.)

***

When Trump tried to peddle the claim that the California governor’s election is being rigged on June 7 Meet the Press, Kristen Welker handled him like a teacher in a school for special needs children. Choice bits from that interview, after Welker began explaining the slow ballot counting in California:

Trump: Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.

Welker: There’s — What? Do you have evidence to support that?

Trump: It’s — all I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.

Welker: But that’s not evidence.

Trump: And I listen. And I listen to people. And let’s see what happens.

After more back-and-forth, as Welker tried to understand his “evidence,” this followed:

Trump: They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.

Welker: To be fair, I’m not crooked. But let’s continue.

Trump: Really? Well, you play right into their hands then.

Welker: Let’s continue.

Trump: You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.

Welker: Let’s continue.

Trump: You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94 percent bad press.

Not long after, Trump ended the interview:

Trump: You’re a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.

Welker tried, without success, to prolong the interview.

Trump: I’ve given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest press.

***

Or, as Trump is proving every day, with a dishonest president. A singularly, epically dishonest president.

This issue may present the biggest untapped opportunity to challenge the scam promoted by Trump and lockstep Republicans: that the 2020 presidential election was rigged; indeed that any significant win by a Democrat is most likely rigged.

Together with the corruption and self-dealing that are endemic to the current White House — and, frankly, to so much of the current Republican Party — hammering on this point constitutes the best opportunity to wake up the public. 

All Americans need to be reminded that these midterm elections of 2026 are not likely to be “normal” — in the sense that everyone who wants to vote casts a ballot, all the ballots are counted, and the candidates with the most votes wins. 

There’s still time to reverse the sinister scenario that Trump and his enablers keep threatening us with. But it will take a concerted effort by those aware of the danger and willing to stand up for democracy.

That effort begins with voting. Those citizens who typically don’t vote, or who are on the fence at this critical time, need a reminder that while gas prices may matter, that’s not everything. 

Undoing 250 years of fealty to democratic ideals through lies and greed, and corrupting the most basic protocol of representative government — fair elections — that’s something too. And something that will long outlive market fluctuations, however painful inflation may be to the millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.