I was driving down the road a few months back when, in the distance, I saw a man on the sidewalk. He was on a bike, dressed in a full Uncle Sam costume, and holding a pole with two flags.
When I drove up and stopped at the intersection, I saw that one flag said, “Trump 2024 Save America Again”, and the other said, “Stop the Steal!”. Although it was rush hour, this intersection wasn’t generating much traffic, which made me admire the commitment. It was a pretty hot day.
As I drove past and continued to drive down the road, it made me rethink a few obvious things. One, the Trump supporters are wholeheartedly convinced that the 2020 election was stolen, and two, they blame the Democrats. But are these seemingly obvious points correct?
Ask Democrats, and clearly, the election wasn’t stolen. And they have a bunch of facts and logic to back this up. But since they’re the rival party and thus the enemy, all those facts and logic won’t and don’t register with most Republicans. Emotion typically trumps logic.
The counterarguments for Republicans sometimes delve into conspiracy theories, and it all becomes a big back and forth of emotion and logic, which never seems to get to the truth.
But what is the truth? The Democrats and Republicans think they know, but honestly, I don’t think it even matters. Because let’s assume the election was stolen for the rest of this article. And let’s go back to the point above, that Republicans blame Democrats for this. Are Democrats to blame for the stolen election? Or should Donald Trump and the Republicans be the ones to blame?
How? Why? Well, let’s dive into this thought experiment, and I’ll try to show that if the election was stolen, the flag shouldn’t say “Stop the Steal”; it should say “Stop the internal Republican incompetence.” It’s not as catchy, but it might be the truth.
Crooked Hilary
It was August of 2016. A rally for Donald Trump was underway in Pennsylvania. He was campaigning in the crucial swing state that could eventually decide the 2016 presidential election, which it did.
During the speech, Donald Trump made comments that raised some eyebrows. He commented that the only way he could lose the state of Pennsylvania was if cheating went on and that Clinton could only win if she cheated in certain sections of the state.
He also talked about voter ID laws and how the system was rigged. However, the most important point he made was that they needed to call up law enforcement and police chiefs and have people watching so they didn’t get cheated out of the election and the state of Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to November of 2016. Donald Trump won the presidential election and, as president-elect, made some similar comments on Twitter.
On November 27th, 2016, Trump tweeted, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He also Tweeted on November 28th, 2016, “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire, and California-so why is the media not reporting this? Serious bias-big problem!”.
Why does all this matter? Because Donald Trump was bringing awareness to potential voter fraud and cheating in 2016. Regardless of whether the Democrats were actually cheating, and it didn’t work, or he was making false claims, he was focusing on and was aware of the issue.
Whistle Past the Graveyard
This leads to the main point: if the Democrats did cheat and there was widespread voter fraud in 2020, Donald Trump and Republicans were aware of this issue years in advance and did nothing to stop it. And so, they have no one to blame but themselves.
They could have “Stopped the Steal!” years in advance during the Trump presidency. Draining the swamp of this problem as Trump was supposed to do. But they didn’t. Why?
It’s one of two reasons for me, and the answer is bad for Republicans, either way you slice it.
One, there wasn’t any voter fraud or anything more than the typical irregularities that happen every election. This means Donald Trump is a liar and everything else the Democrats say he is.
Or two, Donald Trump is massively incompetent and ineffective. He was unable to stop the cheating that he knew was happening and was going to happen, even with all the resources at his disposal.
Donald Trump was the president of the United States and the most powerful man on the planet. He had control of all the office services, including the Justice Department and the FBI. Which I guess can be weaponized by the Democrats but can’t be used for good by the Republicans to investigate fraud.
He was/is one of the wealthiest men on the planet. He had a majority in both chambers of Congress at the start of his presidency and the majority on the Supreme Court, thanks to his appointments. He also had four years to prepare and address this. Yet he took no preemptive action.
As mentioned in the last section, he called for involvement from law enforcement and for people to watch and ensure cheating didn’t happen in 2016. Yet no significant effort was made during his presidency after those initial tweets about fraud. And nothing of large-scale law enforcement or official surveillance during the 2020 election.
Trump had full power and authority. But somehow, with all the power, all the resources, and all the knowledge and forewarning of what was about to happen, the less powerful Democrats and Joe Biden stole the election.
It’s like the New York Yankees losing to the Houston Astros while being a better team and knowing when and how the Astros were stealing their signs. It wouldn’t make sense for Yankee fans to blame the Astros for sign stealing if they knew it was coming and could stop it.
So, it doesn’t matter if the election was stolen for Donald Trump. “Stop the Steal!” should have been a process from day one, yet it’s only an issue after a loss.
Whether he’s a liar or incompetent, it should have been time to move on.
But whether the 2020 election was stolen or not, if there is significant concern about our elections, we should maybe think about doing something beforehand, on both sides, instead of complaining about it afterward.
