The 2024 election denying has begun

Trump, Vance, and Speaker Mike Johnson are setting the stage for denying Kamala Harris a win on Nov. 5. Here’s one thing you can do to fight back.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and others are setting the stage to deny the results of the 2024 presidential election if Trump loses.

How do we know this? Johnson and Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, still cannot acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election.

Terrified of the wrath of Trump and his MAGA hordes, Vance refuses to admit what every sane person knows: Trump lost a free and fair election, and in a desperate effort to cling to power, he fomented a violent insurrection to overturn the election results.

What the world saw clearly on live television, many Republican leaders cannot admit, fearing that MAGA might kill them or throw them out of office.

On Sunday, Johnson also refused to acknowledge this reality.

Here’s how ABC News covered his appearance on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”:

"Can you say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"See, this is the game that is always played by mainstream media with leading Republicans. It's a gotcha game. You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we're talking about the future," Johnson said. "We're not going to talk about what happened in 2020. We're going to talk about 2024."

"So like Sen. Vance, you cannot say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost?" Stephanopoulos asked, referring to Vance's non-answer on this topic at the vice presidential debate Tuesday.

"George, I'm the Speaker of the House. I work with the president of the United States all the time. Joe Biden has been the president for four years. There's not a question about this, OK? It's already been done and decided, and this is a 'gotcha' game that's played, and I'm not playing it. I want to talk about the future. Let's talk about policies," Johnson said.

Notice how Johnson acknowledges that Biden holds the office without saying he won the election? That answer leaves plenty of room to conclude that Johnson believes, like Trump and MAGA, that Biden is president only because he stole the election.

Continuing to sow and entertain doubt about the validity of the 2020 election is part of the ongoing effort to plant doubt about anything other than a clear Trump win on Nov. 5.

And part of that effort is to instill doubt about the integrity and goodwill of government officials at all levels.

This is partly accomplished by pre-testing the system of lies and disinformation by spreading outrageous falsehoods about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

If MAGA people gobble up lies about FEMA money intended for North Carolina flood victims being sent to illegal immigrants, they can be misled to believe that nefarious federal government officials — the “Deep State” Trump talks about — are also preparing to steal votes from Trump and give them to Kamala Harris.

But the noxious Helene misinformation campaign is not only about spreading lies and priming MAGA to remain gullible enough to believe more of them; it’s also about generating white-hot anger at Biden and the “Deep State” in the weeks leading up to the election.

Trump and his allies want that anger to grow and remain so intense that he can activate his MAGA hordes to vote, intimidate minority voters in battleground states on Election Day, and harass election officials in those same states after the election.

Trump and the far-right already have a media ecosystem that can quickly spread their lies and foment hate and violence. The question over the next month is whether the mainstream media is equipped and willing to deal with these lies or will they, as they have so often done in the past, become neutral spreaders of disinformation.

Judging by the national media’s sorry record over the past 10 years, I’m not optimistic that they are willing or prepared for this challenge.

You and I must do what we can to get the truth out.

So, what can we do?

As I have written before, we all have an asset we can use to secure our nation’s future: our credibility.

Share reliable information about this and other issues with the people in your life. Leverage their trust in you to expose them to the truth.

I’ll repeat here what I wrote a few months ago:

There are people in your life — family, friends, professional associates, church members, neighbors, clients, customers — who respect you. They admire your decency, judgment, faith, concern for community, love of family, devotion to your country, and compassion for the less fortunate.

All you are and believe has earned you the admiration of people in your life. You influence them already and probably don’t realize it.

If you share your concerns about Donald Trump or your support for Kamala Harris, many of these people will listen to you.

They will pay attention if you share your alarm over Trump's radical agenda (Google “Project 2025”).

If I have your attention now, let me suggest how these interactions with your friends or family might work:

Create a list of the 10 to 20 people in your life you care about the most. What do those people know about you? They likely see you as a compassionate person who cares about your family. They admire you as a parent or a grandparent. They see how you care for your parents and try to emulate you.

So, tell them why proposals to arrest and expel millions of immigrants trouble you so much. Tell them about the families that will be separated under Trump’s mass deportation policy. Tell them about the young children who will be ripped away from their parents. Tell them of the pain and sorrow this will cause — not to mention the massive economic damage this cruel policy will cause here.

Find a news article that discusses this policy fairly and objectively.

Maybe your email message to a family member could be something as simple as this:

”Dear Aunt Bea,

”I know you share my devotion to family. You’ve always inspired me by holding your family tighter through the hardest times, and I’ve tried to do the same.

”That’s why all this talk about deporting millions of hardworking immigrants worries me so much. It will separate millions of vulnerable children from the parents and communities they’ve always known. It will damage them. It will separate and shatter their families. It will make us weaker and less prosperous. It also goes against what I believe the Bible teaches about welcoming the stranger in our midst.

”I would appreciate your spending five minutes reading the attached article. I think it’s fair and accurate.

“My concern about this issue is one reason I plan to vote for Kamala Harris. You may have a different view or may not have made up your mind, but I hope you will consider this one important issue when making your decision.

“I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if some politician had forced me to leave my community as a child. I want every child in this great, beautiful, welcoming country to have the same opportunities and family support as I had.”

You get the idea.

The people in your life you want to influence may not be persuaded by a clip from last night’s Rachel Maddow show. They may not respond well to a vitriolic, personal opinion about Trump.

Now, your Fox News-watching cousin who flies a Trump flag in his front yard is probably not your key target for these messages, so feel free to omit people who you know will not hear you. It’s not worth provoking people who are not ready to listen.

This is not about starting an argument; it’s about starting fruitful conversations.

But among those with whom you feel safe, you can launch a discussion based on the values you share and hold dear. Those people will likely respect your views on whatever issue you share with them. At least, most of them will listen to you. And that’s a start.

When we wish to influence people, shared values are almost always the place to begin. It’s that common ground where you and I can initiate a hard conversation. It’s how we help people to see the world through our eyes.

You have issues that you care about. You know the people in your circle better than anyone. You know the values you have in common with those people.

Explore that. And write or talk with them about it.

Or choose a chapter from Project 2025 and explore it in depth. Tell the people in your circle what it means. Invite them to read it verbatim. Gently guide them toward understanding your concerns about it.

Or simply forward dispassionate, reliable information about issues to your friends and family. Many of them are not as informed as you. They don’t know where to get reliable information about the issues.

You can become that source. By sharing those stories with them, you can leverage their respect for you and your judgment.

When that information comes from you, it will have credibility.

Share reliable, dispassionate sources of information with them and begin a conversation or plant a seed.

You may not have $1,000 to give to Kamala Harris, but your influence and reputation among dozens of people in your sphere of influence is worth far more than $1,000.

Please consider putting those precious resources to work in the coming weeks and months!

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