Running it Back: Trump Geared Up to Revisit the 2020 Election

Will this help prevent future election fraud, or is it mere vengeance?

For most Republicans, the 2020 election was a slow-motion nightmare. Amid a deadly, once-in-a-century pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and violent riots inspired by Black Lives Matter breaking out across the land, everything had gone completely off the rails for Donald Trump. He was an all-but-helpless victim of deadly circumstances well beyond his control. But once Trump pulled off a seemingly impossible comeback following the ugly aftermath of that heavily disputed contest and recaptured the presidency in 2024, we might have thought he would put 2020 in the rearview mirror. Instead, he signaled on Sunday (Dec. 14) that he is intent on re-litigating the results.

Trump typically pulled no punches in attacking his enemies. “They’re good at cheating in elections, very good at cheating. They’re professionals at cheating,” Trump said while hosting a Christmas event at the White House. “Because we won in 2016 by a lot. The election was rigged in 2020. We have all the ammunition, all the stuff, and you’ll see it come out. It’s coming out in truckloads.”

The first blush of Trump’s project is taking place in Georgia, a particular sore point for the president in 2020, when he lost the state by just over 11,000 votes. He was then indicted for asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes following the election, but the charges were dropped after a scandal involving the prosecuting District Attorney Fani Willis. Firing back, the administration has now filed a lawsuit asking a federal court in Atlanta to demand that ballots from the 2020 presidential election be produced within five days of a court order. The Board of Registration and Elections in Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, has reportedly refused to comply with a subpoena from the state’s election board to release all election records, arguing that they were “under seal” in accordance with state law.

Helpful or Vengeful?

The essential question is whether this promise to revisit 2020 stands to be a productive exercise revealing previously unknown, secret, or disputed documentary evidence of election fraud, or merely an act of vengeance against those Trump believes cheated him out of a second term. Is it likely to cast more light than heat, or merely reopen gaping wounds that have festered for years?

While Trump’s mortal enemies, seemingly as numerous as the stars, went ballistic over the president’s claims that the election was rigged (not dissimilar to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ assertion that the “system is rigged”), he challenged the outcome properly, in courts of law. While his claims were rejected by dozens of judges, Trump was under no obligation to accept sight unseen the results of an election like none the country had ever witnessed.

Using the pandemic as the pretext, election laws were changed in midstream, untold millions of unsolicited ballots were distributed like junk mail, and unguarded drop boxes were employed in bulk. It all left a stench of uncertainty, especially since Trump had won 12 million more votes than in 2016. And the inept Joe Biden, who barely campaigned, being credited with 81 million votes was a bridge too far for Republicans, a clear majority of whom sided with Trump’s assertion that something was rotten.

Shortly after taking office as the 47th president, Trump issued an executive order on election security designed to prevent the free-for-all of 2020 from ever happening again. This order requires all states to comply with established federal election laws. Strict verification of voters’ citizenship and paper-ballot records are now required for every vote. And ballots received after Election Day will no longer be counted. This is designed to reverse the very conditions that benefited Biden and Democrats to an immeasurable degree in 2020. It led to post-election reforms, particularly in red states, that produced largely unchallenged 2024 election results. Indeed, unlike four years earlier, claims of fraud were few and far between.

The 2020 Election, a Blessing in Deep Disguise

Remarkably, in the end, Trump’s narrow defeat in the 2020 election turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If he had been declared the winner, the political landscape would have been, to say the least, far less favorable for him than in 2024. The pandemic was still raging, the economy was just starting to recover from nationwide lockdowns, economic collapse, and Depression-era levels of unemployment, and Black Lives Matter had reached the height of its radical influence. But, bitter as it all was for Trump, he was blessed with a needed pause, followed by a stunning reversal of fortune.

Given the abject failure of Biden, together with four years to regroup and think deeply about how he would govern if he could return to the White House, Trump came out firing on all cylinders, rested and ready to attack the job. Unlike in his first term, when he knew little of the ways of Washington and was forced to appoint unfamiliar people recommended to him, he was fully prepared with a lengthy list of proven, Cabinet-ready allies fully committed to his America First agenda. There is little question that Trump was far better positioned to advance his audacious agenda in 2024 than in 2020. Nevertheless, the sting of the 2020 election evidently never quite went away. And now, with one last chance to convince Americans that his claims about that long-disputed outcome were true all along, the president of the United States hopes to bring closure to the most unfortunate chapter of his extraordinary political life.

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