A never-Trump conservative argued that the president has finally built something he has spent years chasing – a story about election fraud that no evidence can ever disprove.
The Bulwark's Will Saletan analyzed President Donald Trump's baseless, week-after claims of voter fraud, which he argued were remarkably durable as he repurposes his lies to fit each loss.
“But as a denialist innovation, it’s marvelous,” Saletan wrote. “It covers all the scenarios he failed to cover in his previous tales of rigging and cheating. Anytime he loses, no matter the facts or circumstances, he can say the election was stolen.”
In 2020, Trump claimed Democrats waited until the counts were in and then dumped fake ballots in the swing states where they needed them. This year, Republicans trailed in televised vote counts from the start, so Trump moved the alleged fraud to early voting and now claims fake ballots were slipped in before counting began.
He has flipped his line on polls, too. For years, Trump dismissed surveys showing Democrats ahead as “fake polls” and pointed to his 2024 win as proof. This year, the pre-election polls looked bad for Republicans and the results were worse, so Trump now argues that the gap proves the count can’t be trusted.
“In short: When Trump wins, the vote counts are real and the polls are fake,” Saletan wrote. “When he loses, the polls are real and the vote counts are fake.”
The writer argued that Alaska shows Trump adjusting the story in real time. For weeks, he complained that a candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. had confused voters in Sen. Dan Sullivan’s race against Democrat Mary Peltola. But a New York Times analysis found that most of the other Sullivan’s voters ranked Peltola second.
Trump then went further. He branded the race “voter fraud” and demanded that votes for both the other Sullivan and a third candidate, Gerald Heikes, be handed to the senator. The Bulwark compared that to his 2020 demand that Georgia officials “find 11,780 votes.”
Saletan also noted that Trump told Fox News on election night that he “won” Minnesota “three times.” He lost the state in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
“Ultimately, there’s only one number Trump will accept,” Saletan concluded. “It’s the number of elections he’s ever lost. That number, in his mind, is zero.”