For six long years, Donald Trump has regularly alleged that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, despite the thorough debunking of his and his allies’ claims by federal and state governments and the courts. Now the 47th president has put the entire prestige of the United States, and its law enforcement and intelligence agencies, behind the audacious assertion of a vast conspiracy to corrupt that election and cover up innumerable acts of treason. In an unusual “Address to the Nation” on Thursday night, Trump announced a series of “revelations” about election security that will thrill the most credulous of conspiracy theorists with their scope and the bottomless depravity they purport to expose.

The intelligence reports on which much of these allegations are based will be picked apart by experts. But the important thing to grasp tonight is that the President of the United States has destroyed any confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections for Americans inclined to believe him, setting up a certain challenge to any midterm results adverse to his party. To justify his sweeping indictment of the election system, Trump stipulated the existence of the most massive conspiracy since Hitler and Stalin divided Poland. It involved, he said, the government of China, the mainstream news media, Democratic officeholders, and “deep state” civil servants, all of whom worked consciously together to steal election data, hack voting machines, corrupt voter rolls, and lift Joe Biden to........

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