A View from My Porch: On Surrendering the Mantle of ‘Leader of the Free World,’ Part II

Editor’s Note: Click here to read the first installment of this two-part series.

Trump has disseminated misinformation about America’s free and fair elections ever since the 2016 Republican primaries, and has made election doubt a central part of his campaigns. 

He has a long history of “crying foul” after a loss — and he’s still doing it. 

For example, he complained when his TV show The Apprentice lost Emmys from 2004 to 2006, and when he didn’t receive a Nobel Peace Prize. 

“Amazing Race winning an Emmy again is a joke,” he tweeted. “The Emmys have no credibility— no wonder the ratings are at record lows.” 

After the 2016 Iowa and Colorado caucuses, which he lost to Senator Ted Cruz, he again alleged fraud without evidence, tweeting that the results should be nullified or rerun. 

Cruz rebuffed Trump at the time, telling supporters at one event: “Donald, it ‘ain’t’ stealing when the voters vote against you — it is the voters reclaiming this country and reclaiming sanity.”

Cruz told conservative political commentator Glenn Beck in April 2016: “Apparently, when anyone votes against him, it’s an act of theft.”

Trump also warned of voter fraud shortly before the 2018 midterms when Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives. 

In a speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before Trump supporters began a violent attack on the Capitol, Cruz rose on the Senate floor in support of Trump’s unfounded argument that the 2020 presidential election he had recently lost was rigged against him. Cruz said he was voting not to accept the Electoral College results showing Trump was defeated.

Several weeks ago, Trump said “Connecticut is an extremely corrupt voting place,” adding that’s why “a guy like Blumenthal can keep getting elected.” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., responded to Trump’s baseless allegations and said that voter fraud is “incredibly rare” in the state, adding that “Trump peddles conspiracies and distractions as he tries to restrict voting rights.” 

Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas said she was disappointed but not surprised by Trump’s comments.

Note that Connecticut has voted “Blue,” — i.e., Democratic — for the past nine presidential elections.

Prevalence of Election Fraud

According to the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, there is no credible evidence that widespread or outcome-changing fraud occurred in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The group pointed to multiple courts, federal officials, audits by independent researchers and Trump’s own former attorney general, William Barr, all rejecting the claims.

“Limited, isolated incidents of misconduct have been documented over many years, but those do not demonstrate the sort of coordinated, large-scale fraud alleged by Trump and his allies,” the Brookings report stated. 

Trump has long seen Fulton County, Georgia, as central to the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump had already lost 61 of 62 cases in court by the time his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to interrupt electoral count proceedings. 

You may recall Trump’s infamous hour-long call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, where he repeated his standard litany of phony claims of widespread voter fraud — ranging from dead voters to conspiracy theories about drop-box stuffing to compromised election equipment — in an attempt to pressure Raffensperger to reverse the state’s election results.

Trump claimed it was not possible for him to have lost in Georgia and asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes so he could be declared the winner of an election that three separate recounts had already confirmed he lost. 

This all appears to be another of Trump’s “if you repeat it enough times, people will begin to think it’s true” tactics.

Election Interference

Almost predictably, Trump and his Republican supporters have begun an unprecedented multifront initiative to obstruct the midterm elections — laying the groundwork to undermine access and results.

The SAVE Act, introduced in the House of Representatives in 2025, was passed in the House by a 220-208 margin, with all Republicans and four Democrats voting in favor. It has since been rebranded as the “Save America Act,” with even stricter procedures for voter registration and voting. The legislation now faces the Senate and the president before becoming law.  

It would require in-person proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and photo ID at the polls. Examples of primary citizenship evidence include a birth certificate, a U.S. passport, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Certificate of Citizenship or a Certificate of Naturalization. 

According to Brookings and experts at Northeastern University, many Americans do not have a passport or birth certificate or don’t have one with their current name. Getting these documents can be a challenge, which could create a hurdle for voters to address what some say is a nonexistent problem.

There is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have ever been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome. In fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that registration and voting by noncitizens are few and far between.

Research done by the Brennan Center for Justice shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents. Roughly half of Americans don’t have a passport. Millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. 

The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.

In addition, states would be required to submit their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for assessing citizenship status.

The DOJ has sued Washington, D.C., and 24 states, including Connecticut, for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers. 

Referrals and Investigations

On January 28, Pam Bondi’s FBI served a search warrant at Georgia’s Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center in a surprise raid, seizing 700 boxes of original 2020 election records, including physical ballots, voter rolls and digital records. The search was based on “potential criminal conspiracy and voting law violations.”  

An affidavit unsealed on Feb. 10 said the FBI investigation was initiated by a referral from Kurt Olsen, who previously worked on efforts to overturn the 2020 election and now serves as Trump’s “Director of Election Security and Integrity.” The FBI improperly relied on Olsen’s years-old claims about the 2020 election, most of which had been thoroughly investigated and found to have no connection to widespread fraud.

In the Oval Office after a bill signing with Republican lawmakers on February 2, Trump again regurgitated disproven claims of voter fraud when he said that Republicans should nationalize elections and take them over from the states. 

A few days later, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, raged on his “War Room” podcast that he wants to see ICE officers “surround the polls” during November’s midterm elections.

“You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen,” Bannon said. 

You may recall that federal officials, facilitated by the U.S. Coast Guard, arrested Bannon in 2020 on a 150-foot yacht named “Lady May,” owned by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, that was anchored off West Beach in Westbrook, Connecticut.

Bannon was one of four people indicted for defrauding donors in the online campaign “We Build the Wall,” which raised over $25 million. They lied about the use of funds and used fake invoices and accounts to hide their misappropriation.

Author’s Thoughts

I defer my closing thoughts to two journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

“As reporters, we had studied Nixon and written about him for nearly half a century, during which we believed with great conviction that never again would America have a president who would trample the national interest and undermine democracy through the audacious pursuit of personal and political self-interest.

And then along came Trump.

Both Nixon and Trump created a conspiratorial world in which the U.S. Constitution, laws and fragile democratic traditions were to be manipulated or ignored, political opponents and the media were ‘enemies,’ and there were few or no restraints on the powers entrusted to presidents.

Unlike Nixon, Trump accomplished his subversion largely in public.”

– Washington Post, 6/5/2022

Two questions remain: 

Does the GOP know that there doesn’t appear to be much control over what is disseminated to the world on Truth Social under Trump’s name?

Will there ever be “A Bridge Too Far”?

About the author: Tom Gotowka spent his career in healthcare. He will sit on the Navy side at the Army/Navy football game. He always sit on the crimson side at any Harvard/Yale contest. He enjoys reading historic speeches and considers himself a scholar of the period from FDR through JFK. A child of AM Radio, he probably knows the lyrics of every rock and roll or folk song published since 1960.