Trump’s voter fraud lies encouraged a riot. GOP allies are still giving them oxygen.

… Allegations of voter fraud and irregularities have been used by Republicans to sow distrust in the American electoral system for decades, experts said, laying the groundwork for Trump’s sweeping claim that widespread fraud denied him a second term and priming the party’s base to believe him despite his inability […] Read more »

How Trumpism May Endure

One hundred and fifty years after the emergence of the Confederate Lost Cause ideology, a new Lost Cause invaded the U.S. Capitol with the incitement of the president of the United States. Waving American, Confederate, Gadsden and, especially, Trump flags, Donald Trump’s loyalists desecrated the greatest symbolic edifice of America. […] Read more »

Most Americans reject the attack on the Capitol — but millions empathize with the mob

Over the course of the past five years, the labels I use when I create graphics based on polling have grown increasingly dark. From poll questions about perceptions of foreign interference in elections, to impeachment, to death tolls from novel viruses to, now, sentiment about the violent takeover of the […] Read more »

The events of this week show the GOP has a big problem

Let’s state what happened on Wednesday for what it was: an insurrection by supporters of President Donald Trump storming the US Capitol. They were the definition of a mob. The insurrection and the Electoral College objections to President-elect Joe Biden’s election that preceded and followed it were an ugly milestone […] Read more »

Seven Key Stats From the 2020 Election

The horrific events in the Capitol have made this one of the darkest weeks in recent history. There is no justification whatsoever for what occurred on Wednesday. While Republicans should always support election integrity in the voting process, many people have had difficulty in understanding how President Trump could have […] Read more »

Republicans Confront the Consequences of Their Doomsday Rhetoric

The Republican Party’s “Flight 93” revolution tragically, but almost inevitably, came full circle this week in a storm of insurrectionary violence at the U.S. Capitol. Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, an anonymous author, eventually revealed as Michael Anton, a conservative scholar who later joined the Trump White House, described […] Read more »