Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork to deny the results of the 2024 election.
Sen. Sanders said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA:
Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that “nobody” showed up at a 10,000 person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness. Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses. If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are “fake” and “fraudulent.”
This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about.
This is why we must do everything we can to see that Trump is defeated.
Trump is trying to delegitimize the Harris-Walz crowd sizes, because it is a gateway to a delegitimization of the election results. Trump is freaked out by the Harris energy and the big crowds, but he also knows that if he acknowledges those big crowds as real, it makes it more difficult for him to deny the election results after he loses.
Bernie Sanders was correct. Trump is setting the stage for claiming that the election was stolen from him and that the people who voted for Harris-Walz were not real. Part of this is because the ex-president has lived his entire life in a delusional fantasy land. The other part is that a strong Harris campaign that draws large crowds makes it difficult for him to deny the results.
Trump works every day to undermine the legitimacy of democracy, and he must be stopped.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
