Why Fox News is Crucial to Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ 2.0

The election denial movement has come a long way since Donald Trump’s first attempt to “stop the theft.” Before election day, MAGA media personalities and a newly institutionalized network of far-right advocacy organizations i am better prepared than ever to undermine confidence in American elections.

Gone are the days of Rudy Giuliani hair dye drips and Michigan State Senate hearings pretty wild for a reference to “Saturday Night Live”. Today, election conspiracists are on the front foot and wielding a powerful microphone. Groups like Election Integrity Network, Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA have invested heavily in various election rejection initiatives. Together, a supercharged network of professional right-wing election deniers have developed a three-pronged strategy to persuade the public Trump can’t lose and create a predicate for election theft.

These groups and their leaders, who both regular appear throughout MAGA MEDIA and their run own MEDIA platformbrings unique resources to the expanded cause. Former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network is the tip of the spear. Mitchell used her stature and influence decades as an advocate for the conservative movement, to direct millions in financing a “the permanent infrastructure of electoral integrity.”

Mitchell claims to supervise a “volunteer the citizen army” involved as election workers and within the Republican Party. The Election Integrity Network (EIN) has chapters across the country, including swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgiawhere they have already worked at undermine the democratic process.

“We have a presence and an eye on the process that we really didn’t have in 2020,” Mitchell recently praised. “We have so many volunteers who are being trained who now know the election code better than most lawyers.”

The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind it Project 2025is also a central hub of the movement to deny the elections. The right-wing power is behind the voter suppression policies being promoted by statewide election denial groups and hosts Hans von Spakovskyanother long-standing “voter fraud”. alarmist WHO frequent appear in from the right MEDIA.

These groups and their MAGA media allies collaborate to bring together three complementary tactics as a comprehensive anti-democracy strategy.

The first point is a war of messages. The powerful right-wing media creates a cocoon of voter fraud conspiracy theories that envelops their audience, fueling a perpetual sense of discontent and outrage.

In 2024, “the vote of non-citizens” became the most common form of fear. Fox News and other similar outlets have bought into the idea that non-citizens will swing the election away from Trump. Of course, this idea is totally unfounded: Non-citizen voting is extremely rare. But even these conspiracy theories have serious consequences, the right is conflating increasingly bloodthirsty xenophobia with Trump’s election denial to fuel mistrust, the perpetuation of racial profiling and sow chaos before these elections.

Right-wing media messages have also focused on the disenfranchisement of overseas voters. Conspiracy theory site The Gateway Pundit has spread the false idea that Democrats are passing a law allowing military personnel and other US citizens living abroad to vote.

Some of these bad actors have faced consequences for spreading election disinformation, but they are undeterred. Even though Fox News was forced to pay a historic settlement of $787 million in his defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems, he did he continued to push electoral fraud. And The Gateway Pundit wasn’t punished either, despite the fact that recently Sitting a trial of two Georgia election workers it targeted with conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 election. The site is now running the same kind of election disinformation to sow doubt in 2024.

Election deniers then turn this media conspiracy into grassroots activism—the second step of their strategy. A particularly troubling example is Julie Adamsmember of the Fulton County Board of Elections and EIN activist. As ProPublica reported, Adams is “working to change Georgia’s election certification rules.”

Former Trump campaign official Steve Bannon just released from prisonwas also on the front lines, using his popular podcast to push election lies and then the organization his followers to take action through the “ward strategy”. Bannon urged his audience to get involved and fill positions on precinct committees with local Republican parties. “In some states,” Propublica reported in 2021, “they have a say in choosing election workers, and in others they help choose members of the boards that oversee elections.”

Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post has documented the impact of the precinct strategy, noting that this approach has “led thousands of new Republican activists” to get involved since the 2020 election. “If you’re not prepared to be sent to a federal prison as a political prisoner,” Bannon told his audience this week“then you are not worthy to be in this movement.”

Finally, the lawyers come around. According to the Democracy Docket, election deniers have already filed 146 anti-vote lawsuits nationwide so far. Like my colleague Abbie Richards explainthe primary purpose of these lawsuits is to confuse voters and wreak havoc on election officials who are just trying to do their jobs. Often the pipeline from the right-wing media to the courts is remarkably direct, as in his case multiple suits in swing states on the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which allows Americans overseas to vote.

No one knows which way this election will go. But one thing is certain – the anti-democracy activists are looking, not only in 2024, but for the foreseeable future. We must be “fearlessly pro-democracy”, in the words of voting lawyer Marc Eliasand “it will be the citizens themselves who will lead the way.” That starts by arming ourselves with facts and standing strong against the alliance between the increasingly fascist right-wing media and professional election deniers, all determined to overturn the result.