Let's Stop Using the Words: 'Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election'
— Alexis de Tocqueville
After almost three years — and as Democrats in Colorado and Maine ban Donald Trump from the Centennial State's ballot — it is beyond time for the media to stop "reporting" that "Trump tried to overturn a presidential election" and to quit referring matter-of-factly: to "the election that Trump lost"; to "Trump's defeat" and his "baseless" "false claims"; and to "Trump is challenging the results" of "Biden's victory (in, say, Georgia)" and to "swing the election in his favor."
It is equally time for news organizations to stop "reporting" that the four (who's counting?) indictments are nothing more than valid or understandable (if ill-timed) reactions to punish Trump for his ("criminal") attempts to "disenfranchise voters" and thus "subvert democracy."
This is not a neutral, objective, and non-partisan view of of the facts of the 2020 election. Far from it. No. It is the (self-serving) DNC version. It is akin to asking "When did you stop beating your wife?"
Phrases like “baseless fraud claims,” “sham election investigations,” and “false claims of election fraud” come straight from the Democrat party. At a minimum, readers and viewers are used to circumspect "allegedlys," to prudent "reportedlys," and to cautious "accused ofs". What happened to them?
At this point, a crucial question arises: What is Donald Trump's version of the 2020 election?
Remember that his whole message — as was that of the protestors on Jan. 6, 2021 (not a single one of them, to my recollection, brandishing weapons other than cellphone cameras for selfies) — is exactly, or almost exactly, the same — i.e., that it was the Democrats who tried to overturn (and, indeed, who succeeded in overturning) the 2020 election and thus democracy (hence his, and the protesters', far from unreasonable anger).
We could even use similar wordings: "the election that Biden lost," "Joe's defeat," "false claims," and "the Democrats tried to change/challenge (and succeeded in changing/challenging) the results." Indeed, the 45th President called it "stealing the election" and thus … if anyone disenfranchised voters and undermined democracy, it was the party of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
Given that the charges are basically the same, shouldn't a media outlet that was neutral, objective, and independent — instead of acting like the purveyors of (to use Trump's expression) fake news — give equal space to both charges?
The way that even conservative outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, not to mention RINOs like Mike Pence, buy into and repeat the Left's "talking points" and double standards is disconcerting. (A WSJ editorial defended Donald Trump against "lawfare" (to wield war on people through the legal system, by imprisoning them or "merely" ruining them, a tactic the Democrats have already used on such Trump allies as Gen. Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani) while calling his "post-election behavior" in 2020 "deceitful and destructive" and referring to his "disgraceful" "malfeasance." While National Review also pushed back against the Trump indictments, all the while feeling the need to point out that it "condemned Trump’s appalling actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election" as well as "Trump’s deceptions": "Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable.")
An otherwise outstanding post at the Power Line Blog by the usually outstanding John Hinderaker, gives us, paragraph after paragraph, evidence of cheating and lying by Democrats. And still, that can't prevent Hinderaker himself from being polite and handing some rope to the opposition, ending said post with the words, Trump's "obviously indefensible claims," and with these immortal lines:
In sum, the indictment does not make out a case that Trump is a criminal who should go to prison. But it does make out a strong case that Trump is a dishonest egomaniac with terrible judgment who should never again be entrusted with a responsible government position.
You have just written 15 paragraphs detailing the Democrats' lying, cheating, and criminal interference in the 2020 election, John Hinderaker — not least in the very indictments that have been served up by Bolshevist prosecutors. Where do those two final sentences fit in except to prove that with enough pressure and broadsides, the Drama Queens' left-leaning propaganda will overwhelm even the most open-minded and the most honest brain?
Why is being a(n allegedly) "dishonest egomaniac with terrible judgment" worse than being a lying cheat with Bolshevist tendencies or than being a fellow Republican who cannot see that the other side are lying cheats with Bolshevist tendencies?
Across the Atlantic, the usually outstanding Nicolas Lecaussin (an author born in communist Romania whose IREF — Institut de Recherches Economiques et Fiscales — and IFRAP — Institut Français de Recherche sur les Administrations Publiques — try to take on the Deep State in France the way FEE or the Mises Institute do in the U.S.) pulls no punches with the Biden family but feels the necessity to come down on Donald Trump with une tonne de briques:
[l']ancien président, que ses frasques et son détestable caractère rendent aussi imprévisible qu’ infréquentable (the former president, whose escapades and loathesome character make him as unpredictable as unfit to be associated with).
Why can't a refuge from Nicolae Ceausescu's communist nightmare see that OrangeManBad's "loathsome" attitude is explainable by his disgust with America's left-leaning politicians, the corruption that they engender, and their desire to turn (or "fundamentally transform") America into a banana republic like Cuba or … Romania?
Republicans Follow the Rules of Golf ...
While Democrats are Playing Ice Hockey:
I don't like the idea of being protected by these shepherds
who are no better animals than us, and who very often are worse.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
Speaking of which: Meanwhile, Joe Biden's — far worse — instances of corruption, both as senator and as occupant of the White House (over $20 million in bribes from China's communists?!), are duly opposed but never with such vitriolic wording. The opposition is quite restrained and, even if principled, almost of the "Ho-hum" variety (rarely, if ever, loaded words like "disgrace(ful)," "appalling," or "malfeasance"). I don't remember Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, or Liz Cheney — not to mention the Department of Justice — getting worked up about any of the Biden family's shenanigans.
You might as well say: Well, of course, the Soviet tribunals went too far. That goes without saying. But still, with regards to individual cases such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov (or, say, a Romanian opponent to Ceaușescu), surely those losers in some way did deserve their fate.
Why do conservatives so often suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and feel the need to be "fair" and to give in to the self-serving views of Democrats, who have never harbored an iota of goodwill for them and who are in no way willing to reciprocate? (See the GOP video of 12 minutes of one Democrat after another, from Al Gore to Stacey Abrams, contesting one election result after another since 2000; just as important, notice that while a troubling number of naive conservatives have expressed a degree of sympathy towards the Democrats' contention that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election — even in spite of the fraud — not a single member of the donkey party ever does so with regards to their own party; in addition, none of the mainstream media outlets can point to many an MSM report telling Jimmy Carter or Karine Jean-Pierre that it is time to "move on," much less informing them that they might simply be wrong.)
As Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder, mentioned 11-12 years ago, explaining "the rules of the game":
the Republicans play the rules of … golf. In golf, if you miss a putt or you touch the ball, you call a shot on yourself. We're playing the game of golf. The Democrats are playing ice hockey. It's a killer game. And that's the difference in politics.
The genius of Donald Trump was, and is, to have the GOP play the game of ice hockey as well.
The Principle of Fairness:
Dispassionate Examinations of the Rival Contentions
There is nothing more prone to error than common opinion.
A good isolated observer actually has more weight on my mind
than a thousand superficial or self-interested accounts which repeat one another.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
But let us take a moment to examine the principle of fairness: as far as fairness is concerned, if a reporter, or a common citizen, were to examine the rival charges dispassionately, wouldn't an intellectually honest person (journalist or other) feel the need to conclude that there is more evidence in Trump's favor?
Isn't it "evidence" of a stolen election that election offices in a handful of states in which Trump was leading after voting ended closed at or after midnight — a move that is absolutely unprecedented — and when they re-opened the next morning, several hours later, Joe Biden was suddenly ahead?
I could go on about the efforts to change state election laws, the House retaining all GOP seats while adding another dozen, and mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, as well as the Twitter Files, with institutions, social media, and the MSM all ganging up to malign stories such as the New York Post's report on Hunter Biden's laptop, etc…
But I would refer you to Matt Kane's outstanding must-read article at American Thinker, where he discusses "unconstitutional changes to state election laws, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud" as well as the fact that "Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a conspiracy theory."
I would also refer to the Time Magazine article of Feb. 4, 2021 — less than a month after the so-called January 6 "riots" by "thugs" that represented "threats to democracy" — in which Molly Ball approvingly reports on a “cabal” (Time’s own choice of words) of “left-wing activists and business titans” working to "save" the election from Trump. In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds — who points out that although "Jan. 6, 2021 … has been called an “insurrection,” it was closer to a campus mob occupying the dean’s office than a coup d’etat" — reports that the "'cabal' that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us" and on the world
pushed mail-in voting. It moved to block election fraud suits brought by Trump and supporters. It employed social media censorship to mute pro-Trump arguments and amplify anti-Trump arguments. It sponsored protests.
Isn't it evidence that recently (after Christmas 2023), in one of the (Soviet-style?) court cases against Donald Trump, the Special Counsel, Jack Smith, has asked the judge (Tanya Chutkan) to block the former president from presenting January 6 evidence, 1) effectively not allowing an American citizen his First Amendment rights, 2) effectively not allowing the former president to defend himself, and 3) effectively not assuming that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty?
Apart from those — numerous — pieces of evidence, for myself, there is one simple instance that stands out above the rest.
How conceivable is it that a doddering professional politician with nary a history of a gift for gab or one of national popularity (unlike, say, deservedly or not, Ted Kennedy) would not only beat the Republican Party's rock star (Donald Trump) in votes, but also the Democrat party's rock star (Barack Obama) — in numbers of votes, especially since Joe Biden's (rare) campaign speeches and (rare) campaign appearances hardly attracted any significant number of individuals, let alone crowds, and since, indeed (upon the strange advice of VIPs like Nancy Pelosi), Sleepy Joe hardly left his basement to campaign?
By contrast, let us be fair and examine the left's talking points: one of the main reasons many of us are skeptical pertains to the very fact that the mainstream media has been trying to stifle all debate on the subject, and that from the earliest hours of Nov. 4, 2020. Trump "continues to argue, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen from him" (New York Times, Aug. 8, 2023).
All the left does is repeat incessantly — they don't even bother using their usual weasel tactic of referring to (unnamed) experts, although that is implicit — that Trump's claim are "baseless" or "unfounded", if not an outright lie (or "the big lie"), all the while calling us skeptics "conspiracy theorists," without ever giving, at least once in a while, some evidence thereof.
Just presenting one in-depth single article or news story in which every one of Trump's claims is meticulously picked apart and debunked might be enough, and the New York Times and the Washington Post could refer to it by linking the word "baseless" or "lie" in every every other subsequent news story to it. But that "article" does not seem to exist in any editorial office.
As Dennis Prager puts it, in today's America (and world),
all you have to say to people who went to college is "Experts say" … As I've said for years, for the secular college graduate, "Experts say" is what "Thus sayeth the Lord" has been to religious people for thousands of years. They have just exchanged authority from the Lord to "the experts"…
In this case, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN don't even use "experts say", knowing that that would sound ridiculous (who on Earth — what individual — can be called an unassailable expert on the matter of election results if there have been shenanigans which by definition are stealthy and which the so-called expert cannot possibly know anything about) while betting — incredibly, with no lack of success — on nobody challenging their basic language about Trump's "baseless" claims and his desire to "overturn" an election and, indeed, democracy itself.
Mark Levin's latest book is called The Democrat Party Hates America. The truth, as we have seen with the Woke movement, is that leftist scholars and activists hate American institutions, leftists hate American values, leftists hate American history, leftists hate American liberty and Democrats have hated Republicans since the movement was born in 1854.
Lincoln in 1860: "when you [Democrats] speak of us Republicans,
you do so only to denounce us as reptiles or [as] outlaws"
Democratic peoples have a natural taste for freedom…
But they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion
for equality; they want equality in freedom, and,
if they cannot attain equality in freedom,
they will want equality in slavery.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
And they have been quite willing to lie about all of the above. It has been common to debate to what degree the Civil War was caused by slavery or states' rights. I have a third explanation: the conflict was caused by the election, in 1860, of a "ghastly" Republican to the White House. (Shades of 2016…) And there was so much outrage among Democrats in 1860 that they proceeded to try to tear the nation apart over the next four years (in a far bloodier way, of course, than in the 21st century).
Only a dozen years ago, James Carville referred to (modern-day) Republicans as "reptiles." And more than 160 years ago, when an Illinois lawyer felt the necessity to address himself to Southerners and Democrats (during his Cooper Union speech in February 1860), guess which term Abraham Lincoln reached for:
…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles [!], or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.
"Reptiles, outlaws, pirates, murderers"… How often have Republicans been called (domestic) terrorists in the past dozen years? (And in the years, in the decades, before that?) Don't we hear every four years that the latest Republican candidate is showing signs of fascism and, indeed, that he probably is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler, one who can be expected to start World War III?
When you hear that your opponent is a Nazi or a racist, it is not illogical to do everything in one's power to prevent Adolf Hitler from becoming leader of your country. But the demonizing Drama Queens (especially those in Colorado and Maine) ought to remember that during the 1860 election, the name of Abe Lincoln was also removed from the ballots of ten states, to wit, 10 of the Southern slave states all of which were all under the firm hand of the Democrat party.
We keep hearing that we — and that 2024's Republican candidate (be it Trump or one of his opponents) — should not re-litigate the 2020 election. That would be tedious and divisive and "it is time to move on and put it behind us." Doesn't that "rational" piece of advice come from the DNC as well?
Isn't the issue of stealing an election (along with… the attendant subversion of democracy) important? Isn't it paramount?
Isn't the main issue of our times that a major political party tried, successfully, to undermine America's democracy? And no, the culprits were not Donald Trump and the GOP.
In that perspective, never forget that it is not Jan. 6, 2021 — repeated, deliberately, ad nauseam by the Democrats and the mainstream media alike — that is the critical date; no, the significant date is Nov. 3, 2020.
Erik Svane is a freelance journalist, a historian, and a published writer. He resides in Paris and has been blogging at No Pasarán for 20 years.
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