Trump, eyeing 2024, doubles down on vote conspiracy theories

Kicked off Twitter and Facebook after his supporters stormed the US Capitol, Donald Trump eventually set up his own platform Truth Social, declaring in April 2022 after a stumbling launch: “I’m Back! #COVFEFE.”

Yet to concede his loss to Joe Biden, Trump is now signalling he will seek the White House again in 2024.

And with midterm elections Tuesday, he is doubling down on voting conspiracy theories he has wielded ever since the 2016 election, which he won, and amplified since his defeat four years later.

In the past 58 days, Trump has shared about 100 posts on Truth Social casting doubt on the integrity of US elections, according to an AFP analysis of the former president’s more than 1,200 interactions in that period.

“Here we go again!” Trump wrote on November 1, sharing a misleading headline about ballots in Pennsylvania, a swing state he lost to Biden but which next week could determine if Republicans win back the Senate.

“Rigged Election!” Trump added.

The tactics mirror his 2020 playbook, when he tweeted repeatedly before the election that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud. Dozens of court cases have since ruled otherwise.

But such misinformation could undermine confidence as Americans vote in the first national polls since the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, experts say.

“If leaders tell their followers that elections are unreliable, their followers believe them,” Russell Muirhead, professor of politics and democracy at Dartmouth College, told AFP.

“Trump’s insistence that elections are flawed (when they’re not) is doing one thing: it is corroding American democracy.”

Trump posts often on Truth Social, sometimes dozens of times a day.

In the last two months, he has attacked Biden and Democrats, criticized ongoing investigations against him and glorified his own rallies and accomplishments.

Trump has also lavished praise on Republicans who support his stolen-election claims, such as Kari Lake, who has signaled she may reject the results if she loses her bid to become Arizona governor.