More than three weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump stood before supporters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and declared that the presidential election was being “rigged.” As his campaign faced damaging allegations and unfavorable coverage, Trump broadened his attack beyond Hillary Clinton or the news media to the legitimacy of the political process itself. “The whole thing is one big fix,” he told the crowd. The rhetoric is significant in hindsight: Trump's campaign to undermine confidence in an election he might lose did not begin in 2020. It was already plainly visible four years earlier.**
Donald Trump had not lost the 2016 presidential election.
The election hadn't even happened.
But on October 14, 2016, Trump was already telling Americans that the process was rigged.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump attacked the media, Democrats and the political establishment.
Then he went further.
“The process is rigged,” Trump declared.
“This whole election is being rigged.”
Later, he returned to the theme.
“The whole thing is one big fix,” Trump said.
“It's one big fix.”
Election Day was still 25 days away.
Trump Was Under Enormous Political Pressure
The remarks came during one of the most chaotic periods of Trump's 2016 campaign.
One week earlier, the Access Hollywood recording had become public.
Trump had been recorded in 2005 making crude remarks about women and describing kissing and grabbing them.
Then women began publicly accusing Trump of unwanted sexual contact.
Trump denied the allegations.
At the Greensboro rally, he spent considerable time attacking his accusers and the news organizations reporting their stories.
But Trump connected those controversies to something much larger.
He portrayed them as evidence of a coordinated attempt to prevent him from becoming president.
“The process is rigged,” Trump said.
“This whole election is being rigged.”
The election itself had now become part of the alleged conspiracy.
“One Big Fix”
Trump's argument wasn't limited to the general election.
He pointed to Bernie Sanders' Democratic primary campaign as another example.
“Bernie Sanders was a rigged deal,” Trump told the crowd.
Then he broadened the accusation:
> “The whole thing is one big fix.”
Trump repeated it.
“It's one big fix.”
He described the media's reporting as lies and fabrications and told supporters that their political movement needed to overcome what he called a “terrible deception.”
The message was increasingly expansive.
The media couldn't be trusted.
The political establishment couldn't be trusted.
The election process couldn't be trusted.
And if Trump failed, his rhetoric was already providing an explanation:
The system had been stacked against him.
There Was No Evidence the 2016 Election Was Being Stolen
Trump's statements were not accompanied by evidence showing a coordinated effort to manipulate enough ballots or vote totals to determine the presidential election.
American elections are decentralized.
They are administered primarily by state and local governments under different laws, using thousands of jurisdictions and election officials across the country.
Trump nevertheless increasingly talked about the presidential election as though it were a single system that could be centrally “rigged” against him.
Election officials from both parties pushed back against such claims.
So did prominent Republicans.
But Trump continued.
The Claim Became More Specific
In the days surrounding the Greensboro rally, Trump's rhetoric increasingly included allegations of voter fraud.
He encouraged supporters to watch polling places.
On October 18, he specifically told supporters to watch cities including Philadelphia, St. Louis and Chicago.
“Watch Philadelphia,” Trump said.
“Watch St. Louis.”
“Watch Chicago.”
Voting-rights advocates expressed concern that loosely organized groups of Trump supporters appearing at polling places—particularly in minority neighborhoods—could result in voter intimidation.
Trump presented it differently.
To him, supporters would be protecting the election from fraud.
The assumption underneath the request was already established:
Something suspicious might happen.
Obama Responds
Four days after the Greensboro rally, President Barack Obama publicly confronted Trump's claims.
Obama said Trump's allegations were unsupported and unprecedented in modern presidential politics.
He accused Trump of “whining before the game is even over.”
Obama argued that presidential candidates traditionally accepted the legitimacy of the electoral process even when they fiercely disagreed over politics.
Trump was challenging that norm before voters had even finished casting their ballots.
Then Came the Final Debate
Five days after Greensboro, Trump was given an opportunity to settle the issue.
During the final presidential debate on October 19, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump whether he would accept the election result if Hillary Clinton won.
It was a straightforward question.
Trump wouldn't make the commitment.
“I will look at it at the time,” he said.
Wallace pressed him.
Trump responded:
> “I'll keep you in suspense.”
Hillary Clinton called the answer “horrifying.”
Trump had now moved from claiming the election was rigged to publicly refusing to promise that he would accept its result.
Then Trump Won
The scenario Trump had spent weeks warning about never materialized.
Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
He defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College, 304 electoral votes to 227 after seven electors cast votes for other candidates.
Clinton conceded the election.
President Obama invited Trump to the White House.
The transition of power began.
Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president on January 20, 2017.
But even after winning, Trump continued making unsupported claims about the election.
Because there was one part of the result he had lost.
The popular vote.
Trump Claimed Millions Had Voted Illegally
Hillary Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes nationally than Trump.
Trump responded by claiming—without evidence—that millions of people had voted illegally.
He asserted that he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
No evidence emerged demonstrating millions of illegal votes.
Trump later created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate election issues.
The commission was dissolved in January 2018 without producing evidence supporting Trump's claim that millions of fraudulent votes had cost him the popular vote.
Four Years Later
The significance of the Greensboro speech became much clearer after the 2020 election.
That year, Trump again spent months warning that an election could be rigged.
Again he alleged widespread fraud.
But this time Trump lost.
Joe Biden won the Electoral College 306–232 and received more than seven million more votes nationally.
Trump refused to concede.
His campaign and allies filed numerous lawsuits challenging election results.
Courts repeatedly rejected efforts to overturn the outcome.
State officials—including Republicans—defended their results.
Trump's own attorney general, William Barr, said the Justice Department had not found fraud on a scale that could have changed the election result.
Trump nevertheless continued claiming the election had been stolen.
The effort ultimately culminated in the attempt to overturn the election results and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify Biden's victory.
2020 Wasn't the Beginning
It is easy to look back at Trump's claims following the 2020 election as something that began after his defeat.
The historical record shows otherwise.
The rhetoric existed years earlier.
October 14, 2016 provides an unusually clear example.
There were still more than three weeks until Election Day.
Nobody had counted the votes.
Nobody knew who would win.
Trump had not presented evidence demonstrating that election officials were secretly manipulating the presidential vote against him.
But he was already telling thousands of supporters:
“The process is rigged.”
“This whole election is being rigged.”
And finally:
“The whole thing is one big fix.”
Four years before Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 presidential election, he was already teaching his supporters to question the legitimacy of an election he thought he might lose.