In the wake of the verdict against Trump, it is important for the media (and Americans) to be aware that the claims of “election interference” in May and June 2024 are exactly the same as claims of the “stolen election” in November 2020.
In 2020 Trump and others made manifold claims of thousands of “illegal votes.” Recounts and over sixty court cases confirmed no such things. The claim is repeated to this day, with all explanations depending on the idea that the real evidence is still hidden, but the evil of the Democrats should be enough for us to trust Trump. It is an untrue statement dependent on innuendo about the character of nameless Democrats.
The question (then and now) ceases to be about who won the election and becomes about whether Democrats are evil.
So too with the claims of “election interference” with the recent guilty verdict for Trump. As claimed by Trump loyalists including J.D. Vance, the argument is that because the judge and the prosecutor were both Democrats, the jury’s verdict is false. Trump cannot have been guilty. This is an assertion made without evaluating a single piece of the evidence presented against Trump—which involve falsifying business records to pay hush money to cover up an affair with a pornographic film star during the election of 2016.
In this way, the conversation shifts from a discussion of how Trump broke the law and was found guilty to a discussion of how Democrats are “corrupt.” It is an untrue statement dependent on innuendo about the character of nameless Democrats.
I hope that any media outlet or network that hosts someone claiming this verdict is election interference will do all of us the courtesy of presenting the evidence against Trump as it was displayed in the courtroom. The last time politicians were given free rein to invent stories about election interference without being burdened to provide evidence, it didn’t end great.