The cycle of lies that drove the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is again underway.
Five months before the 2024 election, claims that only fraud could explain a future Donald Trump defeat are already commonplace in the right-wing media ecosystem. Fox News stars and Trumpist influencers are priming their audiences to listen if Trump once again claims an election was “rigged” against him — and to come to his aid.
Twice last week, Greg Gutfeld told viewers of “The Five,” Fox News’ most-watched broadcast, that the public will only believe the 2024 results are legitimate if President Joe Biden loses.
“If they aren’t that worried that Joe’s going to lose, given his sorry state, what are they planning? What are they doing to save the day?” Gutfeld asked June 13. He added that if “by some weird, miraculous chance” Biden wins, “how do you convince anyone that’s real? Have they even thought of that?” He concluded, “Even the Dems behind the scenes better hope he doesn’t win because no one’s going to believe it.”
Gutfeld reiterated the point the next day, saying that if Democrats “somehow pull this out” by using “shenanigans” to win, “you’re going to deal with a public that doesn’t buy the election.”
That same week, Gutfeld’s colleague Jesse Watters used his prime-time show to call for banning ballot drop boxes on the grounds that they are “ripe for fraud” and to warn of millions of undocumented immigrants voting. “Biden let 10 million illegal immigrants into this country,” Watters claimed (falsely). “How are we ever going to accept the results of the election in this kind of landscape?”
This fear-mongering about the potential for election-changing fraud has been a consistent refrain all year on Fox News. “The Democrats are going to stop at nothing,” host Laura Ingraham declared in January. “If they can, they’re going to game the system or yeah, maybe even cheat.”
While the network paid a heavy price for its election denial in 2020 — including a $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems — its hosts are under constant pressure from other Trumpist competitors who loudly claim that Democratic election-rigging is an indisputable fact. “There are no ‘issues’ with the 2020 election — they stole it,” former Trump adviser and right-wing podcast host Steve Bannon claimed in March. “The only way they defeat Trump is to steal it. The only way they defeat Trump is they steal it. The only way they defeat Trump is they steal it. He is unstoppable.”








