Column By John Young
Hearing Donald Trump prosecute the Big Lie and Republicans parrot it reminds me of another masterwork in group duplicity.
Back when the George W. Bush White House hewed to shifting fallacious pretexts for invading Iraq, a friend remarked:
“They have to meet every morning to keep their stories straight.”
False comparison, I know: There’s nothing intricate and strategic about Trump and his Big Lie chorus. The MAGA cult doesn’t need even semi-plausible theories to say what it says, just parrot what the Orange One says.
We must marvel, nonetheless, at the scope of this abomination. We aren’t just witnessing a web of lies. We are seeing something as vast and hard to grasp as the whole human genome.
Recently it became evident that one of the key components of the Big Lie was no longer defended by the key purveyor of it.
The film “2000 Mules” has been cited over and over again by Republican policymakers who tightened red-state voting restrictions.
In particular, the movie falsely made ballot drop boxes to be how Democrats “stole” the election.
This resulted in GOP crackdowns on the number of drop boxes and limits on their availability.
“2000 Mules,” produced by GOP activist (and Trump pardon recipient) Dinesh D’Souza, offers “proof” that Democrats were “vote harvesting.”
It says that cell phone geolocation data and video footage show people voting multiple times in the 2020 election – enough illegal votes in key states to swing the election.
It featured comments from an unnamed whistleblower to back up the claims.
Not surprisingly, law enforcement officials wanted to know more.
It turns out that it’s easier to produce a conspiracy-laden film for people who want to believe “Trump was right” than to convince law enforcement.
In 2021 the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had a simple question of the organization behind the film, Texas-based True the Vote: Can we talk to this whistleblower?
Uh, uh, well, uh, we’ll get back to you.
The group similarly stonewalled Arizona investigators.
Now, four years after the “steal,” Washington Post columnist Phillip Bump, who gave D’Souza ample opportunities to back up the film’s claims, has pronounced “Mules” to be based on a hoax.
Bump’s assertion coincides with a stunning development: Faced with a court order by the Georgia investigators to turn over any solid evidence about vote harvesting, True the Vote said it didn’t have any.
These bogus claims were used by Trump in May of 2021 when he cited “millions of votes on camera” showing the “stuffing of ballot boxes.”
No, “they” didn’t.
So, this is why it’s harder to vote in Texas, Georgia, and other states governed by Republicans. Pure bovine excrement had been used to frame ballot drop boxes as silent conspirators in Trump’s defeat.
Nothing has ever added up in the whole “Stop the Steal” movement. How could Trump have been screwed out of a second term when Republicans by and large had a pretty good 2020 election?
If Trump was cheated in swing states, why not other Republicans like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and a host of members of Congress who contested the 2020 election? Yes, contested their own victories.
“2000 Mules” goes down in the annals of lead balloons like the Dominion Voting Systems hoax that cost Fox News $787 million for defamation. Stay tuned for a similar suit by Smartmatic.
Donald Trump decided before his defeat that he was going to lie about it. Evidence be damned.
What’s particularly sinister is that long after Donald Trump is no longer on the scene, the Big Lie will live on in vote-suppression policies that never would have been contemplated without the lie he concocted in ignominious defeat.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
