A dispatch from the future: There is nothing more patriotic than questioning the results of elections

[The following column is satire.]

December 3, 2024 — A New York City newsroom … We all know by now about the travesty that occurred on November 5, when Donald Trump received 302 electoral votes, despite losing the popular vote by millions. Just a few hundred-thousand people swung the election, thanks to small margins in a few swing states.

But there are several legitimate reasons to question the results of the 2024 presidential election — and we must come together as a country to overturn these results, ensuring that Trump can never get near the White House again.

Yes, it was four years ago to this day that I wrote a column calling Trump and his ultra-MAGA acolytes dangers to democracy for daring to question the results of the 2020 election. But that election was confirmed by experts at leading institutions to be entirely pristine and fraud-free.

This time is different — this is real. And there is no greater patriotic duty all Americans must undertake than to question the results of an unfair election, and correct this fraud on our republic.

It’s no secret how Vladimir Putin and the Russian government once again worked to sway the results of the election in Trump’s favor, just as we know — inherently and in our hearts — that he did in 2016. And thanks to the dangerous lack of censorship on Elon Musk’s “X” platform, Americans of little intelligence were free to consume information without filters or gatekeepers, impeding their ability to make rational, correct decisions.

It is deplorable that Trump was even allowed to continue his presidential run in the first place, given the unprecedented circumstances of being a convicted felon. The single guilty verdict in New York for the illegal business thing (it was hard to follow) should have been enough to send him to prison for eternity. But he still has three pending trials that must take place — and if his illegally-seated Supreme Court hadn’t slow-walked the cases, the American public would have had the necessary information to make an accurate assessment. Instead, this election interference has caused an outcome that puts America itself in danger.

Several panicked young people in Michigan have already expressed their shock about Trump’s victory to reporters, saying they stayed home rather than vote for Biden because of Israel, without realizing it could ultimately sway their state toward Trump. How many more are there like this throughout the U.S.? These voters must be given the opportunity to fix this injustice and vote for Biden immediately.

It also only seems fair that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 12 percent of the popular vote should be invalidated, and instead given to President Biden, who correctly assessed that RFK was a member of the pandemic-era “disinformation dozen,” and therefore should be ineligible for votes.

America has options, and we only need to look to our recent past for solutions to remedy the faults of our system in this crucial moment. When Trump “won” the 2016 election, thanks to Putin and Facebook and idiots in South Wherever, American patriots stepped up. These were not the traitors like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani in 2020, with their outrageous, criminal schemes. No, these were serious people.

The vaunted legal scholar and MSNBC primetime host Christopher Hayes tweeted back in December 2016, “Fun fact: states decide how to apportion their electors. They could give them all to, say, whichever candidate won majority of counties!”

Hayes would go on to have the brilliant public intellectual Michael Moore on his program the same month to explain in greater detail why the electors should “absolutely” be “persuaded and pressured” to vote against Donald Trump. “We have to keep fighting, we have to fight all the way to Inauguration Day,” Moore said, urging fair-minded Americans to continue “protesting, obstructing, disrupting, civil disobedience. The man has no right to enter that house.”

This may sound similar to rhetoric I strongly condemned when it came to the 2020 election from Republicans, but it’s vastly different — because Donald Trump is evil.

But it wasn’t just Hayes and Moore. The 2016 groundswell of support for not adhering to the will of the people in a totally different way than Trump did in 2020 included respected Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, explaining in great details in the Washington Post why the electors should just choose Hillary Clinton. Or former President Martin Sheen and the guy from “Better Call Saul” urging the electors to be an “American hero” and “change the course of history” by voting against Trump.

The Emoluments Clause. The 25th Amendment. That whole 14th Amendment thing. The marshal of the Supreme Court. Surely there’s some specific reason Trump can’t enter the White House again that will still leave us feeling morally superior to the dangerous insurrectionists we have spent the last four years criticizing who won’t accept the 2020 results!

For the sake of democracy, all fair-minded Americans must work together to ensure Donald Trump cannot take office in January — or else we will abandon our republic and the rule of law itself. He dared to question the integrity of the 2020 election. Well, this 2024 election was rigged, he needs to be disqualified now and a do-over must commence at once.

Look, it’s impossible that Trump received so many votes to begin with — literally everyone I know told me they voted for Biden.

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.