Hard-line Republicans are already prepping the claim that Kamala Harris ‘stole the election’

A right-wing blog, backed by the hard-line conservatives at Project 2025, has suggested that the only way Kamala Harris can win the presidency is by stealing the election.

An opinion piece in The American Mind on Friday (25 October), under the heading “What if Harris Gets Away With It?” made several baseless accusations against the Democratic presidential candidate in the run-up to next week’s vote.

Written by Brian T Kennedy, a member of the right-wing think tank The Claremont Institute, the editorial suggested that Harris could only win through a “stolen” election, which would cause the “disintegration” of the US political system.

“If Kamala Harris does win, it will, as of today, be because of a stolen election,” he claimed. “Under these circumstances, America will become an ungovernable country. Large groups of Americans will believe their vote no longer counts.

“Over the past two decades, we have been living through a slow-motion communist revolution,” Kenndy claimed. “The most devastating has been the corruption of our election system. Having vilified President Trump more than any man in American history, the American communists and their allies in the Democratic Party may well be able to steal the 2024 election.

He went on to say: “I have two kinds of colleagues: those who believe a blowout [win] for President Trump, and those who believe the election can be stolen, given the massive cyber-vulnerability of our electronic voting system, and the refusal of [Democrat] state governors and secretaries of state to build a transparent, same-day voting system.”

There is no evidence to show that the Democratic Party ever have or are now planning to rig the election. To suggest otherwise plays into the conspiracy theory that former US president and Republican candidate Trump won the US election in 2020, despite his failure to prove this in dozens of court cases across a number of states.

The conspiracy theory eventually led to the US Capitol riots on 6 January, in which thousands of Trump supporters stormed congress in an effort to stop the election results being rubber-stamped in 2021. At least six people died and hundreds were injured.

In his piece, Kennedy hinted that it was possible that violence would again break out, if the Democrats were to retain the White House to take office.

“Americans can be a very rough lot of people when they want to be. You can rig one election before their eyes, but can you rig two?” he asked. “And can you rig the second one so openly and brazenly, and expect that the American people will not push back?

“How they push back is another matter, but it would serve the interest of America’s enemies to face a nation even more deeply divided than ours already is. Violence is not an option. But a political disintegration of Red America from Blue America is not impossible.”

Kennedy also attacked Harris personally, calling her an obscure vice-president who comes off as “little more than a joke”. He then claimed that only communists, abortionists and “transgenderists” believe the country was on the right track.

“There are a substantial number of serious people who believe the election can indeed be stolen. Very little has changed in the seven swing states that decided the 2020 election,” he wrote. “If anything remains obvious, it is that there are substantial numbers of Deep State operatives within the Biden Administration who know that if President Trump is elected, they will most certainly face investigation.

“There are large numbers of powerful people within our government who have a vested interest in seeing President Trump lose.”

What is Project 2025 and how does it relate to Donald Trump?

In analysing the opinion piece and other Project-2025-backed material, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz concluded that Republicans were gearing up to claim that, if they lose on 5 November, the election was stolen.

Project 2025 is a political blueprint, generated by think tank The Heritage Foundation, for a future Republican president, and outlines his first 180 days in office. It focuses on a wide-range of subjects, from the availability of abortion pills to a Bible-based definition of marriage and family.

Gertz argued that, while Trump has a chance to “very well win legitimately”, he and his Project 2025 allies could try to “subvert [the] election”,.

He went on to claim: “While elements of that plan could be different, the broad strokes of declaring victory, presenting himself as the victim of election fraud, filing pre-textual lawsuits, and ultimately leaning on Republican officials at local, state and federal levels to hand him the presidency, remain unchanged.

“This strategy rests on Trump being able to convince the Republican base that he won the election.”

Gertz pointed to Trump’s similar efforts in 2020 and, with the support of the “vast right-wing media ecosystem,” could generate a similar conspiracy theory in 2024.

“The right has purged media figures and Republican politicians who had stood in the way of the plot. And now, the same players are again laying the groundwork for a Trumpian subversion effort,” he said.

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