Donald Trump on Friday revealed he is still living in 2020, calling for the appointment of a special counsel to probe the election he overwhelmingly lost to now-former President Joe Biden.
“Zero Border crossings for the month for TRUMP, verses 60,000 for Sleepy, Crooked Joe Biden, a man who lost the 2020 Presidential Election by a ‘LANDSLIDE!'” Trump wrote in one of his quintessentially batshit crazy Truth Social posts. “Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin! What this Crooked man, and his CORRUPT CRONIES, have done to our Country in 4 years, is grossly indescribable! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
We don’t know how many times we can say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen. Biden won, and won convincingly.
But Trump, who incited a violent and deadly but ultimately unsuccessful insurrection to try to remain in power, cannot accept that.
Nearly five years later, he is back in office and trying to use the power of the presidency to prove something that did not happen.
And now that he’s surrounded by election-denying conspiracy theorists and yes men in positions of power—including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel—he is working to use the levers of government to prove his lies.
Earlier this week, Patel tried to push an insane conspiracy that China interfered in the 2020 election by somehow importing fake IDs he claims were going to be used for mail-in ballots.
From an NBC News report:
The unsubstantiated claim promoted by Patel, which an unidentified confidential human source gave to the FBI in 2020, during President Donald Trump’s first term, asserts that the Chinese mass-produced driver’s licenses to be used in a mail-in ballot scheme. Patel linked to an article written by John Solomon, whom Trump appointed alongside Patel in 2022 to represent him before the National Archives and Records Administration on matters related to his presidential records.
The article Patel promoted mentioned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized fake licenses that were arriving mostly from China and Hong Kong around the time the FBI received the tip about the election plot. According to a 2020 news release from CBP, most of the seized licenses “were for college-age students,” a population that has historically sought licenses with fake birthdays so underage students can get into bars and purchase alcohol.
Patel said he referred the “evidence” of the alleged conspiracy to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee. Of course, if whatever bullshit evidence Patel had was real, the DOJ would bring charges rather than give a report to Congress.
“DOJ doesn’t turn over evidence to Congress if they have a viable investigation in the works,” former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance wrote in a post on Bluesky.
Trump then parroted the conspiracy theory on Wednesday, but botched the story of what he claims happened.
“Not only did they cheat, I guess you saw yesterday it came out with China and the license plates—tens of thousands of cards. They use those cards to vote in the second election—my second—the one in 2020. Because as everybody here knows, I won that election by a lot,” Trump said on the White House lawn.
Related | Pam Bondi could be in hot water for using DOJ to do Trump’s bidding
But now, Trump wants a special prosecutor to try to find nonexistent evidence that he won an election he actually lost. It’s a tried-and-true tactic used by Republicans to try to launder conspiracy theories that they blast out on right-wing propaganda outlets like Fox News in order to fire up the MAGA base.
For example, Republicans utilized special counsel John Durham to try to delegitimize the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia’s 2016 election interference, culminating in a weak report that Republicans still used to falsely claim Trump was unfairly targeted.
But given that Bondi spends her time going on Fox News to heap praise on Trump and carrying out his goal of weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies, a carefully selected special prosecutor might just help Trump get what he wants this time.
Lord help us.