I ask this honestly of all the people who think the last election was fair: What did Trump have to lose by not cheating?

If he cheats and he wins, he becomes president and can then use Absolute Immunity™ to completely shield himself from the consequences of both the most recent election and also the 2020 election interference / coup d’etat that he was in court for.

If he cheats and loses, he goes to prison - probably for the rest of his life.

If he plays fair and wins, exact same outcome as if he cheated, only with worse odds for victory.

If he plays fair and he loses, he goes to prison - probably for the rest of his life.

Trump would have been a fool to not try to rig the election. He was already in deep shit, and he couldn’t possibly get in more trouble than he already was. Cheating and getting caught in 2024 would have been like throwing gasoline on a raging forest fire.

Literally everybody with half a brain said for 4 years that Trump and his team, if not prevented from running again, would learn from their mistakes in 2020. And the lesson they learned wouldn’t be “Don’t cheat.”, it would be “Don’t lose.”. Right after the dust settled, Republicans moved to disenfranchise voters specifically for the next election to give them the edge they needed to win this time around. They left no margin for failure this time, and I wouldn’t have put it past them to have altered voting machines while they were at it. But nobody is looking into any of this because we’re too concerned with not appearing like hypocrites.

The greater fool is the one who trusts a person who cheated and went unpunished to not cheat again.