Trump complains that he lost Georgia because voters thought the election was ‘rigged’

During a speech at a rally in Arizona this Saturday, former President Donald Trump praised the Arizona state Senate for its ongoing audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County and thanked the “brave and unyielding conservative warriors in the Arizona State Senate” for going ahead with the audit.

Trump regurgitated all his usual unproven claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, calling it the “greatest crime.” He also took a few shots at the state’s GOP Gov. Doug Ducey.

At one point, Trump ironically acknowledged that fears of a rigged election likely caused some voters to stay home for the state’s Senate races.

“And what happened is we had two senators running a couple of months later,” Trump said. “And you know what happened to them? The Republicans said, ‘We’re not going out to vote because this was rigged.’ This election was rigged.”

In a 2016 piece for The Washington Post, Pippa Norris predicted that Trump’s “rigged election” talk would backfire in the way he described on Saturday. “Evidence shows that those who question the integrity of the voting process are far less likely to participate,” Norris wrote, adding that Republicans, not Democrats, are “more likely to believe the Trump claims of alleged malpractices. It may be his own supporters who are most likely to be discouraged from voting.”

Joe Biden won Arizona by a mere 10,457 votes, a 0.3% margin, making it the first time a Democratic carried Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996.

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.