Phoenix (CNN)Two events -- a Trump rally and a voting rights march -- in the same state on the same day this Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend encapsulated a nation at odds with itself about the future of its democracy.
One side fears a return to the past, hearing echoes of Jim Crow in the present.
The other has been convinced by a sustained disinformation campaign that elections in the United States are rigged.
The latter was out in full force on Saturday at former President Donald's Trump's first rally of 2022, in Florence, Arizona. Among the dozen or so Trump supporters there who spoke to CNN, grand conspiracy theories -- all of which have been debunked -- about how the 2020 election was supposedly rigged (like through voting machines linked to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013) seem to have given way to more refined talking points that closely align with restrictive voting measures being enacted by Republicans across the country.
"There's a famous statement -- 'sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate,' " Trump said in a video posted online Friday, underscoring how Republicans motivated by his election lies have sought to undermine the legitimacy of America's elections. Arizona -- which President Joe Biden carried in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state since 1996 -- has been at the center of those efforts.
In Florence on Saturday, Trump showed exactly what kind of "vote counters" he approves of.
Speaking...
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