On the final Sunday before Election Day, CNN’s Dana Bash sat down with Sen. Tim Scott and presented the South Carolina Republican with a good question about Donald Trump’s pre-election message: “You think it’s OK to spread false rumors about fraud and undermine the integrity of the election, regardless of what happens?” the “State of the Union” host asked.
Scott, in his role as a Trump surrogate, responded, “The liberal media has done a better job of spreading misinformation than any candidate I have seen so far.”
This was, of course, utterly insane. In fact, if the senator were genuinely interested in those “spreading misinformation,” I might refer him to the man he’s trying to put in the White House. The Washington Post reported on the final pre-election campaign rally held by the Republican Party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office.
Donald Trump, speaking at his final campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is repeatedly claiming, without evidence, that Democrats will cheat during Tuesday’s election. In the weeks leading up to the election, Trump and his allies have set the stage for disputing the results of the election if he loses, despite having no evidence of widespread fraud. He’s doing so again onstage.
Earlier in the day, reporting from an event in Pennsylvania, The New York Times added, “Trump is once again trying to sow doubts about election results, making unfounded accusations that Democrats would rig the election, based on his debunked lies that they did so in 2020. ‘They’ll try, and they are trying,’ Trump told his supporters. ‘You know that.’”
Those who keep an eye on the former president’s rhetoric know that the final day of pre-election campaigning was not an aberration. The GOP candidate has spent every day of late trying to preemptively delegitimize the 2024 election for the most obvious of reasons: Trump realizes that he might lose, so he’s laying the groundwork now so that he can discredit a possible defeat.
We can say this with some certainty because it’s precisely what he’s done before.
Just as notably, he’s getting plenty of help. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who’s never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, was on Fox News over the weekend falsely accusing Democrats of cheating. The Washington Post recently published an unsettling analysis that found, “Nearly half of Republican candidates for Congress or top state offices have used social media to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2024 election … highlighting a pervasive effort within the GOP to undermine public trust in the vote ahead of Nov. 5.”
The party is getting backup from predictable sources. The Post also reported, “More than two dozen popular podcasts have aired claims preemptively casting doubt on the integrity of the 2024 election, disseminating unsubstantiated claims on a popular medium that operates largely outside the view of tech industry monitors.”
Meanwhile, reality-based officials have tried to promote facts. When Trump lied about Pennsylvania’s system of elections, local officials pushed back. When he lied about balloting in Georgia, locals pushed back again.
But if recent history is any guide, Republican voters will believe Trump and his allies over the evidence and those telling the public the truth.
We’ve already seen some of the consequences of such tactics, and there’s every reason to be concerned about a sequel. NBC News reported on the latest from the Proud Boys: “As Donald Trump yet again tells his supporters he can lose Tuesday only if there’s massive voter fraud and as he ramps up violent rhetoric about Democrats and other ‘enemies,’ members of the far-right group that put more ‘boots on the ground’ than any other at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, say they’re mobilizing.”
Watch this space.
