Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing author and filmmaker, admitted last week that one of the key pieces of evidence in his film “2000 Mules,” a 2022 documentary alleging a vast conspiracy involving thousands of “mules” placing fraudulent ballots for Joe Biden into drop boxes, was based on “inaccurate information.”
Just as the film’s distributor, Salem Media, did back in May when it pulled it from its platforms, D’Souza apologized to a man who sued both him and Salem for defamation, after the man was falsely accused in the film of being one of the fictitious “mules.” But, D’Souza still insisted, “there was systematic election fraud sufficient to call the outcome into question” and the film’s “basic message” remains accurate. (According to The New York Times, the suit against Salem was dismissed shortly after the company apologized. But the falsely accused man’s lawsuit against D’Souza and the organization that partnered with him on the film, True the Vote, is ongoing and motions for summary judgment are expected to be filed this month.)
You could say the big lie won the 2024 election.
This aptly summarizes our current political moment. Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen has been debunked for years in court and by Republican and Democratic election officials. It was also roundly rejected by the 6-3 conservative-leaning Supreme Court and several members of the first Trump administration — including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his attorney general Bill Barr. But the “basic message” of that lie will never die.
In fact, you could say the big lie won the 2024 election.
On Election Day 2024, Trump baselessly warned that there was already “massive cheating” by Democrats going on. The next day, D’Souza posted to X: “Kamala got 60 million votes in 2024. Does anyone really believe Biden got 80 million in 2020? Where did those 20 million Democratic voters go? The truth is, they never existed. I think we can put the lie about Biden’s 80 million votes to rest once and for all.”
As my colleague Hayes Brown noted last week, 87% of Trump voters polled by Politico and Morning Consult believed voter fraud would seriously affect the 2024 election. After Trump won, that number dropped to 24%. But it didn’t change their minds about 2020 — they still think that one was stolen.
The plainly evident contradictions don’t matter. The thoroughly adjudicated facts don’t matter. The plea deals and convictions of some of Trump’s co-conspirators don’t matter.
Far be it from putting a decisive end to the 2020 election fraud lies, the 2024 election result effectively ends any attempt to hold the main perpetrators responsible — or to heal the country’s now-permanent psychic wounds inflicted by a president who couldn’t accept he lost.
There was no meaningful voter fraud in the 2020 election, and there’s no reason to believe there was in 2024. But there was an attempt to illegally overturn (or “steal”) the 2020 election.
Trump tried to bully Georgia election officials into “finding” enough votes for him to win. There’s a recording of it. There is no doubt he said it. And he was going to go on trial in the Peach State over his alleged “criminal racketeering enterprise” to overturn the state’s election results. But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ decision to have a romantic partner lead the prosecution caused enough tumult and delays that the trial couldn’t happen before the election. Now it’s doubtful it will ever happen.
Likewise, Trump’s election led special counsel Jack Smith to drop his cases on Trump’s hoarding of classified documents after he left office and refusal of repeated requests to return them to the federal government, and also for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump was indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Though there’s always a chance the cases could be reopened once Trump leaves office, don’t hold your breath waiting for those wheels of justice to ever move again.
Trump tried to bully Georgia election officials into ‘finding’ enough votes for him to win. There’s a recording of it. There is no doubt he said it.
Trump has promised to pardon people convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol — the same people Trump summoned to D.C. on that day and then beckoned to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” The once and future president refers to these folks — a number of them documented members of far-right, racist, violent militant groups — as the “Jan. 6 hostages.”
And despite numerous members of Trump’s first administration saying he’s unfit for office — or as retired four-star U.S. Marine Corps general, Gold Star parent and former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly described him, a “fascist” — enough Americans voted for Trump and enough Democratic-leaning voters stayed at home to give Trump a previously unthinkable comeback win.
Many elected Republicans and conservative commentators who said Trump should be barred from office for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election have since fallen in line. They’ve apparently both forgiven and forgotten Trump’s self-coup attempt. And now that he’s headed back into the most powerful position in the world, Trump is unlikely to ever face any political consequences or criminal penalties.
And while former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay $146 million for defaming two Georgia election workers, the big lie’s main propagator is headed back to the White House. And he’ll have the support of a GOP congressional caucus that has largely endorsed his lie — including House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as MAGA’s heir apparent, Vice President-elect JD Vance. And the legacy of “2000 Mules” includes armed right-wing militias patrolling voter drop boxes in Arizona this year.
Despite D’Souza’s and Salem Media’s under-duress mea culpas, you’d be hard-pressed to find any of the right-wing commentators who endorsed or platformed D’Souza during his “2000 Mules” promotional blitz walking back their support or apologizing for their credulity.
As The Bulwark put it back in June: “In a less rotten information ecosystem, telling easily debunkable lies might result in some social consequences: The liar’s audience, trust broken, steamed at having been played for fools, recalibrates and tries to find more accurate information elsewhere. In the world we actually live in, it seems like the only real accountability we ever see these days is legal: Someone harmed by the laws takes the liar to court, proves the lie, and twists their arm into finally admitting the truth.”
That remedy might have worked on D’Souza and his ridiculous documentary, but it sure didn’t work on Trump — who endorsed the film and even attended its 2022 premiere. The 2024 election essentially codified Trump’s big lie. It didn’t put an end to the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen, but it did make it politically irrelevant — and therefore permanent.