What is the essential difference between someone conveying information and someone conveying propaganda? It’s not that the former is presenting something true while the latter, something false. No, the difference is that the propagandist has no concern for the truth. He does not care whether there are facts that contradict his position. He holds his views, not because they rest on facts and on logic, but simply because he desires them to be true. Like the fervent religionist whose beliefs are impervious to rational argument, the propagandist’s assertions, too, are not derived by reason.
What then are we to make of the accusations about widespread election fraud and cover-ups offered by President Trump in his July 16th speech to the nation? Are we to take seriously a professed concern over election integrity when it comes from the man who encouraged a mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in order to undo the results of a presidential election? Can we believe that the man who pardoned all the people convicted of violent action during that riot actually wants to prevent interference in the election process? Can his warnings about alleged election tampering have any credibility when he tenaciously evades the overwhelming evidence, including dozens of court findings, that he lost the 2020 election?
When Trump declares that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets—when Trump declares that the hundreds of thousands of deported immigrants are guilty of serious crimes—when he declares that the tariffs he has imposed on us are being paid for by foreign exporters—when, in other words, he makes claims that are easily shown to be baseless—he is engaged in the equivalent of propagandizing. His aim is not to present the truth, but to offer a rational façade for his irrational beliefs.
If someone says to you “7 times 3 equals 21,” you can judge that statement as true. Which means that it is a successful effort at cognition, a successful attempt to grasp reality. But if you hear those same words being uttered by a parrot, you cannot judge them as either true or false. The squawking of a parrot is outside the realm of cognition. The parrot is not trying to name a truth. It is just emitting sounds.
The same applies to Trump’s statements about election fraud. He does not care whether his assertions are actually true. So one’s initial response should not be to grant his arbitrary claims a cognitive status, any more than one would to the parrot’s squawkings. Rather, one should ask: What is Trump’s purpose?
And clearly his goal is to pave the way for his own intervention in future elections. His goal is to make the public receptive to his future claims of fraud and to his efforts to nullify voting results. He failed to reverse the 2020 vote. He will doubtless try to do better the next time. He has publicly stated that his big regret is having failed to send National Guard troops to seize voting machines after his loss in the 2020 election. Will he order them to do so for this year’s midterm, or 2028’s presidential, election? Will he authorize his armed ICE agents to oversee voting sites by claiming that illegal immigrants are casting ballots? Will he unleash the many Jan. 6 goons he pardoned, and instruct them to “ensure” honest elections?
What we need to fear is not the secret machinations of “deep state” conspirators who want to skew the vote, but the open attempts by our own head of government to overturn results he does not like.
Your headline says "Election Fraud." The essay is about Donald Trump. Those aren't the same topic, and the substitution does the reader a disservice.
Set Trump aside completely. You're left with a voting system recently and rapidly changed: in many places, no photo ID, no documentary proof of citizenship at registration, grossly inaccurate voter rolls, and mail ballots passing through multiple hands with a poor chain of custody. Does that structure create incentive to exploit it? Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome.Notably, almost every advanced country has banned mail-in voting, for very good reason.
Note the trap in "no evidence of widespread fraud." A system designed so that fraud is difficult to detect will generate little detected fraud. That is not reassurance — it's circularity. The real question is the scale of the fraud, and that question is answerable: proper voter identification and certification, voter roll maintenance, and custody standards.
Whatever one thinks of Trump, he is temporary. The election system is not. I'd rather the essay engaged the durable problem.
Given Trump’s current approval rating of something like 35%, one would think that any attempt on his part to overturn a vote would be met with massive protests and opposition. However, that may not matter, given ICE agents willing to murder protestors.