f questioning the results of a p**********l e******n were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 e******n and its aftermath, then much of the Democratic Party and media establishment should have been indicted for their behavior following the 2016 e******n. In fact, the last time Democrats fully accepted the legitimacy of a p**********l e******n they lost was in 1988.
After the 2000 e******n, which hinged on the results of a recount in Florida, Democrats smeared President George W. Bush as "selected, not elected." When Bush won re-e******n against then senator John Kerry in 2004, many on the left claimed that v****g machines in Ohio had been r****d to deliver fraudulent v**es to Bush.
HBO even produced and aired the Emmy-nominated "Hacking Democracy," a documentary claiming to show that "v**es can be stolen without a trace," adding fuel to the conspiracy theory fire that the results of the 2004 e******n were illegitimate. But nothing holds a candle to what happened in 2016 after Donald Trump’s surprising defeat of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Rather than accept that T***p w*n and Clinton lost fair and square, the political and media establishments desperately sought to explain away Trump’s victory. They settled on a destructive conspiracy theory that crippled the government, empowered America’s adversaries, and illegally targeted innocent private citizens whose only crime was not supporting Hillary Clinton.
The Russia collusion h**x had all the elements of an e******n conspiracy theory, including baseless claims of hacked v****g totals, illegal v**er suppression, and treasonous collaboration with a foreign power. Pundits and officials speculated openly that President Trump was a foreign asset and that members of his circle were under the thumb of the Kremlin.
Mollie Hemingway calls out the ‘unconscionable’ war on American parents Video
But despite the patent absurdity of these claims, the belief that Trump stole the 2016 e******n had the support of the most powerful institutions, individuals, and even government agencies in the country. To question the legitimacy of the 2016 e******n wasn’t to undermine ourdemocracy; it was considered by some of our most elevated public figures a patriotic duty.
"You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the e******n s****n from you," Clinton told her followers in 2019.
"I know he’s an ill********e p*******t," Clinton claimed of Trump a few months later. She even said during an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning" that "v**er suppression and v**er purging and hacking" were the reasons for her defeat.
Former president Jimmy Carter agreed. "[Trump] lost the e******n and was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf," he told NPR in 2019. "Trump didn’t actually win the e******n in 2016."
Their view was shared by most prominent Democrats in Congress. Representative John Lewis of Georgia, for example, said he was skipping Trump’s inauguration in 2016 because he believed Trump was illegitimate: "[T]he Russians participated in helping this man get elected.... That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not an open democratic process." Lewis had also skipped the inauguration of President George W. Bush, claiming Bush, too, was an ill********e p*******t.
A few members of Congress joined him in 2001. By 2017, one out of three Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives boycotted Trump’s inauguration. Many said they refused to take part in the installation of an "illegitimate" president.
The corporate media didn’t condemn leading Democrats’ refusal to accept the results of the 2016 e******n. In fact, the media amplified the most speculative claims of how Trump and Russia had colluded to steal the e******n from Clinton. They dutifully regurgitated inaccurate leaks from corrupt intelligence officials suggesting Trump and his staff had committed treason. They ran stories arguing that Republicans who didn’t support their conspiracy theory were insufficiently loyal to the country or somehow c*********d themselves.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2020-e******n-investigated-discussed-mollie-hemingway