How the “big lie” came to be and why people still believe it
The so-called “big lie” has a long, complicated backstory, according to a new piece of reporting from ProPublica.
President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fair and square. But many people — including prominent Republicans — say otherwise.
Republican politicians, both locally and nationally, continue to cling to the lie that President Biden did not win the election. The results have left many wondering, how did this happen?
“One of the things we really zeroed in on during our investigation was a small coalition of people, some of whom had started spreading rumors or disinformation about how the election would be stolen even in advance of the election itself.” — Doug Bock Clark, ProPublica
Listen: The origin story of one of the most controversial topics in American politics.
Guest
Doug Bock Clark is an investigative reporter with ProPublica, and co-author of “Building the ‘Big Lie’: Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth.”
Clark says some political operatives decided that if Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, they would claim that voting machines were corrupted by bad actors to change votes in favor of Joe Biden.
“One of the things we really zeroed in on during our investigation was a small coalition of people,” says Clark, “some of whom had started spreading rumors or disinformation about how the election would be stolen even in advance of the election itself.”
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