Trump’s 2020 election claims back in spotlight in closing weeks of campaign

Former President Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss is back in the headlines because of his own comments and those of his running mate, putting an issue that could be problematic for Trump front and center in the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign.

Vice President Harris has not made the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy nearly as central to her campaign as President Biden did before ending his candidacy in July.

But Trump’s unwillingness to let go of his defeat or even acknowledge it and the reluctance of many Republicans to break with the former president on the topic has given Democrats an opening to appeal to voters wary of backing the GOP nominee.

“We can say with absolute certainty that Trump and his campaign do not want this to be a topic of conversation,” said Jim Kessler, a co-founder of the left-center think tank Third Way.

“They do not want this in the news cycle at all and they feel it does damage,” Kessler said. “And it does damage because it’s a reminder to people of the chaos that he brings and that he denies the obvious truth.”

Trump’s continued false claims that he won the 2020 election or that it was rigged against him made their way back into headlines in recent days partly because of an exchange that came late in the vice presidential debate in which Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) downplayed Trump’s refusal to concede.

“This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) replied to Vance. “And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say, he is still saying he didn’t lose the election. I would just ask that: Did he lose the 2020 election?”

Vance would not directly answer, saying he was focused on the future.

Trump routinely invokes his distrust in the 2020 results at campaign rallies, and he did so again at a rally in Michigan last week.

“We did great in 2016 and a lot of people don’t know that we did a lot better in 2020. We won. We won. We did win. It was a rigged election,” Trump said.

When a reporter asked Vance about those comments at one of his own events in Georgia, the vice presidential candidate shrugged off the question and told the reporter who asked it, “bless your heart.”

Multiple Republican lawmakers were asked during Sunday show appearances about Trump’s refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election. In a sign of how Trump’s election fraud claims have become a litmus test for loyalty, top lawmakers sought to dance around the topic.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called questions about the 2020 election a “gotcha game.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a candidate to serve in a future Trump Cabinet, said Biden was elected, but that it was an “unfair election in many ways.”

In addition, court documents were unsealed last week in which special counsel Jack Smith revealed new details about Trump’s efforts to remain in power, including conversations he had with aides about having lost in 2020 and his nonchalance upon learning then-Vice President Mike Pence had to be moved to a secure location at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Trump and his allies have railed against Smith’s latest filing as an example of “election interference” intended to distract voters in the closing weeks of a campaign.

The former president has more broadly attempted to flip the argument about threats to democracy back onto Democrats, arguing it is his opponents who are the real danger to the country. He has cited the numerous legal cases against him and the change in the Democratic nominee for president, likening it to a “coup.”

“The threat to democracy are when you put incompetent people in charge of our country. That’s a real threat to democracy,” Trump said during a Sunday rally in Wisconsin.

A poll conducted in late September by NPR/PBS News/Marist found 64 percent of registered voters said preserving democracy will be a deciding factor in their choice of candidate in November.

An Associated Press poll conducted shortly after Harris became the Democratic nominee found majorities of Democrats and Republicans said democracy could be at risk depending on who won in November, but the question of which candidate posed a threat to democracy was divided along partisan lines.

While Biden made the threat Trump poses to democracy and government institutions central to both his 2020 and 2024 campaigns, Harris has made it less of an emphasis since replacing Biden atop the ticket in late July.

The vice president has instead focused much of her time on talking about issues like the economy, immigration and protecting abortion access and other rights.

But the recent resurgence of Trump’s 2020 election claims has given the Harris campaign an opening to go on offense.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who became a fierce Trump critic after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, has endorsed Harris and campaigned with the vice president in Wisconsin last week, where she eviscerated Trump as unfit for office.

Cheney will be joined at an event Wednesday in Pennsylvania by three former Trump White House officials who have become outspoken critics of their old boss: Sarah Matthews, Alyssa Farah Griffin and Cassidy Hutchinson. The event is not affiliated with the Harris campaign, but it is taking place in a pivotal battleground state and is expected to focus on threats to democracy.

“I consider threats to democracy a top tier issue … but if you feel that way already you’re convinced,” Kessler said. “And so what I think is more significant about the Liz Cheney endorsement is less that it brings back Jan. 6 to the fore, but it gives a permission structure for traditionalist Republicans to say, ‘You’ve never liked this guy, you’ve always worried about what he’d be like. I’m giving you permission to go to Harris.'”

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