July 15, 2021

By Bill Berkowitz

“Funny how the big lie can make us all kids again.” – Judge Clement, “Trackdown”

In a 1958 episode of the short-lived television series “Trackdown,” titled “The End of the World,” a balding snake oil salesman named Walter Trump, (yes, Walter Trump) comes to town, selling an end-of-the-world whopper to a town full of scared and gullible townspeople. “I am the only one. Trust me! I can build a wall around your homes that nothing will penetrate,” Trump tells a crowd. Trackdown’s Hoby Gilman (played by Robert Culp) asks the sheriff: “How long are you going to let this con man walk around town?” Trump fires back: “Be careful son I can sue you.” A narrator’s voiceover intones: “The people were ready to believe. Like sheep they ran toward the slaughterhouse. And waiting for them was the high priest of fraud.” Gilman then appeals to Judge Clement to arrest the grifter. Judge Clement tells Gilman that he doesn’t have enough evidence: “Funny how the big lie can make us all kids again,” he says. SPOILER ALERT: Trump is eventually arrested for fraud.

On Sunday, July 11, ex-president Donald Trump took the stage in Dallas and regaled the crowd of Republican Party regulars, Christian Right supporters, QAnon proponents, and violent reactionaries at CPAC, the nation’s largest Republican conference, with … wait for it … The Big Lie. Disregarding his abysmal performance during the coronavirus pandemic, Trump said: “We were doing so well until the rigged election came along.”

Two weeks earlier, on June 26, amidst a blizzard of reports and headlines eviscerating his Big Lie, Donald Trump made another stop on his revenge tour. According to CNN, Trump repeated his litany of lies about the election and then took some serious time at the event in Lorain County, Ohio, “to lambast Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for voting to impeach him earlier this year.”

Meanwhile, The Big Lie was being battered by former friends and foes: Former Attorney General William Barr, who once thought that Donald Trump’s Big Lie about election fraud was worthy of further investigation, now says, “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.” Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “there's a growing recognition that this is a bit like [professional wrestling]. That it's entertaining, but it's not real. And I know people want to say, yeah, they believe in the 'Big Lie' in some cases, but I think people recognize that it's a lot of show and bombast. But it's going nowhere. The election is over. It was fair….let's move on." 

In Michigan, lawmakers led by Republicans, issued a report “that eviscerated Trump's lies about voter fraud,” according to CNN. At the same time Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was suspended from practicing law in New York because of all the lies he has told in court proceedings.

Recent reporting found that in November, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel, Justin Riemer, called claims that Trump had won the election “a joke.” Speaking of the lawyer pushing such claims, Riemer said, “They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing.”

Many of the participants in the January 6 Capitol riot are drained of both energy and resources, if not commitment to the cause. QAnon supporters have withdrawn from headline grabbing gatherings – other than the big Texas rally last month -- and appear to be settling in for some long-term political engagement.   

Yet, the beat goes on. The Big Lie seems to be surviving the onslaught of truth, and Trump is still a most popular fellow within Republican Party ranks. A survey from Echelon Insights — a Republican polling firm — found that 59 percent of GOP voters would definitely or probably vote for Trump in the 2024 primary, compared to just 35 percent who would definitely or probably vote for a different Republican.

As Declan Garvey recently reported, “The resumption of his rally schedule, therefore, serves a dual purpose for the former president. Not only do blockbuster events generate stories … and reinsert his name into a political discourse that has been remarkably Trump-free since February, but they work as deterrence against further GOP independence.” 

And in the GOP, authoritarianism rules the roost. In a piece titled “Call it authoritarianism.” Vox’s Zack Beauchamp wrote:  “It’s worth being clear about this: The GOP has become an authoritarian party pushing an authoritarian policy agenda.” Beauchamp discussed what is called “competitive authoritarian governments,” which has a veneer of democracy, so much so “that many of their own citizens believe they’re still living in one.”

Thus, Republicans in the Senate successfully blocked the establishment of a joint committee to investigate the January 6 Capitol riot. As Rick Perlstein recently wrote in New York magazine, “Democrats have been slow to understand that this is an insurgency against democracy with parliamentary and paramilitary wings.”

In a piece titled “The Long Authoritarian History of the Capitol Riot,” Perlstein, author of several brilliant books on the rise of modern conservatism, noted that the Republican Party has been awash in authoritarianism for decades. Perlstein noted that Richard Wirthlin, chief strategist for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, and Advertising Age’s Adman of the Year in 1981, did a survey in 1979 called “Survey of Voter Values and Attitudes.” Wirthlin’s survey found that Reagan supporters “obtain high scores on … authoritarianism – and a low score on egalitarianism.”

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