The man who is the least predictable president (as he was a presidential candidate) in American history and who has denounced mail-in voting as "mail-in cheating," while claiming (falsely) that it "was a source of fraud and contributed to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election," only recently voted by mail in Palm Beach County, Florida (the home of his Mar-a-Lago Club), in a traditionally Republican district where, surprisingly, a Democrat (and a woman, no less) won a seat in the Florida State House against a Trump-endorsed candidate (something that's been happening across the country in 2026, as Democrats have flipped a dozen state legislative seats to one for the Republicans).
Phew! I'm already out of breath from that single-sentence paragraph and we still have months to go until this year's congressional elections!
Under the circumstances, can there be any doubt that there had to be "mail-in cheating" of some sort in Florida (though not by the president himself, of course) or how in the world (if you don't take Donald Trump's increasing unpopularity into account) could a Democrat have won that way? Fortunately, the president isn't alone in his worries. It seems that, according to New York Times reporter Abbie VanSickle, the six Trumpian Supreme Court justices may soon "upend mail-in voting throughout the country" by not allowing mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted (just as they may fulfill another of Trump's passing dreams by lending him a hand when it comes to asylum seekers along the border with Mexico).
And with that in mind and a president who has never quite ruled out a third term in office, despite the 22nd Amendment, let TomDispatch regular and former Baltimore Sun reporter Arnold Isaacs offer a little advice to his "tribe" of journalists on how in the world to cover this year's crucial congressional elections. Tom
From an Old Journalist, Another Letter to the Tribe
Cover the Election, Not Just the Candidates
A few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, I wrote "An Open Letter to My Old Tribe," urging "every reporter who is covering this election at any level" to focus on a crucial question -- whether the public would trust the election procedure and the losing candidate would accept the result as legitimate. "It does not seem an exaggeration," I wrote then, "to say that the future of American democracy, perhaps its very survival, depends on the answer."
More than five years later, with less than seven months to go before the midterm elections, that question is before us again, but in far starker terms than I could have imagined in 2020. So, here's an updated letter to the media tribe I once belonged to, with suggestions broadly similar to those I made five years ago, but with a far sharper sense of urgency, even fear.
Here's my first suggestion: reporters in 2026 need to pay more attention to and offer more forceful coverage of President Trump's continuing insistence that Joe Biden's victory in 2020 was fraudulent and that year's election illegitimate.(As recently as March 15th, he tweeted this completely false allegation: "With time, it [the 2020 election] has been conclusively proven to be stolen.")
While Trump keeps repeating that long-discredited claim, journalists should not treat his falsehoods as "old news" that no longer requires detailed coverage anymore. They should instead consider it an important and newsworthy story right now. Instead of briefly repeating a shorthand conclusion ("false" or "without evidence") after a quote from the president, they should take a few more lines of type or minutes of air time to remind readers or listeners of the facts that show irrefutably why they should never believe his words. After all, Trump's "rigged election" claims haven't been validated in a single one of 64 court cases -- that's right, 64! -- challenging the election results, or in any official investigation or recount.
On that point, reporters can cite an authoritative 2022 report, "Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case That Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Election," written by a panel of authors including two former Republican senators, a lawyer who served as solicitor-general under President George W. Bush, and five other prominent conservatives. After exhaustively reviewing every judicial proceeding and post-election probe in six states where election fraud was alleged, the authors concluded that "Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case." Their definitive verdict on the overall issue was: "There is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct."
(Journalists might also pass on this thought from David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, who, in a recent podcast, suggested that all 2020 election conspiracy theories rest on this dubious premise: "Democrats, being out of power, somehow managed a conspiracy against a sitting president, who controlled the entire government, to steal an election from him" and that four years later when those same Democrats held every lever of federal power, they forgot to do it again.")
Reporters should also remind their audience of another important fact: Trump's claims of fraud in the 2020 election were emphatically refuted by Mike Pence, his vice president, and Bill Barr, his attorney general, both of whom publicly broke with the president, strongly denied his allegations, and unequivocally recognized that Joe Biden had been legitimately elected.
In that connection, here's a related suggestion for reporters: ask every Republican candidate on your state's ballot to answer this question: Do you really believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and lost only because of massive vote fraud? Press as hard as you can for an on-the-record, yes-or-no answer, and if you don't get one, keep pushing. If a candidate says yes or evades the question, follow up with questions like: "What evidence do you have? How do you explain that those charges were not verified in a vote recount or in a single one of more than 60 judicial proceedings? Were judges in 64 courtrooms across six states all part of a nefarious conspiracy against Donald Trump, or do you have any other explanation?"
Report on the Process, Not Just the Arguments
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