According to a New York Times evaluation, since announcing his presidential candidacy, former President Donald J. Trump has publicly and baselessly expressed doubts in regards to the fairness of the 2024 election on average about once a day.
Although the tactic is familiar – Trump also raised the specter of a “rigged” election within the 2016 and 2020 election cycles – his attempts to undermine the 2024 election represent a major escalation.
A line graph shows how often Donald J. Trump expressed doubts about the fairness or integrity of the election in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 election cycles. The line for 2024 shows that Trump began sowing doubt months earlier in this election cycle, and made hundreds more statements than in previous elections. Three videos in the graph show early instances of Trump sowing doubt, namely in 2016, 2019, and 2022.
Mr Trump first asked questions about 2016 Election in August of the same year, about 100 days before the election.
He did this earlier – and more often – before the 2020 Choice.
But in the 2024 Cycle: The falsehoods have been entrenched since Mr. Trump announced his candidacy nearly two years before Election Day, and they show no signs of letting up.
Trump's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election had historic consequences. The so-called “big lie” – Trump's false claim that the election was stolen from him – led to the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, and to two of four charges against Trump and his second impeachment.
But Trump had sown doubts among his supporters long before election day, essentially creating a future with no losses: either he would prevail or the election would be rigged.
He has never abandoned this position, which is supported by no evidence whatsoever, long after his presidency ended. And now, as he seeks to return to the White House, it has become the backbone of his campaign.
Long before he announced his candidacy, Trump and his supporters had falsely claimed that President Biden was using the Justice Department as a “weapon” to target him. But it took until March of last year for Trump to settle on a new accusation: that the numerous legal challenges surrounding Trump's business and political activities represented a “latest sort of fraud” to “interfere” in the 2024 election. He has made this accusation more than 350 times in various versions.
“This is a rigged deal, similar to the 2020 election was rigged, and we are able to't allow them to get away with it,” Trump said on November 18, 2022, three days after announcing his 2024 candidacy. His comments were in response to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland's appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the events leading up to the January 6 riots, as well as Trump's decision to store classified documents at his Florida resort.
Last summer, Trump perfected this phrase and made it a staple of his campaign speeches: “They rigged the 2020 presidential election, and we will not let them rig the 2024 presidential election.”
The Times has documented more than 500 campaign rallies, social media posts and interviews for the 2024 election cycle in which Mr. Trump falsely accused Democrats or others of trying to “rig,” “cheat,” “steal” or otherwise “influence” the following election – or having done in order early as 2020.
Trump’s accusation of “election interference” in the 2024 election cycle
Mr. Trump has tailored the details of his accusations to each of the three election cycles. But in each case, his discourse pattern has followed the same contours. He sows doubts about the legitimacy of the election and then begins to capitalize on those doubts by suggesting that he will not accept the election results – unless, of course, he wins.
This rhetorical strategy – heads, I win; tails, you cheated – is Trump's favorite strategy, and it predates even his time as a presidential candidate. He called the Emmy Awards “a con game” after his television show “The Apprentice” failed to win in 2004 and 2005. And before he officially became the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, he began to raise the possibility that the primary campaign, as he put it, “manipulated and controlled by the boss.”
In May of that 12 months, Trump spoke openly about why he had set the argument aside. “You've heard me say over and over again that the system is rigged,” he said, “but now I'm not saying it anymore because I won.”
Late this summer, with a watch on the final election in November, Trump tried a brand new strategy, claiming that “the media” was “rigging” the election in favor of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. His claims intensified in October after a recording surfaced of him using vulgar language about women.
“I will fully accept the results of this great and historic presidential election – if I win,” Trump said at a rally in 2016, three weeks before Election Day. And although he ultimately won the electoral college vote and the presidency, his failure to win the bulk vote prompted him to create a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to “prove” that rampant voter fraud was the cause.
In December 2019, within the midst of Trump's re-election campaign, the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives filed articles of impeachment against him on the grounds that he used the facility of the federal government to solicit election assistance from Ukraine in the shape of investigations designed to discredit Biden. Trump then said that Democrats were using the “impeachment hoax” to “interfere” within the election.
The Covid-19 pandemic gave him a brand new battle cry that focuses on election integrity: Mail-in ballots are “dangerous,” “riddled with fraud,” and are getting used to “steal” and “rig” the election, he said.
About six weeks before Election Day 2020, Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. “We want to make sure the election is honest, and I'm not sure that's possible,” Trump said.
This time, Trump again tied his acceptance of the election result to conditions after spending greater than a 12 months promoting the speculation of “election interference” in relation to the criminal charges against him and repeatedly warning that the Democrats were “cheating.” It was six months before Election Day in 2024.
“If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results,” he said in a press release on 1 interview with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “If not, you have to fight for the right of the land.”
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