This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 30 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Tuesday’s election is shaping up to be one of the closest races anyone has seen in U.S. history. Polls nationally and in the key states show a dead heat between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
People in what we used to call a reality-based community understand that this is a very tight race in a closely divided country and it could go either way, but the story on the right is … not that.
For a while now, the story on the right has been that Trump is cruising to victory and that he’s way ahead.
According to conservative media, Trump is set to win next week’s election by a landslide. Guests on Fox News are predicting the former president will win every swing state and host Greg Gutfeld already declared the election over, “Donald Trump’s got this.”
For a while now, the story on the right has been that Trump is cruising to victory and that he’s way ahead. They say that the Harris campaign has collapsed and the only way they can win the election is by stealing it. Now, that’s just as untrue as it was four years ago but that hasn’t stopped Trump from telling the same lies on the campaign trail this year.
Trump can very well win this election outright but, as he’s been telegraphing for four years, the plan is to cheat and sow doubt about the outcome in advance so, if things don’t go his way, he can claim the election has been stolen. Just like he did last time.
In fact, on Tuesday, one of the ex-cons advising Trump, Steve Bannon, gave a press conference after getting out of jail and almost immediately said Trump’s main mistake on election night in 2020 was that he took too long to falsely declare victory. A mistake he said Trump shouldn’t make again this year.
They are running the same “Stop the Steal” playbook as they did four years ago — you know, when they tried to overturn the 2020 election results, for which Trump and dozens of others are still facing prosecution. On Wednesday, a reporter asked the former president about his election night plans and if he anticipates being able to declare victory that night.
Trump, while donning a reflective vest and climbing into his name-branded garbage truck, told the reporter, “I hope that we’re going to declare a victory,” and then raised suspicions about results taken from voting machines. It’s the same old song. But this time, the Republican central message is getting a big signal boost. Not just from Fox News, but also from the social media platform X and its owner, Elon Musk, the Trump-loving reactionary billionaire and the world’s biggest broker of disinformation. That’s just one place where Trump and his allies are now posting false claims about “cheating” at “large scale levels” in Pennsylvania early voting. It’s the same old song. But this time, the Republican central message is getting a big signal boost: Elon Musk. Now, it turns out there might be some voter fraud being committed — but not in Pennsylvania and not by Democrats. On Tuesday, Indiana state police said they had arrested Larry Savage, a Republican precinct committeeman and former congressional candidate. Police say he stole two ballots from a test of voting machines and then claimed the machines were flawed. According to court documents, the investigators also searched Savage’s phone and found a text that read: ”sis, they say anything about the ballots i took.” Investigators also say he posted on a social media page condemning the county’s election procedures, shortly before police found the stolen ballots in his truck. Meanwhile, as Republicans are setting the scene for another attempted theft of the election, Democrats are trying to do what they did in 2020 and 2022, which is to get people out to vote and win a close race.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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