On election night 2020, the center of the pro-Trump MAGA world was the rooftop terrace at 101 Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC.
Steve Bannon, once a top adviser to President Trump and now a podcaster, was also in his element.
Behind Mr. Bannon, the Capitol was lit up and the air was cold as Mr. Bannon began his final eight-hour election night broadcast.
He sat in the middle of a panel of guests from what he called “alternative conservative media.” He had panels, maps, election data people, everything.
Former President Trump adviser Steve Bannon appeared on the election night broadcast of his show “War Room” on the night of the 2020 election.
About 100 supporters of Donald Trump gathered on the rooftop with Trump, preparing for a big night of partying.
Mr. Bannon’s show had all the elements of an election night broadcast. But it was much stranger than that.
In fact, there were four different broadcasts happening simultaneously on the same rooftop.
There was Bannon’s show, another right-wing TV network, a right-wing radio network, and the dissident Chinese broadcasters GNews and GTV.
GNews and GTV were part of a billion-dollar fraud scheme run by Steve Bannon’s exiled Chinese friend. They were not a legitimate news organization, nor were they a means to extort money from Chinese expatriates.
But even if the news organization is an investment scam, covering an election requires a plan.
Leaked audio of Steve Bannon reveals election night plans
On October 31, 2020, the weekend before the election, Mr. Bannon met with staff from Chinese news organizations to explain how election night would unfold.
Audio of that meeting was leaked to the news outlet Mother Jones in 2022.
In it, Mr. Bannon told his broadcast partners that Mr. Trump would declare victory early in the evening.
“He’s going to claim victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner.”
Mr. Bannon knew the key to President Trump’s election denial strategy: a basic piece of political science called the “blue shift.”
Basically, when vote counting begins on election night, things initially look very good for Republicans like Donald Trump, but as the night progresses the results tilt toward the Democrats.
This happens because Republicans are concentrated in small towns and report results quickly.
At that Halloween meeting, Mr. Bannon explained to his colleagues how this oddity in the electoral system would be used by Mr. Donald Trump to make people question the results of the election.
“They obviously have a disadvantage, and Trump will take advantage of that.”
So on election night, Bannon says, Donald Trump will declare victory before the blue shift occurs. before Democratic votes in large cities and mail-in ballots are counted and added to the vote count.
“That’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself the winner. So we’re going to wake up Wednesday morning and there’s going to be a lot of noise.”
And he went even further.
“If Trump had lost by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, things would get even crazier,” Bannon said.
“He’s going to sit there and say they stole it.
“If Biden wins, Trump will do something outrageous.”
And of course, three days later, election night unfolded exactly as Bannon said it would.
Rather than admit defeat, Donald Trump appeared in front of television cameras and called the election results a “fraud on the American people.”
“This is a disgrace to our country. We were preparing to win this election.”
“Frankly, we won this election. We won this election.”
On election night 2020, the world watched as President Donald Trump refused to concede. (AP: John Locher)
Earlier this month, a 165-page court filing was unsealed, revealing further details of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Citing previously unknown testimony from close associates of the former president, the filing alleges that Trump “laid the groundwork” to reject the election results before the campaign was over.
He reportedly told his advisers that if he maintained an early lead, he would “declare victory before the votes were counted and a winner was predicted.”
The ensuing 64 days of chaos and intrigue
In 2020, the plan to deny the results of the presidential election was not as complex as the one Steve Bannon outlined in his leaked Halloween planning session.
In the months that followed, Donald Trump and his allies tried to score an impromptu victory in an election they knew they had lost.
You can follow the theories and strategies they used in the talking points amplified on Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Key to delegitimizing the results themselves was a conspiracy theory championed by retired Air Force Gen. Thomas McInerney.
“The Hammer is a surveillance tool… Two weeks after taking power, the Obama administration put the Hammer elsewhere and began using it politically against its enemies. And it modified it with this vote-altering software package. The software package is called a scorecard.”
hammer and scorecard. Government-run supercomputers and secret software. The combination was allegedly used to switch votes from red Trump votes to blue Biden votes in real time on election night.
podcast
If you’re listening
America’s last election: The big lie
The “Hammer and Scorecard” conspiracy theory popularized after the 2020 election all starts with a man with a long history of defrauding the U.S. government.
Days after the election, this is a theory that spread throughout the MAGA media ecosystem, of which Steve Bannon was a part.
It became the “Big Lie” that underpinned a widespread movement to deny the election results.
Hammer and scorecard conspiracy exposed
The lie of the hammer and scorecard was a good fit for the reality of the “blue shift.”
None of that was true. Not only are Democrats not hacking elections, there is no evidence that Hammer and Scorecard exist.
Things are not going well for those involved in promoting the hammer and scorecard theory.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon is scheduled to be released from prison the week before this November’s election. (AP: Alex Brandon, File)
Steve Bannon is in jail for contempt of Congress and is awaiting release five days before the election. Bannon’s Chinese business partner is in jail on fraud charges. His Chinese news network involved in the scam has disappeared.
But this is true of all theories used to deny the 2020 election results. None of the theories about election fraud have been proven true, but that doesn’t really matter. Millions of people believe it.
The danger of this misinformation was evident on January 6, 2021, when thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop what they saw as the fraudulent certification of election results. .
On January 6, 2021, a crowd of supporters of US President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building in Washington, DC. (Reuters: Leah Millis)
Almost 70% of Republicans now say they believe the election was stolen.
Many of Donald Trump’s supporters have spent the past four years believing this, and it’s played a key role in Trump’s efforts to win back the White House.
Make the vote “too big to rig”
Denial of the 2020 election results has a major impact on Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
He frequently shouts at political rallies, pleading with his supporters to make this November’s results “too big to rig.” The implication is that the small losses in 2020 in key battleground states were the result of fraud.
This illustrates the tightrope Donald Trump must walk to get MAGA supporters to vote.
Those who believe the 2020 vote was “rigged” need a reason to try again.
Donald Trump often provokes crowds at his rallies with chants like “too big to equip.” (Reuters: Tom Brenner)
Donald Trump has muddled the issue in recent months, angering some supporters by saying in interviews and rallies that he “lost by a narrow margin.”
However, during a September debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, he retracted the comment, claiming it was made sarcastically.
And at a rally this month in the battleground state of Michigan, Trump again repeated his false claim that he had won the 2020 election.
“We have to be too big to cheat, you know…vote in record numbers.
“You know, in the last, last election, we did great in 2016, but what many people don’t know is that in 2020 we did much better. Ta.
“We won. We won. We did win. It was a rigged election. It was a rigged election.”
“I have to tell Kamala Harris, that’s why I’m doing it again. If I thought I lost, I wouldn’t be doing this anymore.”
Will Donald Trump accept a close result this time?
In 2022, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig presented evidence to the U.S. Congress regarding the events of January 6th.
Michael Luttig, seated next to Greg Jacob, testifies before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. (ABC News: Cameron Schwartz)
He told the committee that Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy.
“It’s not because of what happened on January 6,” Judge Ruttig said.
“That’s because, to this day, the former president and his allies and supporters have promised that in the 2024 presidential election, if the former president loses that election, they will try to overturn (the election) in the same way. They tried to overturn the 2020 election, failed in 2020, but succeeded in 2024.”
Judge Luttig said the former president and his allies were implementing the 2024 blueprint “in the open and clear view of the American people.”
That blueprint is largely based on a failed attempt to deny the 2020 election results.
But while that election denial was orchestrated on the spot, Donald Trump’s response to this narrow loss will benefit from four years of planning by his team and supporters. It will be.
Donald Trump’s campaign is selling merchandise featuring his mugshot. (Reuters: Alyssa Poynter)
Many of those who believe the 2020 election was “stolen” by President Trump’s opponents are also seeking involvement in the political system and a local role in certifying the election results.
Given the campaign rhetoric, it is unlikely that Donald Trump will concede on election night in a close race.
And if Donald Trump wins the election fair and square, he will say more, not less, about the stolen election of 2020, as he uses his presidency to ensure that something like that never happens again. You will be asked a lot of questions.
