It's one of many articles of bad faith in MAGA world, the fact-free zone of delusion and conspiracy that Donald Trump and his enablers, lackeys, lickspittles, and loser voters exist in. They believe that it's fine that Trump challenge the results of the secure and fair-ish (leaving aside all the ways that the GOP disenfranchised voters) 2020 election because, they insist, Democrats tried to overturn the 2016 election.
Sure, part of that comes from their basic misunderstanding of the constitutional impeachment vote (impeachment and removal wouldn't have given Hillary Clinton the presidency), but Trump has said repeatedly, most recently on December 2, that Democrats and "their four year effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election" and that Democrats "perpetrated one phony and fraudulent hoax after another. You’ve been watching it now for four years." For him, it all began right before the 2016 election, when allegations about Russian interference in favor of Trump were first raised. Rather than react as a normal fucking president and say, "Oh, shit, that's bad. We should investigate the fuck out of that," Trump immediately took it as an attack on his legitimacy when no one in any position of power was trying to change the outcome of the presidential race.
In fact, here's then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on November 17, 2016: "After winning the Presidency, the Electoral College, but losing the popular vote, I think that President elect Trump, that he has a responsibility to try to bring people together, not continue to fan the flame of division and bigotry. Later today, I'll meet with Vice President-elect Pence, and it is my hope that we can discuss areas where we can work together constructively. As we've always said, we always try – we have a responsibility to find common ground but to stand our ground when we can't." You see that? Pelosi didn't even wait for the certification. She didn't wait for the safe harbor date. She declared Trump the winner and talked about how to work with the incoming administration. Like a fucking normal human would.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was working so hard to overturn the election that he and other Democrats were looking for ways to negotiate with Trump: "Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, elected Wednesday as the new Democratic minority leader, has spoken with Mr. Trump several times, and Democrats in coming weeks plan to announce populist economic and ethics initiatives they think Mr. Trump might like." That's from November 16, 2016, with not a word about trying to get states to send alternate electors.
What about the leaders on the left? In a speech to the AFL-CIO right after the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren talked about the things she and Trump agreed on: "He talked about the need to address the rising cost of college and about helping working parents struggling with the high cost of child care. He spoke of the urgency of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and putting people back to work." Of course, Trump had been fucking lying throughout the campaign about that shit, as anyone who knew a goddamn thing about him could tell. But Warren wanted to get shit done, so you work with the hand you're dealt. Or that's what it used to be. Democrats are playing poker. Republicans are playing 52-card pickup.
Yes, there were liberal voices who wanted something to happen to stop an obviously incompetent, dangerous, greedy, maniacal narcissist from becoming president. Fuck, I was one of them, and I was fucking right. But that wasn't the view of the Democratic Party and its elected officials.
What happened is that Trump decided that everyone was out to get him because, in his warped pudding of a brain, everyone is always out to get him. And because his campaign had actively sought intel from Russians, he knew that any real investigation into that country's interference would naturally show what a goddamn criminal he was (and always has been). But that shit's on him. He created the myth of Democrats trying to overturn the election when, really, the best effort was made to remove just him from office, leaving Mike Pence as president.
All Republicans who go along with this lie about Democrats are really just saying that they were too fucking cowardly to get rid of the madman when they had the chance. And they're justifying their own fucking lies about the 2020 election because they're still cowards.
