Trump is About to "Prove" the Election Was Hacked. Don’t Take the Bait.
On Thursday night at 9pm ET, Donald Trump says he’s going on TV to announce that newly declassified intelligence proves a foreign government interfered in the 2020 election.
Yawn.
A strong leader wins and moves on. Six years later, Trump is still shopping for someone to tell him he won the 2020 election. He already has an intelligence report on our voting machines. It’s been sitting in a drawer for six months, because it didn’t say what he needed it to say. His fixation on an election he lost in 2020 has become a national security problem.
Don’t take the bait. Here’s how we handle claims that a foreign government hacked, breached, or rigged our elections: laugh it off. Don’t argue back with facts. Debating whether a lie is true is exactly what they want.
Instead, here’s a short, sharable set of talking points for when this comes up with your family, your friends, or the coworker who saw it on TikTok.
Don’t Believe That This is Just About 2020
Yes, this is about Trump’s ego, and about desperation in the face of a losing streak. But mostly it’s about the midterm elections.
This is how the authoritarian playbook works. Doubt is the product. If enough voters walk away from Thursday night’s “announcement” a little unsure whether their voting machines can be trusted, a little less certain their registration is still valid… then the Trump regime wins simply by talking us out of voting.
A country convinced its elections are broken will stand aside while this administration “fixes” a crisis the administration itself invented. That’s their excuse to station ICE agents around voting locations, raid the organizations that register voters, and seize voting machines. It’s all a solution in search of a problem.
It’s actually worse than that, and it’s straight out of the authoritarian playbook. What they’re building is an excuse, months in advance, to throw out a result they don’t like. They think if they manufacture enough doubt now, they can reject the 2026 outcome before the votes are even counted.
If Trump still can’t accept losing in 2020, imagine what he’ll do in 2026. This is exactly why we ignore the claims, laugh them off, and don’t allow anyone we know to take them seriously.
We Can’t Win by Trying to Out-Fact Them
Our instinct with a story like this is to reach for the facts. Line up the receipts. Explain, one more time and very patiently, why none of it holds up.
Trying to out-fact them is exactly what they want, because winning the argument isn’t actually their goal. If they get you in the argument at all, they’ve already won. They want us so busy relitigating a six-year-old election that we’ve got nothing left for the one that’s coming in less than six months.
Every hour you spend debunking is an hour spent playing their game on their turf.
How to Talk About It (and How Not To)
When this comes up at dinner, in the group chat, or from a coworker, try this—
Do:
Call it what it is. “This is a desperate distraction, and I’m not falling for it.” You don’t owe it more than that.
Keep the focus where it belongs. The real story is the next election. One party is trying to earn your vote, and the other is trying to scare you off from voting at all.
Answer it by voting. The best reply to anyone trying to make you doubt the system is to go use it. Check your registration, show up, and call on your neighbors to do the same.
Share this. The more people who simply laugh off the lie rather than debate it or repeat it, the less it works. Send this to the person you know who will be “fraud-curious” on Thursday night and might believe what they hear.
Don’t:
Don’t repeat the specific claim, even to knock it down. Saying it again, in any form, is how it spreads. Talk about why they’re spreading it, not what they’re spreading.
Don’t reach for the fact sheet. Rattling off very serious facts feels productive but changes nothing. Fighting feelings with facts is a losing game.
Don’t give him the ratings. You don’t have to watch it live.
That’s our plan: call it ridiculous, don’t get baited into an argument, and go vote.
Hands off our vote.