Eric Lutz writes:

Back in November, on the same day Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Alabama Republican Mo Brooks announced that he would fight the results of the vote—and urged his colleagues to do the same. “There’s no way I’ll vote in the House to ratify the Electoral College votes of states where illegal votes distorted the will of the people in those states who voted legally,” the congressman wrote November 7. “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud and election theft measures,” Brooks said weeks later. “In my judgment, based on what I know to be true, Joe Biden was the largest beneficiary of illegally cast votes in the history of the United States.”

The remarks were, like Trump’s own relentless fraud claims, the desperate conspiratorial ramblings of a man unable to accept reality—and may have been easy to dismiss as such, were it not for the four years of lies and delusions that preceded them. Other Republicans quickly took up the charge, making clear that they had no interest in turning down the temperature, but rather in helping to fan the flames. By New Year’s, Brooks’ election protest had found voice in the upper chamber, where Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz announced they, too, would object to the certification of Biden’s win. The groundswell continued to build, with Trump encouraging his supporters to flood Washington the day of the certification for a “wild” demonstration. After two months of all this, the country was clearly headed to a dangerous place. And yet, what ultimately happened January 6 still somehow managed to shock: Trump, Brooks, and others whipped the armed MAGA faithful into a frenzy and directed them to march to the Capitol, where lawmakers were beginning to formalize Biden’s win. The rioters stormed Congress, stalking the halls in search of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and other officials Trump had rallied his supporters against. And though the insurrection was ultimately quelled and the chambers would later reconvene to finish the work of democracy, the lies that led to the deadly attack continued to spread, laying the foundation for the myriad voter suppression bills GOP-led legislatures across the country have gone on to push.

The episode underscored how quickly and easily one dangerous falsehood can snowball into something much larger and harder to contain—and should be a lesson for Democrats and anyone who believes in American democracy, as Trumpworld attempts to use the grotesque “recount” effort underway in Arizona as a blueprint to help undermine confidence in the election results in other states. [Continue reading…]