Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. There is no debating this fact. There is no escaping the reality of the situation, which is that Trump simply received fewer electoral and popular votes than Joe Biden. The constant stream of lies and disingenuous allegations from the Trump campaign and its supporters is undemocratic, immature, unfounded, and unAmerican. 

First, let us address (and debunk) some major claims of voter fraud. A seemingly inexplicable addition of 100,000 votes to Biden’s total in Michigan was proven to be an incorrect data input that was corrected within an hour. Despite this quick correction, the President himself retweeted a post by actor Matt Walsh claiming that a screenshot showing this brief error with no context was “reason enough to go to court.” A stream of posts on Facebook claimed Wisconsin had more votes than registered voters was simply untrue. According to Forbes, Wisconsin had a turnout of 3.2 million in 2020, but the state has over 3.6 million registered voters. Eric Trump, the president’s son, reposted a viral video allegedly showing 80 ballots cast for Trump being burned in Virginia Beach, but city officials say these were not official ballots. Sharpiegate, the conspiracy alleging that Republican voters in Maricopa County, Ariz. were given Sharpies to fill out ballots so that they could not be read, is technically true, but it changes nothing. Republican voters in Maricopa County were in fact given Sharpies, but so were Democrats. In fact, every voter in Maricopa County was provided a Sharpie, which can in fact be read by voter center tabulators. 

In addition to these and countless other baseless claims, the Trump campaign has filed numerous lawsuits—all but two of which are either denied or ongoing. The two lawsuits that were ruled in favor of the Trump campaign were filed in Pennsylvania. The first granted the Trump campaign permission to have “ballot watchers” who observe the vote counting process.

This decision ultimately had almost no effect on vote outcome. The second lawsuit the campaign won ruled that voters who had not provided supplemental identification by Nov. 9 could not have their votes counted. According to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, this decision had virtually zero effect on the vote count due to the very small number of voters to which it applied. 

The staggering amount of false claims that the Trump campaign has made signifies that these are bad faith arguments. It seems that the  president does not truly believe that he has been cheated or that the American election system is in danger. He is too prideful and vain to admit defeat, and will do anything to save his reputation. This mentality has transferred to his supporters, whose unwavering support supersedes rationality as evidenced by the ever-growing number of election conspiracies from conservatives on social media. This battery of an ego driven leader and his devout supporters poses a threat to American democracy. The lengths to which Trump and his supporters have gone to discredit and delegitimize what has been a fair and legal election will leave a permanent mark on American politics. The pervasive mentality amongst Trump supporters that their candidate is fighting a corrupt system has created a perfect situation for him to dispense a rush of propaganda that will further these supporters’ distrust in the American government. Sowing the seeds of distrust amongst the population in order to gain personally with no regard for the future impact of these decisions are not the actions of a president. They are the actions of a tyrant.