It was all rigged from the start
You have to be very careful about using the words “rigged election” these days, after Donald Trump spent the past three years basing his entire political existence around the flat out lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him. But the cold hard ugly reality – which we’ve all known for a very long time – is that the 2016 election was in fact rigged for Trump. Now we finally have one of Trump’s own associates admitting under oath that he and Trump rigged the 2016 election together – and not just against Hillary Clinton.
When David Pecker took the stand in Trump’s criminal trial yesterday, he confessed under oath that he and Trump spent the 2016 election conspiring to put out knowingly false stories about whoever Trump’s most dangerous opponent was at the time. When Marco Rubio was surging in the polls, Trump and Pecker ran National Enquirer stories falsely claiming Rubio had a love child. When Ted Cruz was the last Republican standing against Trump, Trump and Pecker shifted to tarnishing Cruz’s reputation. And then once it was clear that Trump would face Hillary in the general election, Trump and Pecker began putting negative and often knowingly false stories about Hillary in the National Enquirer. Trump and Pecker also conspired to acquire negative stories about Trump so that they couldn’t be run.
“It’s just the National Enquirer,” some might say. But the average Trump voter in 2016 is precisely the kind of person who sees the fictional National Enquirer headlines in the checkout aisle and thinks they’re true. And since this media manipulation in favor of Trump and against his opponents was connected to an act of felony financial fraud on Trump’s part, this means that Trump criminally conspired to rig the 2016 election in his favor.
This is on top of the fact that Trump had Michael Cohen pay Stormy Daniels not to reveal Trump’s affair with her during the election, only to illegally bury the payments. It’s also on top of the part where Republicans pressured James Comey into sending them a completely misleading last minute letter about Hillary Clinton being under criminal investigation when she wasn’t, which they then leaked. And it’s on top of the Senate’s bipartisan report from a few years ago which quietly but definitively confirmed that Russia manipulated the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.
So yes, the 2016 election was indeed rigged. Trump’s own co-conspirator David Pecker just confirmed it under oath. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen is about to confirm it under oath. Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are about to confirm it under oath. And when Trump is convicted in this trial, it won’t just be confirmation that he committed financial fraud. It’ll be a trial verdict affirming that Trump criminally rigged the 2016 election. If he hadn’t rigged the election, Hillary Clinton very likely would have won. For that matter, if Trump hadn’t rigged the 2016 Republican primary, he might not have even been the Republican nominee.
