Matt Gertz explains how right-wing media are laying the groundwork to reject election results if Trump loses, just as they did in 2020
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Matt Gertz explains how right-wing media is laying the groundwork to reject election results if Trump loses, just as they did in 2020
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From the May 16, 2024, edition of The New Republic's The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent
MATT GERTZ (MEDIA MATTERS): I think folks tend to forget exactly what we saw back in 2020. One of the key aspects of Donald Trump's plan to overturn the election then was the power of the right-wing media ecosystem and the fact that it is more or less seamless. People who support Donald Trump do not get their news from mainstream sources — they get it almost entirely from Fox News and from outlets even more extreme and more conspiracy-minded than Fox.
And so what that allowed Trump to do was sort of seed the field with a lot of false claims about election fraud and then use that to build a groundswell of right-wing activists who could try to pressure Republican politicians to overturn various aspects of the election at the local, state, and federal level.
You know, it didn't work back in 2020 for a couple of reasons. One reason was that Joe Biden won by enough in enough different states that it was sort of unfeasible to try to overturn that many different outcomes. One reason was that many Republican officials were not on board with the election subversion plan and rebuffed Trump when he tried to do it.
And so, here we are four years later, what I'm seeing is that the Republican information ecosystem is just as strong and just as unhinged as it was back in 2020. We have really, you know, overwrought and extreme claims that are raining down on people on the right on a constant basis about how Joe Biden is basically a dictator and a threat to them and the audience and the audience's family.
And at the same time, this constant idea that Democratic election fraud is everywhere and that Democrats are plotting to steal the election from Donald Trump. It is a constant drumbeat that you hear everywhere on the right from Fox News, from people like Steve Bannon, and on down the line.