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Five Questions with WAPO Columnist Jen Rubin

Joyce Vance

Sep 27

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In 2020 it was the Big Lie, Trump’s claim the election was stolen from him. That was the match Trump used to try and light the country on fire that time. With the 2024 election getting underway, we’re all gearing up to understand what Trump and MAGA Republicans’ strategy will be this time if he loses. Trump has not, in the past, been one to accept a loss and move on graciously.

Washington Post columnist and my dear friend Jen Rubin has been ahead of the pack in thinking about this issue. She wrote a column earlier this week about new trends in Republican claims about voter fraud. It caught my attention because of something that’s underway in Alabama—a false claim by our secretary of state that “illegal immigrants” are voting in our elections. I’ve talked with you before about the “Alabamization of America,” my sense that ideas for new ways to suppress voting rights get tried out here first to see if they’ll fly. I’d been wondering about that here. Jen has a lot more to say about the new focus on immigrant voting that Republicans are starting to advance.

It turns out, not surprisingly, that this idea that noncitizens are voting, and voting in sufficient numbers to impact the outcome of the presidential election, is a fiction. But fiction, in the hands of Donald Trump and his followers, can be dangerous. It’s important to understand now, before this new big lie gets in wide circulation, what the falsehood is about and what the ultimate strategy is here. Could this be used to try to steal this election if Trump loses?

No one better than Jen, who is also a lawyer (she says, a lawyer in recovery), to help us understand this development.

“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate having all of you here. Free subscriptions, with access to my other posts, will always be available. Thank you for reading the newsletter and engaging in the hard but essential work of civil discourse.