His speech underscored the nation’s split reality over last November’s election — the real one in which he lost and President Joe Biden was fairly elected and the nonsensical but powerful one that he sells to his supporters.
In his latest return to campaign speeches, Trump showered praise on Arizona state senators who organized the non-scientific audit. He insisted he wasn’t involved, trying to create a false impression of independence and legitimacy in a politicized process inspired by his lies.
“There is no way they win elections without cheating,” the former President said of Democrats, at a packed event entitled — with Orwellian overtones — the “Rally to Protect Our Elections.” The one-term, twice-impeached ex-commander-in-chief related prolonged and false stories of election fraud across the country. He also claimed that many more Republican-run states were seeking their own audits of election results, even though multiple judges have ruled that there was no election fraud.
Trump’s appearance was full of the usual bluster, boasting, self-pity and too many falsehoods to count, and was in many ways a sideshow compared to the critical current challenges — including a pandemic that is quickly worsening again because millions of Republican voters will not get vaccinated.
But his appearance was also a warning of one of the most dangerous problems haunting a divided nation’s deeply polarized politics — the fact that lies and conspiracy theories now represent sincerely held views of a large minority of the electorate thanks to Trump’s mastery of demagoguery and the endless flattery of a compliant right-wing propaganda machine.
Trump reinvents the big lie
The ex-President did tell his supporters to get the vaccine on Saturday — but in such a way that offered an out for those who have bought into conservative misinformation about it — and in an attack on Biden, he further politicized the issue. Yet again, Trump showed that he was not willing to diminish his own political capital for the greater good.
“I recommend that you take it, but I also believe in your freedoms 100%,” Trump said, before adding, “because they don’t trust the President, people aren’t doing it.”
On the vaccine, and many other issues, Trump is seeking to do nothing less than create a new truth.
“The big lie they call it, you know what is the big lie? The opposite was the big lie. The election was the big lie,” Trump said, in a concise example of his malevolent method as he seeks to reshape Republican orthodoxy.
“Does everybody here…
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