During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly said that the electoral process was rigged. After losing the Iowa primary caucus he declared that Sen. Ted Cruz had stolen it and tweeted, "based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified." That was just the beginning. Throughout the general election campaign, he refused to say if he would accept the results, even in a televised presidential debate in October. He finally told his followers that he would accept the vote count — but only if he won — and they responded with rapturous adulation. Even when he won the Electoral College he refused to accept the popular vote results and formed a commission to prove that the numbers were fraudulent. (It came up empty, of course.)
So, it was no surprise that he spent most of the 2020 election casting aspersions on mail-in voting and planting the suspicion that the election was going to be stolen from him.
