The Big Lie: Trump’s January 6th Speech
It was a sunny day on January 6th, 2021, in Washington, DC (World Weather). Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. Meanwhile, at a rally near the White House, Donald Trump gave a manipulatively emotional speech about how Democrats rigged the 2020 election, a conspiracy theory that hinges on motivated reasoning and misinformation circulated in echo chambers. Only an hour after he started speaking, protestors broke through the police barriers at the Capitol. (Lonsdorf et al.)
The main argument of Trump’s speech relies on promoting disinformation to deceive and enrage his supporters. For example, Trump said that in Georgia, “election officials pulled boxes, [..] and suitcases of ballots out from under a table and illegally scanned them for nearly two hours, totally unsupervised” (49:30 — 49:44). The Associated Press reported his claim was deceitful since security footage of the counting center in question shows that nothing illegal happened. Additionally, an independent monitor and an investigator oversaw the center (Woodward). Trump also said that there were “205,000 more votes than voters” in Pennsylvania (33:33 — 33:40). Communications director of the Pennsylvania Department of State, Wanda Murren, described that assertion as “obvious misinformation” (Swenson). Reporters for The Associated Press and Snopes determined the information was based on incomplete and misleading data (Mikkelson, Swenson, Woodward). In both instances, Trump’s evidence is outlandish, not corroborated, and proven false. According to the infographic “In Brief: Confirmation Bias and Motivated Reasoning” (2022) published by The News Literacy Project, “Confirmation bias and motivated reasoning play a big role in conspiratorial thinking. Selective searching online, cherry-picking evidence, and reading significance into random or meaningless details are often at play in belief in conspiracy theories.” That’s why it’s common for conspiracy theories to consist of preposterously false claims. Conspiracy theorists avoid the cognitive dissonance that happens when their beliefs are disproven by employing motivated reasoning and interpreting the debunking as part of the conspiracy.
The belief that the 2020 election was rigged, aka The Big Lie, fits the criteria of a conspiracy theory because it is an inaccurate explanation that blames Democrats and left-leaning news outlets for a malicious plot of widespread voter fraud to prevent Trump’s reelection. Renee DiResta, technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, defines a conspiracy theory as “an unfounded explanation of an event or situation that blames the secretive work of sinister, powerful people, such as a government, a company, or even one person” (0:27 — 0:38). Trump used a lot of unfounded evidence to support his theory, as described previously. The sinister and powerful culprit in The Big Lie is the Democratic Party, aided by the mainstream media. Trump said to the crowd of his supporters, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing” (1:40 — 1:54). Demonizing journalists and other large institutions is common in conspiracy theories. According to the blog post “Conspiracy Theories and How to Help Family and Friends Who Believe Them” (2022) published by the Anti-Defamation League, conspiracy theorists “promote the idea that ‘traditional’ sources of information — such as mainstream news outlets and academic researchers — are unreliable and are even ‘in on’ the conspiracy, attempting to distract people from the truth.” Trump has been discrediting journalism in the country since the start of his political career when he first said “fake news.” Convincing his supporters that reliable news outlets are dishonest results in more of them only using partisan outlets that publish content supporting The Big Lie. According to Kovach and Rosenstiel, journalism “is a discipline of verification” (101) where the “first loyalty is to citizens” (72) and the “first obligation is to the truth” (44). Trump’s speech lacks these crucial features. Also, since Trump can benefit from lying about the 2020 election, he is not an independent source of information on this matter. For those reasons, Trump’s speech is not news. It is propaganda for a conspiracy theory.
Trump uses manipulative, emotional language to convince his supporters that The Big Lie is accurate and to create a community that will echo the theory. The video “Prebunking Manipulation Techniques: Emotional Language (v2),” uploaded by Info Interventions on YouTube, explains that “Playing into your emotions, especially negative ones, such as fear, anger, or contempt, is a trick to get you to pay attention to something when you otherwise wouldn’t” (0:20 — 0:28). Also, “Research has shown that expressing emotion is key for the spread of moral, and especially political ideas in social networks” (0:36 — 0:43). Trump understands the power of emotions. He relies on exaggerated and passionate language in his speech. He villainizes Democrats as “the radical left” and “ruthless” (48:50 — 48:58). He calls the 2020 election “the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world” (63:06 — 63:10). Trump uses this style of speech to help create a strong sense of community for believers of The Big Lie. He talks like he is preparing a troop of soldiers for war. “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” (69:35 — 69:41). Trump’s rallying cry unites his supporters. Together, these people will circulate the misinformation that constitutes The Big Lie. According to an article from The Washington Post, “Research shows that among Republicans […] who said their social circles included a lot of Trump-supporting friends were far more likely to say they accepted the fraud conspiracy theory than were Republicans with a more limited set of Trump-supporting friends” (Bump). The echo chambers created by Trump supporters are even more insidious on social media. Algorithms on platforms like FaceBook, TikTok, and Instagram work by continually serving up similar content to users, making it easier to fall down a rabbit hole of misinformation about the 2020 election.
Trump has been undermining the American voting process since he lost the popular vote in 2016 when he said, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” (qtd. in Axelrod). After four years of eroding trust in elections, it reached a breaking point on the day of that rally, January 6th, 2021. Federal authorities estimated that the insurrection at the Capitol cost $2,734,783.14 in property damages (Smith). The consequences of Trump’s lies and propaganda go beyond financial costs or criminal proceedings. According to “The January 6 Effect: An Evolution of Hate and Extremism,” a webpage by the Anti-Defamation League, in the wake of the riot, conspiracy theories are becoming more mainstream, more politicians glorify and call for violence, and extremism is on the rise with more threats and attacks targeting journalists, school officials, medical professionals, and politicians.
Works Cited
Axelrod, Tal. “A Timeline of Donald Trump’s Election Denial Claims, Which Republican Politicians Increasingly Embrace.” ABC, ABC News Network, 8 Sept. 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-donald-trumps-election-denial-claims-republican-politicians/story?id=89168408.
Bump, Philip. “Analysis | The Community Element of Dangerous Conspiracy Theories.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 8 Mar. 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/08/community-element-dangerous-conspiracy-theories/.
“Conspiracy Theories and How to Help Family and Friends Who Believe Them.” ADL, Anti-Defamation League, 17 Aug. 2022, https://www.adl.org/conspiracy-theories?gclid=CjwKCAjwrpOiBhBVEiwA_473dEzrRegmYtLG5KKmzxbmS_Q4UmgXZJos9GT6YaSjPLYI9LZUFDpNjxoC4kQQAvD_BwE.
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“In Brief: Confirmation Bias and Motivated Reasoning.” News Literacy Project, New Literacy Project, 2022 https://newslit.org/educators/resources/in-brief-confirmation-bias-motivated-reasoning/.
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Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. 4th ed., Crown Publishing Group, 2021, pp. 44, 72, 101.
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Lonsdorf, Kat, et al. “A Timeline of How The Jan. 6 Attack Unfolded — Including Who Said What And When.” NPR, NPR, 9 June 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/01/05/1069977469/a-timeline-of-how-the-jan-6-attack-unfolded-including-who-said-what-and-when#:~:text=January%206%2C%202021%2C%20was%20a,him%20speak%20at%20noon%20ET.
Mikkelson, David. “Did Pennsylvania Record 205,000 More Votes Than Voters?” Snopes, Snopes.com, 13 July 2022, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pennsylvania-205000-votes/.
Smith, Zachary Snowdon. “Capitol Riot Costs Go up: Government Estimates $2.73 Million in Property Damage.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 8 Nov. 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/04/08/capitol-riot-costs-go-up-government-estimates-273-million-in-property-damage/?sh=33f8cee19c59.
Swenson, Ali. “There Were Not More Votes Than Voters in Pennsylvania.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 29 Dec. 2020, https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9887147615.
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