Trump’s bid for re-election in 2020 is clearly the event, more than any other, that opened the door to the political madness that has engulfed America to this day.

As our nation lurches with foreboding towards this autumn’s midterm elections, it is clear that President Trump is determined once again to assault objective reality. Truth has always been his greatest enemy.

At this moment, it may be worthwhile to briefly review the electoral history of Trump’s three presidential campaigns. The results of the 2016 election were a surprise in a number of ways. It was considered by many, notwithstanding Truman’s victory over Dewey in 1948, as the greatest upset in presidential history. Clinton’s popular vote total was nearly 66 million (48.2 percent) while Trump received just under 63 million votes (46.1 percent). Trump lost the popular vote by almost three million. In fact, more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in history. It must have been difficult for her to make the call, but she conceded to Trump at 2:30 a.m. on election night. One can only imagine what Trump’s reaction would have been if this situation had been reversed.

Trump’s bid for re-election in 2020 is clearly the event, more than any other, that opened the door to the political madness that has engulfed America to this day.

A quick look at the raw numbers in the 2020 results helps to tell the story. First of all, a massive turnout of more than 155 million Americans went to the polls, far more than in any other election in American history. In 2016, only 129 million voters showed up. In 2020, Biden received just over 81 million votes, while Trump’s final total was approximately 74 million votes. Trump immediately declared that it was statistically impossible for him to have lost the election. This is because he had received far more votes in 2020 than in 2016, an election which he had won! He is right about the numbers, having tallied over 11 million more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016. Trump’s reasoning however ignored one very important fact, that he was not running against himself. Instead he was competing against Joe Biden, who with over 80 million votes had defeated Trump by a healthy margin of approximately seven million. As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie, but occasionally Donald Trump does.

Since the numbers didn’t work out for Trump, he quickly resorted to other explanations as to why the 2020 election had been stolen from him. We are familiar with most of his theories of conspiracy, including everything from rigged voting machines to Italian satellites controlled by the Democrats to falsify the election returns. Trump’s charges of fraud are boundless and these political lies have been spewing forth incessantly for now over five years.

I believe the Jan. 6 attack on our nation’s capital, having occurred after Trump’s defeat but while he was still president, will be burned into American memory for generations to come. This frontal assault on democracy is the most surreal political event of our lifetime. It is still hard to imagine that an American president would have ever launched a mob to physically attack our own government, but President Trump did just that.

Incredibly in 2024, even after all of Trump’s lies and political smears, he finally managed to get a plurality of the votes cast. This tells us very little about Trump, but a great deal about the condition of our American culture.

Naturally he immediately declared his victory to have been a massive landslide. It wasn’t. In every presidential election there are candidates on the ballot with virtually no chance of winning, but who are still able to attract sometimes thousands of votes. When all the ballots in the 2024 election were finally counted, Trump received 49.8 percent of the vote. This means that in each of these three elections more people voted against Trump than those who voted for him. Sadly, still a loser after all these years.

Keith Townsend