How the GOP Learned to Embrace ‘Stolen’ Election Claims

Philip Bump: “From the earliest days of his candidacy, Donald Trump forced Republicans and the conservative media to figure out how to make his most extreme rhetoric defensible, if not palatable. Trump would say something and his base of supporters would quickly seize on it. His allies were left playing catch up, needing to both nod along with Trump in order not to alienate voters or viewers but while still often insisting on some tether to reality.”

“So the specific claim that Trump Tower had been wiretapped became a story about intelligence agencies revealing the identity of someone who had been talking to Russia’s ambassador. The insistence that the Russia probe was a witch hunt — offered even before we learned anything about its genesis — became a complicated story about improperly obtained warrants and, more recently, a false claim that it was all Hillary Clinton’s fault.”

“When Trump lost in November 2020, the party might have been forgiven for assuming that the defeat marked the end of the pattern.”