The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020

Politico reporter Lemire debuts with a trenchant analysis of the origins and impact of Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Tracing the roots of the January 6 Capitol riot to an August 2016 rally in which Trump first publicly said that he expected the upcoming presidential election to be rigged, Lemire sketches Trump’s long record of distortions about his real estate holdings, wealth, TV ratings, and sex life. Lemire also details how Trump’s promotion of the “birther” conspiracy during the Obama presidency helped him to gain traction among Republican voters and revisits the 2019 episode in which then president Trump crudely altered a hurricane forecast map in order to justify his erroneous claim that Alabama had been in the storm’s path. Though treated as a joke at the time, Trump’s actions, coupled with the pressure government employees felt to support him, “changed the very nature of the nation’s politics and deliberately exacerbated the mistrust many Americans already had in their government.” Throughout, Lemire forcefully calls out Trump’s Republican enablers and uncovers behind-the-scenes details about Sen. Joe Manchin’s torpedoing of the “Build Back Better” bill and other events. This dispatch on the state of American politics hits the bull’s-eye. (July)