Source: Justin Sullivan / Getty
At this point, it’s clear that Donald Trump and his MAGA cohorts are planning for an election loss in November and that they’re already planting the seeds to claim, without evidence, that the election was stolen through fraudulent votes just as they did in 2020. Now, Trump, who has scarcely let a single day go by over the last four years without repeating his “big lie” to anyone who will at least pretend to listen, is out here claiming that the only way he could win in the state of California is if Jesus Christ himself descended from the heavens to personally count the votes in order to thwart the actual vote counters, who he said would certainly cheat him out of another election win (that he never won).
Oh, y’all think I’m exaggerating?
“I guarantee you, if Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California,” Trump said during a recent interview with Dr. Phil.
He continued: “In other words, if we had an honest vote counter, a really honest vote counter, I do great with the Hispanics, great, I mean I had a level that no other Republican’s ever done, but if we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.”
Wait. What?
California isn’t even one of the eight states Trump unsuccessfully challenged the votes in via dozens of lawsuits, which only resulted in dozens of judges joining every single 2020 election official in determining that there was no evidence of a rigged election. Maybe that’s because Trump lost in California by 30 percentage points in 2020. Maybe it’s because the last Republican to win the presidency in California was George Bush Sr. in 1988.
For Trump to win in California, Jesus would have to do more than count the votes, he would have to rig the election in Trump’s favor by turning Kamala Harri’s votes into Trump votes like he was turning water into wine.
I mean, honestly, we didn’t need more evidence that Trump’s big, baseless and ongoing lie about fraud costing him elections was never more than a ploy to either save face after losing or a backup plan to upend democracy but here we are.
As for why Trump is out here invoking Jesus’ name in the first place, I blame all of these evangelical Trump supporters for gassing the bible-salesman-in-chief up and making him think he’s the second coming of MAGA Moses. Hell, if Jesus did come to count the votes resulting in Harris winning in California, Trump would be calling for a second crucifixion and then blaming the “deep state” if he was crucified only to show up three days later.
Speaking of crucifixions, the fine folks on X have been figuratively nailing Trump to the cross since he made his absurd claim that Jesus would have his back.
All jokes aside, it’s important to note how truly nefarious this election fraud propaganda is, because while Trump is simply lying, his minions are turning those lies into voter intimidation and voter laws that are decidedly anti-democracy.
Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has been promoting the GOP’s promise to deploy an army of poll watchers to police elections that don’t need policing based on Trump’s lie. (She also claimed her poll watchers would “physically handle the ballots,” which is very much illegal.) Lara also insisted her MAGA volunteers would prevent “illegal citizens” from voting, ignoring virtually every study on the matter—including a study by the Heritage Foundation, the group responsible for Project 2025—that has indicated it’s so rare that undocumented immigrants successfully vote in U.S. elections that it has never remotely affected a single election. In fact, back in May, Republican legislators proposed a bill that would make it illegal for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections—which, of course, is already a crime.
This month, Georgia Republicans voted in favor of a policy that would give legislators the right to flat-out refuse to certify votes in the 2024 presidential race if they believe, with or without evidence, that the election process has been tampered with, which should be concerning to all voters since, based on Trump’s lie, 147 Republican legislators voted to overturn a legal election in 2020.
So, it’s not just about the lie, it’s about how Trump’s “big lie” has resulted in arguably the most blatant example of applied propaganda we have seen in modern times.
The narrative is fake, but the danger of the narrative is very real. Trump knows it. Republicans know it. And if Jesus was here, he would know it too.
SEE ALSO:
Latest Trump Speeches Highlight Same Cognitive Fears That Republicans Express About Biden
