Democracy Dies in Darkness

Trump doesn’t need Russian trolls to spread disinformation. The mainstream media does it for him.

Perspective by
Former columnist
October 7, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
President Trump at a campaign event in Duluth, Minn., last week. This time, it only took the megaphone of the presidency, amplified by journalists trying to seem neutral, for Trump’s falsehoods to go viral, a Harvard study found. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Voting fraud, according to study after study, is rare. Mail-in ballots are, with a few exceptions, a safe way to vote.

But millions of Americans have come to believe something radically different: They think the Nov. 3 election could very well end up being stolen. That the outcome — especially if it relies on counting the votes that come in later than in a normal election year — might well be illegitimate.