In many ways, it was a simple yet systematic failure of imagination in Trump World that prevented anyone from anticipating that the Oval Office was about to be overtaken by Rudy Giuliani; that the president would rush to install a band of sycophants across the administration; and that the repeated misuse and abuse of the bully pulpit from the world’s most powerful political office would foment a revolution in the heart of the nation’s capital.
Trump had spent four years insisting that anything negative about his brand was fake news. The media was lying, no other elected officials should be believed, and the courts weren’t to be trusted. It was a lie that he repeated most consistently when it came to his standing among American voters. Positive polls were accurate, negative polls were wrong, and the only possible explanation for any electoral defeat—the 2020 presidential race, the 2016 Iowa caucuses, or even the 2004 Emmys—was the predictable, if false, claim of cheating and fraud. Each repetition of rigged elections was its own jackhammer to the foundation of the country’s democratic principles.
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