PART I
The BIG Lie
Crazy never goes out of style
The BIG Lie
In the summer of 2016, during the presidential campaign that pitted real estate mogul Donald Trump against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump — the Republican candidate — began to publicly announce that the only way he could lose the election would be if it were stolen.
While Trump won the Electoral College, it was announced that Clinton had won the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. Trump — never willing to admit defeat of any kind — ordered a presidential commission to identify the three million voters who he said had voted illegally. The commission was abandoned shortly after it began, finding no evidence of voter fraud: Trump had simply lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
Fast forward to the 2020 presidential election, and once again Donald Trump began stating publicly — this time from the White House Briefing Room — that if he lost the election of 2020 it would be because of cheating. The coronavirus had exploded into a pandemic, largely due to Trump’s own ineptness in managing it, causing millions of voters in numerous states to choose to vote safely via mail-in ballots. Trump knew Democratic voters preferred using mail-in ballots during the pandemic, but he insisted mail-in voting was being used by Democrats to steal the election from him. He suggested that unless states got rid of the mail-in ballots, the election would be illegitimate.
Trump had been told by his own campaign staff that he would probably be leading on election night, but that once the mail-in ballots started to be counted, his opponent in 2020— Joe Biden — would likely close the gap, and could overtake him. Once again, Trump refused to accept reality, and claimed — on the night of the election and on national TV — that he had in fact won. He claimed the election was over, and called for the votes to stop being counted.
Biden eventually overtook Trump, and was declared the winner, but Trump would have none of it.
First, Trump sent lawyers to court: his lawyers went to court more than 60 times, many of them courts where Trump had appointed the judge. Each time that Trump lost, his team of lawyers — led by Rudy Giuliani — refused to present any evidence of voter fraud.
Defeat after defeat poured in from the courts, but Trump was unwilling to concede: he was determined to find a way to stay in power even though it was obvious he had lost the election. After losing repeatedly in court, Trump’s team developed new, but illegal, strategies.
They set out to establish illegal electors in states Trump did not win: people in key states would claim Trump won, then try to cast official Electoral College votes for Trump. Several states, including Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania had phony electors sign documents claiming to be the official electors when they were not.
Trump’s attorneys hatched another scheme to change the outcome of the election: they would send the military out to each state and seize voting machines. After seizing voting machines, they would claim these machines had been corrupted and the votes rigged, requiring a new election that surely Trump would win (because he would now control all the voting machines). That idea, fortunately, was scrapped before it left the White House.
Trump also considered replacing the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a half-baked scheme to get key states to throw out votes as ‘irregular.’ A Trump supporter who worked at the DOJ had written a memo suggesting the Justice Department could inform key states that they had uncovered fraud in those state’s voting records. The employee, Jeffrey Clarke, told Trump that if he were the Attorney General, he would send out a memo to key states concerning the fraud found in their votes. The memo would recommend to those states that they throw out all their votes from the November election due to that fraud — which did not exist in reality. This plan failed when the top two officials at the DOJ refused to step down from their positions, and refused to let Trump roll out such an obviously illegal scheme.
Trump also used political pressure in an attempt to influence those who controlled the vote counting. In Georgia, Trump asked the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find votes for him. Raffensperger, a Republican, was pressured by Trump to commit an illegal act, but he refused to comply with Trump’s threats. Standing fast, Raffensperger immediately released a taped copy of the phone call with Trump asking him to “find me just 11,780 votes.”
In yet another illegal effort to overturn the election, attorney and part-time historian John Eastman convinced Trump that the Vice-President — Mike Pence — had the power to throw out Electoral votes when Congress met to officially count them on January 6th. While the Electoral College had already determined that Joe Biden had won, the results of the election wouldn’t become official until Congress met in full session in January, heard the Electoral votes counted, and accepted them as the will of the people. Trump used this argument of Eastman’s — that Pence had the power to throw out Electoral votes — to try to convince Pence to do just that. For days, Trump argued his point to Pence, but Pence also refused to do Trump’s illegal bidding: Pence knew he had no legal authority to change anything, and that his role that day was to simply read the Electoral votes and nothing more.
Trump, angered over the fact that nothing was working in his favor, and that he was going to have to leave the White House in defeat, began — as early as mid December — to plan a rally for his supporters. He invited his followers from all over the country to show up in Washington, D.C. the day Congress would meet to count the Electoral College votes — January 6th. He told them “be there, will be wild.”
Trump was angry that he had lost, but instead of accepting the facts, he lied to his followers about the outcome. He repeatedly told them the voting machines had been rigged; that foreign governments had intervened; and that even his Vice President had betrayed them all. Thousands of Trump’s followers showed up for the rally, where he told them they would have to go down to the Capitol and “fight like hell or they wouldn’t have a country anymore.”
And fight they did. For hours, Trump’s angry mob attacked the Capitol Police that were there to protect the Congress. Thousands of Trump’s followers attacked and beat police officers, then invaded and desecrated the Capitol building itself. During the siege, countless Trump terrorists sought out members of Congress and even searched for Pence after Trump had Tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country.”
And that is The BIG Lie, a lie that is so big and so unbelievable that it could not possibly be true; but told often enough, by enough trustworthy people, it takes on the essence of truth to those who hold the teller of the lie in high esteem. Trump’s lie was aided by the fact that his followers worshipped him like a god, turning the BIG Lie into the BIG Myth.
Trump has been telling this lie since 2016. He used it again in 2020, and then said it daily, right up until his followers became convinced that they must act to save the nation. They believed Trump rather than believing the courts, the Secretaries of State, the Department of Justice, or Mike Pence. They believed what they wanted to believe.
In truth, they had little choice: they thought of Trump as a ‘god.’
The minds of Trump’s followers had been conditioned to trust him before any other person. Trump had become their god, and they would do whatever he told them to do — even if that meant death or prison. Trump used his influence over his followers to get them to come to the nation’s capital and attempt the overthrow of the legitimate government.
One might suggest that those who listened to Trump — those who followed him and attacked the Capitol— were temporarily insane, that they were out of their minds with rage, and that they were not able to make rational choices.
But the problem is much, much deeper than that. This wasn't a spur of the moment fit that jumped on these folks: they believed Trump before they ever got to Washington. In fact, they believed Trump before they ever heard of Trump.
Today we still see followers of Donald Trump swearing their allegiance to him, in much the same way that some still swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. While it may be crystal clear to a sane person that Trump lied — of which there is now overwhelming evidence — those who still follow Trump do so because they still believe in him. Trump is using this power over them to continue to raise money, claiming that if they send him cash, he can return to the White House and restore the nation to some lost glory.
Influential people, like Donald Trump, have an ability to convince others they are legitimate, valid, and trustworthy. Donald Trump was the President, a position of great authority in this nation, and a position that is given great respect. Children are taught to admire and listen to this person, as the President is the leader of our nation.
It is a concept rooted in childhood: we are taught to listen to, and respect, authority figures. We are taught they are thoughtful and trustworthy.
Jim Jones, a religious cult leader from the 1970s, convinced his followers to move to Guyana, and eventually most of them committed suicide drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Jones’ lies preyed upon those people, just as Trump’s lies preyed upon those who followed him.
They believed Trump before they ever heard of Trump
With great power comes great responsibility, as Spiderman might say, but with great power there can also be great abuse. Consider the Catholic Church sex scandals that have plagued America.
Trump was able to use and manipulate his followers core beliefs in the nation’s leader. This is simply one more branch that has grown from the deep root of the lies which American society was built upon.
Lies are tools used to master the ignorant
When a populace is ignorant about history and politics, people can be easily led down roads that lead to their own demise. Don’t think so? Talk to any of the hundreds of January 6th insurrectionists sitting in prison today who believed Donald Trump.
The reason they believed Trump, and the reason so many believe him still today, is they were taught as children to listen to their elders, to listen to and respect those in authority. No one represents authority more than the President of the United States. When an authority figure like the president tells a grand tale, those who hold that person in regard believe the tale as fact, when in truth they are nothing but myth.
Politicians have used lies, deception, and half-truths for hundreds of years to win votes, to buy support, and to win campaigns. Millions of ignorant American voters never knew the truth about candidates they voted into office, for the most part because they were taught to trust leaders. Blindly.
Our educational system is a teacher-led system, where students are led through rote learning of facts about American history. The truth is that most of what generations of Americans have learned about our history is lies, half-truths, and fairy tales.
I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating:
There is a big difference between lies and beliefs: lies damage acutely, but can be overcome with facts and integrity. I’ve written about the damage lies can do here.
Beliefs, however, are when the person expressing the thought actually believes what they are saying because that is what they have been taught from birth, not just what they were told recently. Twisted, distorted beliefs are much more ingrained, and much more difficult to change.
In short, those with beliefs based on lies — and there are millions who believe the lies about Columbus, God, and America — create a unique problem I believe America cannot solve: changing the minds of Americans who have been programmed with lies.
What lies ahead
The most difficult challenge to overcome in impacting the followers of Donald Trump, then, is that these folks don’t see what Trump has done as “lying.” They refuse to recognize his words as fabrications: they trust him implicitly because he was the President. Trusting in the President is something they believe deep-down, and they cannot be convinced he is lying.
And that points to a deeper problem here: they believe Trump based on their own very distorted core beliefs, and getting them to ever see the truth — that Donald Trump is a liar — will require a shift in what they believe at their very core.
The behavior of Trump’s followers then can be tracked not to his lies, but to their core beliefs, taught to them since birth.
Their behavior cannot be credited to Trump’s lies alone, but is part of a lifelong façade of lies all Americans have been told: one lie stacked upon another lie, stacked upon more lies. Lies from a figure so enlarged, the lies take on mythical proportions.
America’s foundation is built on lies
After the Insurrection, hundreds of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol were arrested, charged, and convicted. Sentenced to prison, many of them began to realize that listening to Trump just because he was the President smashed the core belief they held of always trusting the nation’s leader.
New York Times reporter Alan Feuer has spent literally hundreds of hours in court listening to testimony from January 6th defendants. Feuer reports that most of those arrested and charged are middle-aged white men with working-class backgrounds, many of them claiming they have lost their jobs, their homes, their relationships, and now find themselves begging to not lose their freedom. A good number of the defendants have argued that they are being persecuted for their political beliefs, and that they were simply following the orders of the president. And in the face of perhaps thousands more being sent to prison for Trump’s BIG Lie, there could be as many as 15 to 20 million prepared to go to war to return Trump to office.
There seems little hope to change the minds of those so hopelessly lost.
The FBI search of Mar-A-Lago in early August, 2022 has brought out more supporters of the former president, calling to defund the FBI, with at least one physical assault on an FBI facility that led to the death of the assailant.
Their hero covered in shame, Trump’s followers are now left feeling hopeless. Still they won’t quit: they hold on to his BIG Lie and the Big Fantasy that he will soon return to the White House and restore himself to the role of president — another Big Myth. They continue to believe in him long after he has proven himself untrustworthy. They believe in him at their own peril, and may just believe in him to their grave.
Trump’s attempt to fill the federal courts with conservative judges has already led to the overturning of one major legal precedent, Roe v. Wade, and many of his followers — including those in Congress — continue the push for a more Christian nationalist agenda, based on the very disturbing beliefs that God created this nation and inspired the U.S. Constitution. These are the core values of Trump’s followers: they believe in the God of the Bible, and that God created this nation, and inspired its constitution. And they believe that God placed Donald Trump at the head of this nation to save it for God’s people: they believe that Trump is the Chosen One, a superhuman, mythological figure.
When Trump speaks, what seems like lies to the rest of us, simply builds on the myth in the minds of Trump’s followers that he is their God-given hero.
It is my thesis then that the majority of Trump’s followers, including those in the Republican Party, cannot see and cannot believe their actions are wrong; they do not and cannot believe the words used by Trump are lies, but instead, believe what he says is truth, convinced through their own core beliefs and their own willingness to accept myth as fact. They base their understanding of what they see and hear on those core beliefs: what they believe is rooted in what they have been taught since birth. And they see Trump as a god-like figure, destined to save America.
They are incapable of seeing, hearing, or believing that Donald Trump is a fraud, and believe in him in the same way they do both God and The Founders of this nation.
What they have failed to comprehend fully is that everything Trump has told them was a lie, a story — a myth — fabricated by Trump. The deeper truth still is that what they have been taught about God and the Government, since birth, are also largely myth, not fact.
This ends Part I, The BIG Lie.
© Timothy J. Sabo 2022 All Rights Reserved
