Analysis | ‘Big tech did it’ is the coward’s version of ‘the election was stolen’
“Sixty percent of the country will see somebody on a ballot somewhere who believes that the 2020 election was not fair and that Joe Biden actually — this is according to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies — and that Joe Biden is not the legitimate winner of the 2020 election,” Faulkner said. “Seventy percent of people polled are saying that.” So why had Masters removed his statement that, with “a free and fair election,” Trump would still be president?
We’ll come back to the framing by Faulkner there in a second. Let’s first consider Masters’s response.
“I think if everyone followed the law, President Trump would be in the Oval Office,” he said. “Look at how the FBI pressured Facebook and other big tech companies to censor true information about Hunter Biden’s very serious crimes in the weeks before the election. … I think that one act of corporate censorship, of big tech censorship? That sent Biden into the White House.”
Four things about this.
First, this is not a new angle for Masters to take. As he told Faulkner, he said the same thing during the debate in which he participated last week.
Second, it’s nonsense, top to bottom. The FBI didn’t “pressure” Facebook to “censor information”; it warned that Russia might try to influence the 2020 election the way it had the 2016 election. Facebook limited the reach of a New York Post story about electronic material belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter out of concern that it may have been part of a Russian ploy. Whether the material detailed “very serious crimes” is a point of debate within the Justice Department, it seems, but there’s no real reason to think that there’s a significant pool of voters who 1) didn’t hear about the material and 2) would have changed their votes as a function of it.
Third, Masters’s effort to constrain his analysis of what happened in 2020 to Nefarious Big Tech was soon abandoned. He also pointed out to Faulkner that “states changed the rules to flood the zone with mail-in ballots,” which he described as “messed up.” This has been a recurring theme within his party as well, and it’s a pretty revealing one. After all, consider what he’s saying: States made it easier to vote (because of the pandemic), and more people voted. During the debate he rejected the idea that rampant fraud had occurred. So he’s not saying more mail ballots let fraud happen; he’s simply taking issue with more people voting — with bolstering democracy itself.
And then there’s the fourth point: Far from charting a novel path through the underbrush of post-election nonsense, Masters is following a course that’s by now well-worn. He’s embracing a cop-out approach that pivots from the rampant belief that the election was stolen to one intentionally crafted to be harder to prove false. He is not being clever here; he’s being timid: wanting to appeal to Republicans who insist that something sketchy happened but without being willing to join them in their actual beliefs.
The Republican base does, in fact, believe that the election was stolen due to rampant voter fraud — or so they tell pollsters. In December, The Washington Post and its partners at the University of Maryland asked if there was solid evidence of widespread fraud; well over half of Republicans said there was, though there wasn’t then and isn’t now. Monmouth University’s been asking people if President Biden won because of fraud consistently since the election happened. On average, almost two-thirds of Republicans have said that he did.
When Masters offered up his Facebook-did-it theory, Faulkner marveled at the idea.
“That’s interesting because that has nothing to do with the election process,” she said, wondering if polls even asked about that theory. Well, no, because there’s no need to. That 70 percent of people who say Biden wasn’t the legitimate winner she cited is almost entirely Republicans, of course, and they’re perfectly content thinking that there’s real evidence that fraud was committed across multiple states to the tune of tens of thousands of votes and that every single person involved has kept mum and no evidence of this happening has emerged. Either it’s the perfect crime or — and bear with me here — it’s no crime at all.
But Masters doesn’t want to say that. He wants to have his base and sidestep it, too. He’s just the latest in a long line of Republicans trying to present as tough-guy opponents of a historic wrong who also want to not be pinned down as full of nonsense.
It began in December 2020. The first member of the Senate to announce that he would protest electoral votes submitted on Biden’s behalf was Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). In a statement released on Dec. 30, 2020, Hawley announced that he would oppose the results from Pennsylvania, ensuring a flurry of headlines from pro-Trump media and praise from Trump himself. (Both of which he got.) Like Masters, though, he didn’t claim fraud, just that, you know, the rules were changed and shouldn’t have been. That the specific rule he mentioned had already been evaluated by Pennsylvania courts and allowed to stand was neither here nor there. The cop-out “the election was rigged!!!” narrative was born.
Oh, Hawley also noted the “unprecedented effort of mega corporations” Facebook and Twitter.
A writer for the right-wing Federalist blog quickly rushed out a book titled “Rigged,” hoping to tap into a market for rationalization that’s still overflowing with capitalist opportunity. She went on Tucker Carlson’s show to promote it, and he did the thing you’re not supposed to do: He asked her if she thought fraud had actually occurred.
Tucker! Not helpful, man! We’re trying to preserve the idea that maybe there was some fraud so that the base thinks we’re on their side while also keep the wackadoodle claims at a distance so that we can still be considered serious! You’re collapsing a very important wall!
After fumbling a bit, she stated that “it’s important to think about what happened in general.” Whew. Wall rebuilt. Or, really, it’s a motte-and-bailey defense. Claim the election was stolen and that Trump should be president and then, when pressed, retreat to the “well, look what Big Tech did!!” position.
You can say that you think Facebook shouldn’t have limited sharing of the Hunter Biden story. You can say that you think the laptop raises important questions and deserved more of a hearing than it got. Fine. Fair enough. But you can’t say that the FBI “pressured” Facebook and that this “sent Biden into the White House” because that didn’t happen and there’s no reason to think that the Facebook decision is why Biden won. Biden’s odds of winning were never less than about twice Trump’s, according to polling averages; the idea that this story about his son would have closed that gap entirely — a story, mind you, that did prompt a lot of discussion — is simply ridiculous.
But what’s Masters going to say? That there was no fraud and Trump lost because he was wildly unpopular for promoting the same policies that Masters himself supports? Why say that, why say he’s been dishonest for months, when people like Hawley and that Federalist person already found the clearest path through the thicket?
Why be brave when being timid is so much easier?
This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Washington Post can be found here.
