We were warned. The Big Lie didn't just happen.
“We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”
Trump, November 7, 2012, on the loss by Mitt Romney to Barack Obama
Trump has a history. He cries foul whenever he loses.
2012 General Election
The Trump tweet in the headline was one of many about the 2012 election. He also tweeted:
Lets [sic] fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.
And:
This is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!
As of November 7, 2012, Trump thought it possible that Romney would win the popular vote but lose the electoral college. He tweeted:
He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
And:
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
2016 Primary
The 2016 primary season started with the Iowa caucuses. Ted Cruz won. Trump said the election was rigged.
Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.
And
Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!
2016 General Election
Trump won the nomination, but In the weeks prior to the November election polls showed him losing. His speeches repeatedly complained that the upcoming election was "rigged" against him. Whether Trump would accept the verdict of the election became an issue. It was brought up in a question in the second presidential debate two weeks before the election. Trump said he would make "a major announcement." Speaking grandly to the cameras he said he promised to "totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election," and then a long pause, "if I win!"
On October 26 he told ABC news:
I think the system is rigged. I think it was -- horrible the way [the prior Republican ticket was] treated in the media. The only thing worse is the way I'm being treated. Look, I'm being treated -- hey, it's record-setting bad treatment what I'm getting. It's the greatest pile-on in American history.
Amid that controversy Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence tried to assure viewers of Meet the Press that he and Trump "will absolutely accept the result of the election."
Trump immediately responded with a tweet:
The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD.
Trump's long history of attacks on the validity of elections helps explain the GOP's readiness to accept the 2020 election Big Lie. He prepared the ground and gave a variety of reasons over the decade, all asserted strongly and all repeated by conservative media:
***The media was biased against him so he couldn't get his story out.
***The media was biased so they hid stories unfavorable to Democrats.
***Democrats benefit from votes cast illegally, especially from immigrant non-citizens.
***Democrats benefit from corrupt election officials in Democratic strongholds with large Black populations.
Those assertions were out there in the public mind. In choosing Trump as their nominee and president GOP voters also selected him as a credible interpreter of political reality. That included the premise that elections were stolen from rightful GOP winners. It was a conclusion assumed. It does not need evidence, only the possibility of evidence. One would not expect to find evidence of crime easily, so the lawsuits, recounts, and audits that fail to find problems are irrelevant or even further proof of wrongdoing. After all, conspiracies are secret, so the lack of evidence is evidence that the corruption is very deep, including Trump's own election security and Justice Department people. He appointed them but they failed him. Don't believe them. They are RINOS.
We are where we are because Trump laid the groundwork.