Some Big Truths To Displace Trump’s Big Lie

The president’s dishonesty demands more than just a five-Pinocchio rating.

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Evan Gottesman is the director of communications and special projects at the Renew Democracy Initiative and managing editor of The Next Move.

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Of all of President Donald Trump’s fibs, the Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged is his favorite. Last night, the president devoted a prime-time address to the subject. It’s personal for Trump, whose ego is permanently bruised by his loss to Joe Biden.

By the standard of Trump speeches—admittedly, a low bar to clear—yesterday evening’s grievance session was something of a nothingburger. Trump appeared tired, lacking ferocity. Yet the Big Lie is bigger than one speech, and it is deeper than some sour grapes over an election held six years ago; it’s part of a politics of resentment that aims to sow doubt about democracy and ultimately induce surrender.

In the leadup to the speech, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff described the president as “the world’s most famous sore loser.” Media outlets went through the motions of fact checking Trump’s address, observing that he did not substantiate his claims with concrete evidence.

This is all fair, but it’s not enough. The Big Lie is contagious. A YouGov poll released last summer found that more than a quarter of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, do not think the US is a democracy. Roughly another quarter are not sure. Our elections are supposedly rigged, so the United States is already not a democracy. Perhaps, one might begin to wonder, being a democracy is not so important after all.

It follows that Trump’s dishonesty demands more than just a five-Pinocchio rating and some sharp digs. A fatigued nation needs leaders who will reinforce Big Truths to displace the president’s Big Lie.

Here are just a few:

The truth is that American elections are safe and orderly. Voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Violence around election day is uncommon too. A bloodshed-free trip to the ballot box is not the standard everywhere in the world, nor was it always the case here in the US.

The truth is that our system of free and fair elections is worth celebrating. The very ability to choose our leaders is worth celebrating. Seventy-five percent of all people on Earth—more than six billion human beings—live under dictatorships. Many have sacrificed their lives and livelihoods for the things that we take for granted.

The truth is that liberal democracy really is—to borrow from Francis Fukuyama—”the final form of human government.” The past two centuries have been about extending rights to people who were excluded from the system rather than fundamentally overhauling it. Over 200 years, no one has come up with a better formula than one person, one vote, backed up by the rule of law and an expanding menu of civil liberties.

Don’t read complacency in these Big Truths. Having something to be proud of does not mean that our system is perfect, nor is it an invitation to rest on our laurels.

Indeed, there is one more Big Truth to consider, which is that the more established our democratic system, the more that’s at stake. There is a real possibility that federal agents will seek to intimidate voters during the midterms. The president may try (again) to overturn the outcome of an election. We have a lot to lose in those scenarios: ten generations of hard-fought progress, to be exact.

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