Larry Elder, Trump Pushed “Big Lie” in California Recall Election

• Larry Elder conceded defeat in the California recall election, but not before echoing the “Big Lie.”
• Trump and conservatives said there was evidence of voter fraud, before the election took place.
• Enough politeness. We need to call them “election liars” every time they open their mouths. 
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

The Big Lie has gone far enough. 

Former President Donald Trump and many of his conservative allies propagated a false narrative of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election — the Big Lie.

The lies started well before Election day and they have infected American discourse over the course of the year since.  

These despicable mistruths have been thoroughly investigated and roundly debunked by every type of investigator imaginable: Republican state officials, impartial courts, even the most noxious right-wing media outlets had to retract some of the more outlandish theories after voting technology companies filed defamation lawsuits. 

And yet, the Big Lie persists. 

California voters voted overwhelmingly to not recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, and the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder — Newsom’s main competition — conceded defeat. 

But in the run-up to the recall election, Elder and conservative allies echoed dangerous nonsense about evidence of voter fraud, straight out of the Trump playbook.

We, the people who think basic democratic norms still hold great value, need to fight back against the Big Lie. 

The best way to do it is to make the Big Liars wear their fraudulent narrative like a badge of shame. 

If they’re so proud to be pushing the Big Lie, make them wear it

Elder and his right-leaning media supporters for weeks stirred a murky soup of innuendo about election “shenanigans” leading up to the recall vote. 

Trump also got involved, saying on the far-right outlet Newsmax and in an official statement that the California recall election is “rigged.” 

Elder, like Trump, prior to the election wouldn’t commit to accepting the results. 

Although Elder did concede and told his supporters to be “gracious in defeat,” he didn’t have much choice given the comically-lopsided 28 percentage-point win for the “No” recall vote. 

And the concession comes far too late, considering his cynical undermining of public trust in the vote has already furthered the conspiracy rot taking over large parts of the electorate. You can’t go around casting doubt for weeks and after the fact think it’s no harm, no foul because you made a late-night concession to sanity.

And it’s clear that these sorts of lies are ingraining themselves in a sizeable portion of the American populace.

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that two-thirds of Republicans incorrectly believe Trump won the 2020 election. And a new CNN poll showed 59% of Republican-leaning voters say their belief that Trump is the rightful winner of the election is “very” or “somewhat” important to their political identities. 

The election-losing Trump never conceded he lost a free and fair vote, and he probably never will. This is a disaster for American democracy, which expects vanquished candidates to accept election results and requires them to transfer power peacefully. 

We saw a brief taste of the consequences wrought by Trump’s deranged lies and insinuations of revolution on January 6th. 

That’s why we should no longer treat the Big Lie as just another distortion by the cult of Trump. 

And we should no longer describe these Trumpists’ actions with polite, milquetoast phrases like “claimed without evidence” or “baselessly asserted.” 

We should call them “election liars.”

It makes it plain that these people have forfeited their right to be called anything else, and it’s direct enough for its meaning to be easily understood by anyone, including the not-very politically active.

American democracy is worth defending without having to trip over ourselves to show some “objectivity” when describing thoroughly vetted and debunked lies. 

We should demand the Big Liars own the Big Lie every single day.

Until they retract and apologize for cynically undermining the democratic process to chase right-wing media clout or curry favor in the MAGA megaverse, they should be identified first and foremost for the thing that produces the most significant impact.

“Election liar and conservative radio host Larry Elder” would be a controversial introduction, but it’s apt and accurate. 

This should also apply to any public figure pushing the fiction of widespread election fraud — be they a candidate for office, a media commentator or even a member of Congress. 

Whether in person, in print or on TV, call them “election liar” or some variant thereof, before referring to them with any other honorific.

Do it every time. 

The Big Lie is the real threat to democracy

Elder, like most of the 147 congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election, almost certainly knows better.

The defeated GOP candidate in August told the Sacramento Bee that Joe Biden won the election “fairly and squarely,” earning him sharp rebukes from his Big Lie-believing base. Mere days later, he walked back the statement, begging for a “mulligan” for having plainly stated the truth. 

Then Elder went all-in on pushing the Big Lie, California-style. 

The Elder campaign launched a website — prior to any ballots being counted — which falsely claimed election fraud had been “detected” in the recall election. The site also asked people to sign an online petition demanding the California legislature “investigate and ameliorate the twisted results of this 2021 Recall Election.”

And this was before the election.

Hours after the polls closed, Elder’s campaign quietly deleted the “Stop Fraud” section of its website, but never corrected the record or retracted its previous voter fraud lies. 

But Elder as a political entity doesn’t much matter. As long as preemptive claims of election fraud remain part of the GOP’s campaign strategy, it’s only going to get more disgusting from here. 

This is all part and parcel with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s axiom that conservatives should “flood the zone with shit” to get their preferred narrative out into the media ecosystem. 

The Big Lie isn’t a mass delusion, it’s part of a deliberate strategy. 

And we must call bullshit on the practice of flooding the zone with shit.

If Trump sycophants truly believe that the election was stolen, then they should have no problem being called Big Liars by a media that they believe acted in concert with Democrats in a ridiculously implausible conspiracy. 

Fox News host Chris Wallace said this week that he won’t allow election fraud liars — including members of Congress — to appear on his show. That’s admirable, but I suspect it’s unsustainable, given how fully mainstreamed in the GOP firmament the Big Lie has become. 

Undermining the integrity of elections — even before those elections have taken place — is a genuine threat to democracy. 

It’s well past time to rhetorically punch hard and punch often at the Big Liars, the way we would at Holocaust deniers of Sandy Hook truthers. 

Call them by their name. Democracy is at stake, and they deserve the shame. 

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