For most Republicans, the 2020 election was a slow-motion nightmare. Amid a deadly, once-in-a-century pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and violent riots inspired by Black Lives Matter breaking out across the land, everything had gone completely off the rails for Donald Trump. He was an all-but-helpless victim of deadly circumstances well beyond his control. But once Trump pulled off a seemingly impossible comeback following the ugly aftermath of that heavily disputed contest and recaptured the presidency in 2024, we might have thought he would put 2020 in the rearview mirror. Instead, he signaled on Sunday (Dec. 14) that he is intent on re-litigating the results.
Trump typically pulled no punches in attacking his enemies. “They’re good at cheating in elections, very good at cheating. They’re professionals at cheating,” Trump said while hosting a Christmas event at the White House. “Because we won in 2016 by a lot. The election was rigged in 2020. We have all the ammunition, all the stuff, and you’ll see it come out. It’s coming out in truckloads.”
The first blush of Trump’s project is taking place in Georgia, a particular sore point for the president in 2020, when he lost the state by just over 11,000 votes. He was then indicted for asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes following the election, but the charges were dropped after a scandal involving the prosecuting District Attorney Fani Willis. Firing back, the administration has now filed a lawsuit asking a federal court in Atlanta to demand that ballots from the 2020 presidential election be produced within five days of a court order. The Board of Registration and Elections in Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, has reportedly refused to comply with a subpoena from the state's election board to release all election records, arguing that they were "under seal" in accordance with state law.
Helpful or Vengeful?
The essential question is whether this promise to revisit 2020 stands to be a productive exercise revealing previously unknown, secret, or disputed documentary evidence of election fraud, or merely an act of vengeance against those Trump believes cheated him out of a second term. Is it likely to cast more light than heat, or merely reopen gaping wounds that have festered for years?
While Trump’s mortal enemies, seemingly as numerous as the stars, went ballistic over the president’s claims that the election was rigged (not dissimilar to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ assertion that the “system is rigged”), he challenged the outcome properly, in courts of law. While his claims were rejected by dozens of judges, Trump was under no obligation to accept sight unseen the results of an election like none the country had ever witnessed.
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