Trump’s Favorite Cold Case: His 2020 Loss

From Fulton County to North Carolina to Texas, Republicans are using the same playbook: Rewrite the rules, bully the process, and call it “election integrity.”

Kristoffer Ealy is a political scientist, political analyst, and professor in Southern California. He teaches American Government and political behavior, with a focus on political psychology, voting behavior, and political socialization. Subscribe to his Substack, The Thinking Class with Professor Ealy.

Illustration by Riley Levine

I am beyond over this crybaby bullshit. During a time of political unrest, with tension dialed up across the country, with innocent people getting killed by ICE and ICE goons, with Kristi Noem in the hot seat for trying to gaslight the country over unjustified killings—after the blowback hit, suddenly the subtext turned into “don’t blame me, blame the Stephen Miller script.” It’s very good to know Trump’s priorities are in order.

Because while all of that is happening—while real bodies are hitting real pavement—Trump decided the emergency worth federal attention is his emotional support grievance from 2020. Fulton County, Georgia. “Investigating” an election he cannot get over. Not investigating corruption in public housing. Not investigating extremist violence. Not investigating the slow-motion unraveling of public trust that happens when the government lies and then points to the smoke as proof of a fire. No. We’re sending the FBI to rummage through election materials like the country is a group chat and Trump just found a screenshot from four years ago that still makes him mad.

And it’s not even the investigation itself that’s the most insulting part. It’s the performance. The message. The giant red billboard that says: if the problem is Trump’s ego, the solution is the federal government. If the problem is federal agents killing people, the solution is a press release and a blame-shift. If the problem is the country spiraling, the solution is … a reboot of the same lie that already got people hurt the first time.

Trump lost in 2020. Legitimately. Full stop. He lost, and then he spent the next four years scaring the bitch-ass Republicans with the threat of: if anybody speaks ill of him, he’ll run as a third-party candidate and split the vote. And because too many of them are cowards who mistake fear for strategy, instead of taking the L and trying again in four years, they decided America had to relitigate a loss that was settled by every court a person could name without pulling out a legal dictionary. This is what the party of “personal responsibility” became: a national hostage situation where the ransom is everyone pretending Trump didn’t lose.

Welcome to hell on earth, ladies and gentlemen. It’s not the fire that’s new. It’s the way the people holding the gasoline keep insisting it’s water.

What makes the 2020 lie so absurd is how selective it is. Republicans won plenty of races in 2020 fair and square. They won House seats. They won down-ballot offices. They held ground in places they expected to lose. The same voters, the same precincts, the same machines, the same process. Somehow the “fraud” had the decency to stop at the bottom of the ballot like it had errands to run. Trump’s loss just happened to be the only election that was “rigged.” That alone should have been the moment the Republicans who won stood up, looked him in the face, and told him to stop embarrassing the party.

They didn’t. They let the lie become a loyalty test, and the lie produced a whole farm system of election deniers who learned the most important lesson of modern Republican politics: if reality doesn’t flatter you, call it a conspiracy. A few names that have existed in this space: Doug Mastriano, Mark Finchem, Jim Marchant—people who treated “I don’t accept the results” like it was a principled stance instead of a tantrum dressed up in a suit. And this last person I don’t even want to name because she’s been out of the news cycle and I feel like if I say her name I’m jinxing us all… Kari Lake. And now there’s chatter that she’s making noise in Iowa these days, because of course she is. Once you build a career on losing loudly, the only thing left is to keep touring the country like a cover band for a song nobody wants to hear anymore.

That’s the part that matters for 2026. This isn’t nostalgia. This is infrastructure. Trump’s 2020 obsession isn’t a diary entry. It’s a tool. The lie is a weapon he uses to shape what happens next—how rules get written, how officials get pressured, how institutions get bullied into becoming props. It’s not complicated. It’s not brilliant. It’s just relentless. A stupid plan can still work when an entire party decides its job is to clap on cue.

That’s why it’s a mistake to treat Georgia like a one-off episode. Georgia is the headline, not the whole story. The point is power—who has it, who uses it, and who keeps pretending it’s rude to act like they’re in a fight while the other side is swinging chairs.

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North Carolina is the clean example because it shows how this works even without the “fraud” costume. The dispute around the North Carolina Supreme Court race wasn’t built on “the counting machines were hacked” melodrama. It was built on something more dangerous because it sounds more “procedural” to people who aren’t paying attention: change the rules after people already voted, then try to toss ballots until the margin flips. Jefferson Griffin trailed Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes. Recounts happened. The math didn’t change. The lawsuit kept going anyway, dragging out the result for months, aiming at categories of voters and categories of ballots, trying to retroactively re-litigate eligibility and documentation like the election itself was a rough draft. Then, after six months, Griffin finally conceded.

The lesson there isn’t “the system worked.” The system survived. There’s a difference. The play was still attempted. The pressure still got applied. The signal still got sent to election administrators and voters: even if the votes are counted correctly, even if the result is clear, even if the margin is validated, the outcome is still negotiable if the right people scream long enough. That’s not democracy as competition. That’s democracy as a customer-service complaint line, and the loudest person at the counter gets store credit.

This is what I’ve been saying since 2020: the old friendly rules Republicans used to play by ended when MAGA became a thing. That era where there was at least a shared baseline—where everyone could agree on what a loss was—got buried under the weight of Trump’s ego and the party’s addiction to power. These Republicans don’t care about “tradition,” “norms,” or the Constitution as anything other than a prop they can wave around when it’s useful. They care about winning, staying in charge, and punishing people who refuse to participate in the fantasy.

Democrats keep showing up to a street fight with a laminated brochure about “how democracy should work.” And then they act shocked when the brochure doesn’t block a punch.

Joe Biden—transformational in real ways—still played footsie with power in the places where power actually needed to be exercised. The biggest failure of that era wasn’t that Democrats didn’t pass enough bills. It was that they let the idea of consequences become optional. Biden allowed Merrick Garland to play games and drag his feet, and every delay became oxygen for Trump’s narrative. It wasn’t just legal slow-walking; it was strategic malpractice. When the person who tried to break the system is allowed to spend years turning “accountability” into a punchline, the next phase is inevitable: they come back with a bigger hammer and a longer list of enemies.

Trump learned the real lesson of modern politics: if power is available, grab it. If it’s not available, rewrite the rules until it is. And he taught Republicans to stop pretending to be shy about it.

Texas is the most shameless version of it. Trump pimp-smacked Governor Greg Abbott and told him to get him five congressional seats. Five. Not “compete harder.” Not “build a better argument.” Not “find candidates people like.” He demanded seats like he was ordering a combo meal. And because Abbott is a chump when it comes to Trump—because too many Republican officials think their career is a leash and Trump is holding it—he capitulated. That’s what this party is now: “Yes sir” politics with a belt and a smile.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. It’s a pattern. It’s coordinated in spirit even when it’s not coordinated on paper. It’s the same mentality everywhere: if the system doesn’t guarantee Republican advantage, then the system is “corrupt.” If Democrats win, the process is “rigged.” If Republicans lose, the rules must be changed. If Republicans win, the win is proof the rules are fine. Heads they win, tails the country burns.

California saw the direction of this and responded like a state that understands the assignment. Gavin Newsom’s response mattered because it wasn’t moralizing. It wasn’t a gentle request. It was a recognition that hardball is already being played, and pretending otherwise is surrender in slow motion. Proposition 50 wasn’t just an isolated ballot measure; it was California voters making a statement that they’re not going to sit quietly while Republicans try to redraw the battlefield midgame and call it “fair.” That posture is what’s been missing from Democrats in too many places. Not recklessness. Not panic. Clarity. A spine. A willingness to treat the threat as real and respond like an adult who actually intends to win.

Virginia is the other side of that coin, and what Virginia is doing cannot be overstated. The headline is that Democrats there tried to maximize power in a way that mirrored what Republicans are attempting elsewhere, and a judge found their redistricting resolution illegal. That matters because it shows Democrats can’t just will their way through procedure. Fine. That’s reality. But the broader point is what it reveals about public appetite and political posture: Virginians aren’t sitting around begging Democrats to be timid. Voters are showing, in plain numbers, that they support substantive Democratic priorities and they are not allergic to Democrats acting like they understand that power is the only language Republicans reliably respect.

That same Virginia polling shows Democrats with majorities on issues that Republicans keep trying to paint as “radical,” including reproductive rights protections, restoring voting rights, paid leave, and a higher minimum wage. Even on the controversial subject of using power to redraw the congressional map mid-cycle, the numbers show real support among Democrats and a meaningful openness among independents—exactly the voters who get treated like porcelain whenever Democrats consider doing anything assertive. The takeaway isn’t “ignore courts” or “break rules.” The takeaway is that voters recognize the stakes, and the fear that “doing anything bold will automatically backfire” is often just a superstition dressed up as strategy.

Here’s the lesson Democrats should learn from the state of Virginia, and it’s real simple: no matter how big or small the majority is, when you get power, you use power. Not to become what Republicans are. Not to indulge in the same nihilism. To protect the rules that allow democracy to function in the first place, and to deliver the policies voters are consistently saying they want. The party that refuses to use power becomes the party that teaches everyone power doesn’t matter—right up until Republicans use it on their neck.

That doesn’t mean becoming paranoid. It doesn’t mean living in a permanent panic posture. I’m not trying to scare anyone. Being fraudulent cats is not a good posture for us. Political literacy isn’t fear. It’s awareness. Diligence. It’s the difference between spotting smoke and pretending it’s fog.

Because it would be naïve to act like Trump’s endgame is simply “complain loudly about 2020 forever.” The logic of his movement isn’t limited to reelection cycles. The logic is dominance. If he can convince enough people that elections are only legitimate when he wins, then every barrier to his power becomes an “injustice,” every check becomes “corruption,” and every limit becomes a challenge to be bulldozed. Don’t be surprised if he tries to bully his way into floating a third-term push, or into normalizing the idea that the Constitution is more of a suggestion than a rulebook. The whole point of his grievance theater is to wear the country down until absurdity feels normal and resistance feels exhausting.

That’s why November matters. Not as a civic ritual where everyone lights candles and hopes decency wins. As a contest where one side is actively manipulating institutions, intimidating officials, and rewriting rules, while the other side keeps waiting for a perfect moment to act like it’s allowed to fight back. Democrats cannot wait for the fires to happen before trying to put them out. Fires don’t send invitations. Fires don’t care about timing. Fires spread.

Georgia is one scene. North Carolina is another. Texas is its own circus. California and Virginia are what pushback looks like when Democrats remember the job is not to be polite—it’s to protect the country from people who think losing is a conspiracy and winning is a birthright. The biggest mistake would be treating any of this as noise that will burn itself out. The noise is the point. The chaos is the strategy. The lie is the lever.

The only antidote is competence, urgency, and the willingness to use the tools that exist before they get taken away.