Trump Keeps Pushing the "Big Lie" With (You Guessed It) More Lies

Matt Johnson/Flickr

AFTER HE WAS BOOTED INDEFINITELY from the major social media sites (for continuing to push the "Big Lie" after the Capitol insurrection), Donald Trump promised us an amazing social media site of his own.

Then, his staffers created him a blog site instead. That's...cool, too, I guess.

Trump used that site, which is decidedly not social media, to whine on Thursday about the continued use of the term the "Big Lie." The real "Big Lie," he claimed, was from Democrats and the media, because they continued to push the very real outcome of the 2020 election (that President Joe Biden was the rightful winner) instead of acquiescing to Trump's false notions that he was the legit winner.

To reiterate: there was no election fraud — none whatsoever — that led to Trump losing. Trump was the legitimate loser, and Biden was the actual winner, of the 2020 election. (In fact, out of the few illegitimate votes, out of hundreds of millions cast, that have been found appear to be for Trump, which, if anything, shows that some of HIS supporters' votes were illegal.)

Nevertheless, Trump continued to claim this week, on his not-social-media-social-media site, that he had still won the election. He also tried to co-opt the "Big Lie" term to say there was an actual lie...against him.

"The 2020 Election, which didn’t even have Legislative approvals from many States (which is required under the U.S. Constitution), and was also otherwise corrupt, was indeed The Big Lie," Trump wrote

This produces yet another lie from the former president, who told dozens of them daily while he was in office: legislatures don't need to approve their states' election results.

Every state approved its electoral outcome in its own way. Contradictory to Trump's assertions, there were no states without "legislative approvals" because the U.S. Constitution doesn't actually require that. Instead, the Constitution says that every state:

• "shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress..."

In other words, the Constitution says that the certification process for picking electors is determined by the state. It makes no mention of state legislatures having to sign off on the final outcomes.

Which goes to show that Trump is the farthest thing from a constitutional scholar as you can get.

The "other guy" closed out his tirade by calling the "Big Lie" the "greatest Fraud in the history of our country," adding that it was a "greater Hoax than Russia, Russia, Russia, Mueller, Mueller, Mueller, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, or any of the other many scams the Democrats pulled!"

Some quick "lightning round" thoughts"

1) "Russia" wasn't a hoax. They tried to influence 2016, no matter how much Trump wants to pretend they didn't (they did the same thing in 2020 as well).

2) The Mueller investigation wasn't a fraud either. But it's a weird thing to see Trump, who used to say Mueller exonerated him, now say that his findings are a hoax. For what it's worth, Mueller said Russia DID try to influence our elections, and found at least 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice that Trump engaged in.

3) The impeachments weren't hoaxes, either. Trump tried to get a foreign country's president to start an investigation on Biden before agreeing to help defend that country's borders (impeachment #1), and he pushed his followers to come to DC on January 6 for a "wild" time, urging them on January 6 to "take back the country" by going directly to Congress on that day and telling them they couldn't do it "with weakness" (impeachment #2). He avoided conviction in both cases, but in impeachment #2, though two-thirds didn't vote to convict, a majority of senators (including some Republicans) agreed he deserved to be indicted.

Some might say, "Trump's off social media — why bother bringing him up anymore?" It's clear that he still has a lot of sway in right-wing American politics (the current infighting among Republicans proves it). But it's also important because the lies he tells needs push-back, lest more people start to believe them.

This president isn't going to let the "Big Lie" he and his supporters want to believe to go away. It's important that we dispel it as often as possible, and make most Americans realize how foolish and wrong this former president is. To not do so welcomes an unopposed ideology of misinformation and propaganda that will veer our country down a terrifying path.