Trump’s Great Voter Fraud Diversion to Win 2024: A Discourse Analysis
By: Cody Wiesner
Tags: United States, Rhetoric, Election 2020, Linguistics, Politics

Trump’s Great Voter Fraud Diversion to Win 2024: A Discourse Analysis

Gage Skidmore / Flickr

On Dec. 14, Hawaii’s four electors cast the final Electoral College votes, making Joe Biden’s lead at 306–232 — and the Democratic presidential nomination — official. But this came as no surprise to many voters since, as of over a month ago, most news organizations including Fox News projected the election to end up in Biden’s favor.

If there was any doubt of a Biden presidency, it was borne out of Donald Trump’s rhetoric. Following the news in early November that Democrats would be projected to win the 2020 presidential election, 45th President Donald Trump commenced an unprecedented campaign strategy. Seemingly, the goal was to make Americans question the validity of current voting procedures and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory. On Nov. 5, Trump’s response to Biden’s projected win was no concession, instead arguing “if you count the legal votes, I easily win” before providing a list of explanations on how the voting system may have illegally and unjustly worked against him. Even after all 538 electors voted on Dec. 14, Trump fired back on Twitter the next day. “Tremendous evidence pouring in on voter fraud,” the 45th president said. “There has never been anything like this in our Country!”

CityOfStPete / Flickr

Trump’s response to the Biden win has elicited mass controversy from all fronts, with Democrats expectedly aghast, half of Republicans viewing Trump as a sore loser, and the other half further emboldened in an image of Trump as America’s only bastion of truth against legions of corrupt Democrats, political traitors like Bush and Romney, scholars, scientists, and the entire news media (except OANN and Newsmax), now that Trump supporters have been “abandoned” by Fox News which dared to report on Biden’s projected win. Still, recounts in favor of Biden stayed in his favor, numerous fact-checks put Trump’s arguments into question, and despite promises of litigation, he had no legal recourse, with no court finding instances of fraud after dozens of cases. What, then, was his goal? Or more aptly, what was the point?

Trump might claim that “there has never been anything like this,” but it turns out he’s not the first president to contest the results of an election — that legacy stretches back to 1824 with election controversies that have sent the media and campaign aides abuzz. However, he might just be the first to employ election fraud rhetoric to ignite the first moments of the next presidential campaign. In addition to the 2024 election, Trump knows that a lot is riding on the 2021 Georgia Congressional race — after all, the results would decide which party controls the Senate.

Biden won the 2020 election, and Trump likely knows it. But knowing the political circumstances we’re in, it’s unlikely Trump is trying to win this election in good faith. He’s playing the long game, and that’s worrying. To win in 2024 and 2021, it’s advantageous to keep Trump supporters angry. Spreading misinformation about voter fraud, which many will believe, is a convenient way of doing that. This incongruency between Trump’s language use and his underlying motives become more apparent the more we investigate his speeches and many tweets following Biden’s projected win.

Trump and the Language of Non-Concession

Matt Johnson / Flickr

On Nov. 5, Donald Trump delivered a speech on the election results that would live in infamy, breaking the trust of Democrats and Republicans alike. This was no ordinary concession. Instead, he delivers a number of remarks about why he thinks the 2020 electoral process was rigged in Biden’s favor. Trump employs language to craft an image of himself as a bastion of progress, fairness, and law, even social justice, while constructing Biden as an archetypal thief out to steal the election from American voters.

That’s unusual. Trump is known for being controversial, even among his loyal supporters — Trump isn’t afraid to be polarizing, and many like that about him — yet Trump appears to position national unity as the focal point of his speech. However, he doesn’t do it like Biden does, or like how any other president has before. Instead, he delivers a balance of self-affirmations and face attacks against all fronts — Democrats, pollsters, the media. One of the many ironies that ensue is the paradox of Trump being both a one-man legal system yet also a rebel against it, which gets echoed with close discourse analysis.

All of these appeals are embedded in Trump’s language. In his opening statements, he emphasizes a marked/unmarked relationship between legal and illegal. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump says. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” Here, legal holds a lot of ideological weight within itself. What is legal, and what is illegal? Trump seems to lump late votes, mail-in ballots, and suppression polls as “illegal,” despite none of these actually being illegal processes in many states. Unmonitored polling sites would be illegal, if Trump is correct that this is happening on widespread scales.

Trump doesn’t seem to be citing actual legislature here. Instead, he seems to be emphasizing some higher law. Maybe none of these practices are illegal, but Trump argues that maybe they should be. When Trump makes the distinction between legal and illegal, what he actually means is corrupt, another word he mentions frequently. “They become corrupt; it’s too easy. They want to find out how many votes they need, and then they seem to be able to find them.” He constructs a truth in which “poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots,” where “[mail-in ballots] really destroyed the system.” But illegal has an edge that corrupt doesn’t. It reveals a Trump who dreams to bring law and order to a perceived injustice that no one but him is fighting. His attempts at litigation, to him, aren’t in service of disrupting fair and legal voting, but instead “it’ll probably go through a process — a legal process.” Simultaneously, illegal serves as an acclaim and an attack that implies that those who believe in fair voting ought to back Trump’s noble cause. Everyone else is committing an illegal crime or, at least, a moral crime that should be illegal.

If his opponents are illegal, Trump counters by crafting an image of himself as the embodiment of all the good traits associated with legality — law and order, fairness, equality, justice. After all, Trump believes he, the legal candidate, “easily won” the legal votes. The crooked pollsters “got it knowingly wrong.” He praises himself for “decisively [winning] many states” “despite historical election interference.” “We kept the Senate, despite having twice as many seats to defend as Democrats.” There’s a clear pattern of providing an acclaim, then following up with a face-attack to demonstrate his victories despite unjust adversity. His opponents, meanwhile, are “trying to steal an election.” In fact, the words “steal” and “stole” appear four times, supporting Trump’s narratives of his opponents as thieves. “It’s a corrupt system,” but Trump positions himself as a rebel knight fighting off the band of robbers and vagabonds that have taken over the kingdom, with the virtuous goal “to defend the integrity of the election.”

Gage Skidmore / Flickr

So the language crafts a narrative of Trump as defender of the people, of equality, but in a way that positions his own brand of law and order as a necessary qualification. Surprisingly, Trump spends a moment talking about what kind of looks like social justice, and what he argues are steps toward equality by Republicans, pointing to more Republican women being elected to Congress “than ever before.” “I won the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican in 60 years.” Look at the meaning baked in “We’re … the party of inclusion” set against his adversity/triumph statements. “Inclusion” and “equality” are leftist words with leftist ideological connotations, but Trump turns the words on their head, implying that social equality is attainable under Trump, possibly only Trump, and their ability to achieve that is hampered by voter fraud.

In the spirit of that inclusivity, Trump ostensibly tries to extend an olive branch. “I challenge Joe and every Democrat to clarify they only want legal votes. … We want openness and transparency.” Anticipating the response that Trump’s underlying goal is to himself steal the election, he defends himself by saying “It’s not question of who wins — Republican, Democrat; Joe, myself.” Instead, Trump’s recurring use of we, of terms like inclusion, create a narrative of Trump-as-unifier. “We want an honest election, and we want an honest count.”

Seen like this, there’s a deliberate attempt to pose the allegations of voter fraud as uniliteral, which on the surface eliminates Trump’s accountability in attacking Democrats. What might be seen as an anti-leftist tirade becomes an anti-voter fraud tirade. Trump makes it out like it just so happens that Democrats were face-attacked 13 times by name because they’re coincidentally the group most likely to commit voter fraud.

Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Nonetheless, Democrats are the object of scrutiny in Trump’s image of corrupt voter-fraud America. Voting apparatuses are “run, in all cases, by Democrats.” “Democrats … try and ban our election observers.” “Democrats … never believed they could win this election honestly.” “That’s why they did the mail-in ballots” as “they’re supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats.”

Trump in his speech wants his cake and to eat it too — to call out Democrats but make it out like he’s gesturing toward a larger systemic voting issues problem. However, the ideologies baked in Trump’s language at times betrays him. “Democrats are the party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech.” The ideograph big is repeated three times. Normally this connotes just a nonpartisan ideology of large organizations overstepping boundaries, but here Trump attributes three “bigs” all to Democrats. That’s not to mention the overtly Republican ideology present through a speech supposedly meant to be nonpartisan. Should mail-in ballots really be illegal? If you’re a Democrat, you might see mail-in voting as not only legal and not fraudulent either, but the morally right choice in the midst of a pandemic. Is Trump accurate that Democrat-run polling places are cheating, but not Republican-run? The many honest Democrats will feel discontinuity with this statement.

Trump’s speech is simultaneously pro-everyone but anti-Democrat. Every argument Trump makes is a standard Republican ideological argument in hiding, claiming instead to be in the spirit of unilateral fairness and justice. The result is non-accountability for Trump for those unaware of the power of ideographic language as he repeatedly and covertly considers voter fraud an exclusively Democrat problem, likening them to thieves stealing the election and committing illegal crimes.

Who Was Persuaded — and Who Wasn’t?

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (right) was one of several Republicans to speak against Trump’s election rhetoric. Maryland GovPics / Flickr

However, given the widespread controversy just a week after Trump’s speech, it seems that his efforts backfired, at least in the short-term. That isn’t to say that the speech didn’t embolden a subsection of Trump’s base (it did), but it also garnered criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

And why wouldn’t the Democrats dislike what Trump had to say? As communication scholar Ronald Lee would put it, ideographic language leverage powers to dole out what is and isn’t acceptable and enact punishments accordingly. Whether Trump meant to directly call out Democrats or not, they were nonetheless routinely the subject of face attacks. Democrats are fundamentally the cause of voter fraud, Trump says. Those who support voter fraud are thieves, corrupt and committing “illegal” acts. Democrats are then thieves, corrupt, and lawbreakers, if we’re to take Trump’s speech at face value.

More surprising was the number of Republicans who took issue with Trump contesting Biden’s projected presidential win. Fox News reported on the many Republican politicians who took issue with Trump’s rhetoric. Rep. Will Hurd of Texas saw Trump’s speech as antithetical to core American values: “A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong.” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan agrees, tweeting that there is “no defense for the President’s comments tonight undermining our Democratic process. America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before.” Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois wasn’t convinced on the details, telling Trump on Twitter, “If you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court. STOP Spreading debunked misinformation. Eric Shawn, a Fox News anchor, was similarly concerned at the lack of evidence arising from Trump’s speech, sparking controversy and support in his view that “such baseless and false claims are an insult to the thousands of election officials and workers across the country.”

Republicans appeared to reject Trump’s premises for two compelling reasons: A) lack of evidence and B) the speech’s threat to the American exceptionalism narrative of our democratic process. These interact with the ideographic language in distinct ways.

The body of evidence against Trump’s claims was substantial, so much so that Republicans were convinced by the fact-checks happening across a number of left-wing media outlets. AP News notes that “He has portrayed the tallying of mailed ballots received after Election Day as illegitimate, but in fact that is explicitly allowed in roughly 20 states, and the Supreme Court did not stand in the way of it. NPR responds to Trump’s claim that “observers were excluded from the counting site in Detroit,” quoting city officials who clarified that not only were observers not excluded, but Republican observers were present. USA Today took issue with Trump’s premature declaration of victory . Despite claims that he won Michigan and Wisconsin as of Nov. 5, “Trump did not win either state” despite “leading in early turns,” and despite claims of being “on track” to win Arizona, Trump was “57,000 votes behind,” leading to a projected Biden win. Ronald Lee’s writings on ideographic language point to the complicated relationship between ideographic narratives and truth — such that ideographs can create “constructed truths” composed of convincing falsehoods— that doesn’t mean, however, that compelling evidence is incapable of debunking a narrative. This is something seen in full force with how many Republicans responded negatively to Trump’s remarks.

In other cases, Republicans reported feeling a sense of cognitive dissonance between Trump’s statements on voter fraud and the narratives of stable, free, lawful democracies they’re accustomed to. The fact that so many Republicans argued Trump actively undermined democracy with his speech demonstrates how ideographic narratives can compete with one another for control over partisan beliefs. And in this case, the stronger ideographs of American exceptionalism and strong democracies won out for many.

Demonstrators rally at Million MAGA March Nov. 14 following the election results. Evert Barnes / Flickr

But what about the ones convinced by Trump’s statements? The moment Fox News reported on Biden’s projected presidential win, Trump took to Twitter, on multiple occasions advising his supporters that “This is why @FoxNews daytime and weekend daytime have lost their ratings … Try @OANN & @newsmax, among others!” And they readily listen. Quartz quotes one Twitter user saying “Fox has been completely unfair and untruthful … Moving to Newsmax,” who makes up just one of the many conservative news viewers contributing to Newsmax’s skyrocketing ratings. Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that conservative protestors chanted “Fox News sucks” during Nov. 14’s online pancake breakfast, the “Million MAGA March.” For these supporters, it seems no amount of traditional Republican appeals to strong democracies, nor the body of disconfirming evidence will deter them from an unwavering belief in Trump’s rhetoric. While evidence has the power to dismantle an ideograph, we cannot forget the power of discourse-based narratives in tying the blinding folds too.

Initially, it was unclear which of these two groups of a fractured Republican party is more prominent. Two major polls that have come out so far reveal conflicting sets of data. Reuters found that six in 10 Republicans said Biden won and that they “trust their local election officials to ‘do their job honestly.’” Morning Consult’s poll tells a different story, specifically that 70 percent of Republicans said the 2020 election “was not free and fair.” At the start of December, NPR ran a poll finding that 75% of Republicans no longer trust 2020’s election results.

Was Trump’s Speech Actually the Start of His 2024 Campaign?

Dan Keck / Flickr

More data is needed to make a definitive conclusion, but unfortunately early polls are finding that misinformation won out among Republicans. This would be exactly what Trump needs to maintain support throughout the Biden presidency. In fact, his speech demonstrates a willingness to do everything in his power to keep Republicans angry. In fact, the content of his speech paired with the external context surrounding it indicates that the speech probably wasn’t to challenge the system and secure a 2020 win via litigation, but to ensure continued conservative support until 2024’s re-election campaign, as well as a party-deciding senate seat in Georgia next year. There are a few reasons to think this.

Trump’s plan to secure the election involved appealing the voting results in court. However, Ned Foley is one of many legal analysts who were doubtful of Trump’s outlook. “They’re just suing for the sake of suing,” Foley said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s a strategy that’s designed to win in court.” Law professor Gerard Magliocca, meanwhile, indicates that Trump’s only regal recourse is to ask for recounts, which is “unlikely” to reach higher courts. And as we ended up seeing, litigation did not work out for Trump, with judges routinely rejecting to hear his case across partisan lines. For a president who claimed to use litigation as a path to undo what he sees as political corruption, it’s odd that he staked his bets on a legal strategy had no chance to succeed. Why even bother?

A few days later the election results, Trump on Nov. 15 tweeted “He won because the Election was Rigged,” seemingly acknowledging that Biden won and he lost the election, in spite of previous remarks to the contrary. On Nov. 9, Trump advisers told Axios that Trump is “thinking about running for president again in 2024.” Politico and NPR later ran polls revealing Trump currently leads among Republicans for a hypothetical 2024 election.

Gage Skidmore / Flickr

All this is to suggest that Trump’s stated goal in his Nov. 5 speech isn’t his actual goal. Or at least, actually succeeding in litigation matters much less than the rhetorical statement decrying voter fraud, especially when taking Biden’s unity platform into consideration. TIME describes Joe Biden as American’s “healer-in-chief” for good reason. After all, Biden appears to be looking across partisan lines for support. In his victory speech, Biden pledges to be a president “who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States.” “People who voted for Trump, I understand the disappointment — I’ve lost a couple times myself — but now let’s give each other a chance.” This kind of unifying rhetoric is bad for a politician like Trump, whose platform is defined by shifting conservative concerns onto others, such as immigrants and broadly to the far left. Rhetoric scholar Roderick Hart notes that Trump used the most appeals to anger out of any politician since 1948, and that anger is a demonstrably effective way to get voters to go to the polls. Thus, if Biden succeeds on his core promises and unifies America, that would pose an existential threat to Trump, as the Republican party could veer closer to the form it took pre-2016. Republicans swayed by Biden would want a Romney, not a Trump.

If Trump gave a non-solution to the 2020 election, is planning to run again in 2024, and has been quoted saying Biden won, it seems likely that Trump’s talk on election fraud is merely a diversion to keep Trumpian politics in vogue long-term, with or without him in office. Politico’s Anita Kumar notes that “the goal is to not only undermine the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s win, but to also rile up supporters for the runoff fight in Georgia,” whose open senate seat will decide which party controls the Senate next year. A Republican victory, supplied by Trump supporters angry over alleged voter fraud, would guarantee that Biden stays a lame duck for the duration of his presidency. “It’s all noise,” a former Trump aide told Politico. But thanks to an emotionally charged use of ideological language and face-attacking strategies by way of an easily exploited issue like voter fraud, Trump has managed to convince anywhere between 40 and 75 percent of Republicans that Democracy is at risk and they ought to secure the “legal vote” for the sake of America. And the powerful language of anger suggests that this was a speech many of Trump’s supporters will remember.

The Great Voter Fraud Diversion is a Long-Term Cause for Concern

Gage Skidmore / Flickr

The rhetorical significance of his remarks is something Americans should be aware of, and worried about. Trump’s speech revealed that language use of terms like illegal, stole, and corrupt crafted a narrative of Trump as an American savior, the one who will return law and order to an American society threatened by Democrats trying and succeeding to “steal” the election through widespread voter fraud. On the short-term, this may have failed — especially among Democrats unconvinced by what they might see as Trump’s faux-unifying language, but notably among a prominent subsection of Republicans who saw Trump as threatening the traditions of American democracy with misinformation, a perspective verified by a number of fact-checkers liberal and conservative alike.

Trump’s speech is likely more than just about voter fraud, though. The 45th’s lack of genuine legal recourse, along with his stated plans to campaign in 2024, and tweeting that Biden won all cast doubt on the stated goals of the Nov. 5 speech to pursue litigation as a way of securing the 2020 election. Thus, in the long-term, Trump’s packed speech might have angered enough conservative Americans to prompt red shifts in both the 2021 Georgia Congress election and the 2024 presidential election. As we’ll likely see, 2020 Democratic victory wasn’t the instant end of the alt-right’s influence, and Trump has planted the seeds to keep it going.