Donald Trump’s insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election despite his having lost the 2020 presidential election put a lot of his allies in a bind.
Republican elected officials had to choose: Would they risk irritating an active, voluble set of Republican voters, or would they affirm the obvious election results? They at least had the option to stay quiet, an option of which many availed themselves. Media outlets such as Fox News couldn’t, having to pick between coddling Trump supporters by echoing Trump’s false claims about fraud or recognizing the reality of the election outcome.
Eventually a third option emerged. Trump allies and those otherwise interested in appealing to a right-wing audience decided that the election had been stolen not through unproven and unprovable voter fraud but instead through devious left-wing machinations. It was the media’s fault, for its coverage, for example. Arguments like that had the benefit of being vague and hard to measure, the rhetorical equivalent of attributing things to vibes.
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There was one concrete claim made, however. The 2020 election was tainted or even determined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose contribution to a group called Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) increased turnout in Democratic areas, making the difference for Joe Biden. This claim had multiple benefits, among them that it leverage right-wing hostility to large social media companies. The idea that “Zuckbucks” — as the...
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