We Cannot Dismiss Trump’s Speech on Election Conspiracy Theories

It was part of the authoritarian playbook, and he's following it to the letter.

Donald Trump’s conspiracy laden 25-minute primetime address to the nation last week landed with a thud and was widely panned as a rehash of years-old grievances centered on his long-debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

But those of us who work to strengthen our democratic guardrails know better than to dismiss his diatribe as merely paranoid and pathetic. He does have the power of the presidency.

(White House photo)

I have spent decades studying authoritarian movements and working with democracy activists resisting them around the world. The playbook is unoriginal and predictable, and Trump is following it to the letter. First, repeat lies because repetition builds the political and psychological scaffolding for what comes next. Then, create imaginary enemies and engage in fear-mongering against anyone who dissents, including the media, immigrants, and the opposition party. Then rewrite the past, distort the present, and acclimate people to extraordinary government actions.

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump’s actions have fit squarely into that playbook. And there are two reasons why Americans must not dismiss last week’s rambling speech as just the grievances of a self-centered and feeble-minded old man.

First, Trump continues to assault our shared historical memory. More than five years after he incited the January 6 insurrection, the violent attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power remains one of the darkest chapters in modern American history. Still, in November 2024, half of voters returned Trump to office. Instead of honoring the responsibility that comes with public trust, he continues to gaslight the country, including by trying to recast convicted January 6 violent felons as heroes and victims persecuted by government power. This egregious historical revisionism intends to erase accountability for political violence and normalize attacks on democratic institutions. Authoritarian politics depends on this kind of selective rewriting because when people forget or reinterpret past harms, there are fewer lessons to constrain future abuses.

Historical revisionism is only half the formula, though. It must be paired with a manufactured crisis. Crises create permission, a second reason we must remain vigilant in our resolve to protect our democracy and take Trump’s speech seriously.

Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb warned that his speech appeared designed to help establish the predicate for extraordinary executive action around the November midterm elections. The aim is to make whatever follows look lawful and justified, even when it very clearly is not.

That strategy is already taking shape. Trump has taken extraordinary action in service of his narrative about election fraud, including the seizure of ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and his Department of Justice demanding 2024 ballots from Wayne County, Michigan, election officials. He has pressured states to provide voter-roll information to support a false narrative about noncitizens deciding American elections. And he has issued executive orders aimed at federalizing election administration — authority the Constitution does not grant him — while making it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes described the material released alongside the speech as a reheated version of long-debunked conspiracies, selectively declassified to lend a veneer of legitimacy to claims that have repeatedly collapsed under scrutiny. The truth matters little to an authoritarian whose objective is to undermine confidence in elections, convince Americans the system is corrupt, manufacture urgency, and then argue that extraordinary powers are required to “save” the country. But we the people must continue to demand the truth.

The president is taking action to pre-determine the outcome of the November elections, including urging GOP states to unfairly gerrymander more Republican seats and insisting on laws or regulations that would make it harder to vote. Even still, the tea leaves may not be in his favor. If the November elections don’t go Trump’s way, the storyline will already be in place: The votes “can’t be trusted.” That narrative can then be used to justify deploying the federal government to challenge or overturn results.

And we don’t have to guess what that looks like because we’ve already seen the plan in action. Federal power has been used in cities under the banner of law and order. Last summer in Chicago, the Department of Homeland Security used the military, complete with Black Hawk helicopters, to raid an apartment building in a Southside neighborhood, yanking families from their beds. The National Guard has been deployed in ways that would once have seemed politically untenable. The Trump administration has expanded and militarized immigration enforcement under the claim of restoring order. Taken together, these actions point in the same direction of normalizing the use of coercive state power until the extraordinary becomes routine.

So, the question isn’t what comes next, but what Americans must do to preserve our democracy and our way of life. Part of the answer must be resistance by the people. My colleagues at Democracy Defenders Fund and other pro-democracy civil society organizations, along with pro-bono counsel and small law firms around the country, are leading a legal resistance, and it is working. In coalition, we are taking to the streets and raising our voices.

But the ultimate guardrail no authoritarian script can replace is the voters themselves. We must reject this authoritarian agenda and show up at the polls in November to defend our democracy and to deny the president the power to mold our country into his elitist, dystopian vision of what America should be.

Susan Corke is the executive director of Democracy Defenders Action.

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