letters to the editor

Big lie, little lie

Posted 1/22/25

The year 2020 famously gave rise to the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump won the presidential election. In fact, it wasn’t even close. He lost by more than seven million votes and …

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letters to the editor

Big lie, little lie

Posted

The year 2020 famously gave rise to the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump won the presidential election. In fact, it wasn’t even close. He lost by more than seven million votes and received only 232 votes in the Electoral College compared to the 306 votes won by Joe Biden.    

Now this year we’re being treated to what we can call the “Little Lie,” the false claim that Trump’s narrow win over Kamala Harris was some sort of sweeping victory that gave him an “outstanding mandate” to reorder American society according to his will. In fact, Trump won the popular vote by just 1.5%, which is the smallest margin of victory for a president in a quarter of a century. George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all racked up much larger winning margins than Trump. Even Hillary Clinton beat Trump by over 2% in the popular vote in 2016, although she lost the electoral college. Moreover, in this last election, Trump once again failed to win the support of even 50% of the American voters.

Far from having been given a mandate by the American people, Trump will take office as president of an evenly divided country where partisan rancor is at an all-time high in large part because of his inflammatory speech and outrageous behavior.

Bruce Ferguson
Callicoon Center, NY

2020, big lie, presidential, race, joe biden, donald trump

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