When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited former president Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, one of his desired outcomes was to bolster his wavering leadership position. He didn\u2019t exactly get what he wanted; soon after Johnson touted Trump\u2019s support, the former president told reporters that Johnson\u2019s fate was still up in the air.<\/p>\n
But Trump got what he wanted, which was Johnson\u2019s commitment to focusing on a new \u2014 and almost entirely imaginary \u2014 threat to America\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, Johnson stood outside the Capitol with a phalanx of Trump supporters and allies in the president\u2019s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election to promote a new piece of legislation. Its focus? Illegal votes cast by noncitizens.<\/p>\n
Reporters pointed out to Johnson that there was no evidence this happened to any significant degree, a point that Johnson couldn\u2019t rebut. Still, he insisted, \u201cwe all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it\u2019s not been something that is easily provable.\u201d So he and his allies pressed on, repeatedly claiming that this \u201cintuitive\u201d problem existed and demanded a resolution.<\/p>\n
For Republicans generally and Trump specifically, it\u2019s easy to see the political appeal. The contrived issue combines the right\u2019s interest in centering the presidential contest on immigration with Trump\u2019s insistences that our elections are under attack from fraud. And it\u2019s easy to disparage Democrats for opposing a law that makes noncitizen voting illegal \u2014 even though it already is.<\/p>\n
Polling conducted by Ipsos last month shows that the idea that immigrants in the country illegally will cast invalid ballots this November hasn\u2019t gained much traction; only a third of Americans believe that\u2019s likely to happen. But a third is a lot \u2014 and that third is made up heavily of Republicans. Within Trump\u2019s and Johnson\u2019s party, nearly two-thirds say this threat is serious.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s useful to consider that in light of other recent polling from Ipsos, conducted for ABC News. It determined that about two-thirds of Americans believed that Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 election was legitimate \u2014 though only a third of Republicans said that it was.<\/p>\n
Since ABC News first asked about the legitimacy of 2020 in January 2021 (soon after the Capitol riot), views of Biden\u2019s election haven\u2019t changed much. Then, about 30 percent of respondents said he wasn\u2019t legitimately elected. Now, about 30 percent still do.<\/p>\n
Other polling shows a similar pattern. CNN, for example, has repeatedly asked not only whether Biden\u2019s election was legitimate but whether Americans felt that there was solid evidence to suggest that it wasn\u2019t. The percentage of Republicans who say the election was illegitimate has been consistent even as the percentage claiming that there\u2019s solid evidence has fallen. But it was still the case in August 2023 that 4 in 10 Republicans say solid evidence exists that the election was illegitimate.<\/p>\n
Again, that was in August 2023, more than 30 months after the 2020 election. Thirty months, mind you, in which Trump and his supporters worked feverishly to find any such evidence, without luck. It\u2019s simply a belief either that debunked or insignificant claims are valid or that non-debunked evidence exists out there somewhere, awaiting discovery by objective observers.<\/p>\n
They knew intuitively that the election was illegitimate, you might say, but it\u2019s not been easily provable.<\/p>\n
So we have this new idea, one bolstered by incessant reinforcement from Republican officials and misleading campaigns by their right-wing allies. And it is working, convincing Republicans that immigrants in the country illegally \u2014 and therefore presumably trying to stay off the government\u2019s radar \u2014 are going to risk their security to be one of perhaps as many as 160 million votes cast across the country.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s recent pledge to prosecute election \u201ccheaters\u201d should be considered in light of this issue. His base is primed not only to reject an unfavorable outcome in November but to see immigrants as a culpable party in his defeat. It\u2019s a belief that Trump and Johnson and others have inculcated not because it\u2019s a real problem but because by doing so, they think, they increase the odds of retaking the White House.<\/p>\n
One way or another.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited former president Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, one of his desired outcomes was to bolster his wavering leadership position. He didn\u2019t exactly get what he wanted; soon after Johnson touted Trump\u2019s support, the former president told reporters that Johnson\u2019s fate was still up in the air. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}