The Big Lie (Foreign Interference Version), Is Back, And Now All U.S. Elections Are At Stake

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The Big Lie is back, and its revival marks an escalation. The first time, it supported the mission of overturning one election that didn’t go the way the Lie’s creator, President Donald Trump, needed it to go. This time, it’s not one election at stake: it’s all American elections, which, Trump tell us, should be “nationalized” and managed by Republicans to fight the kinds of fraud and interference which deprived him of his 2020 win.

This essay builds on my years of studying propaganda and how governments that use it rely on the emotional impact of narratives about foreign infiltration, subversives plotting to destroy the social order (Jews, Muslims, foreign agents and terrorists, and Communists have been popular), and the idea of being “taken over” by shadowy forces.

When a major event is being planned, governments may “test” different narratives on the public to see which lands best. This is what is going on now with the machinations around the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump has long publicly fantasized an end to the inconvenient democratic ritual of voting. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you won’t have to vote,” he promised Evangelical Christians during his 2024 campaign.

Vote Yes or Else: The Fascist Idea of Elections

Americans voting in free and fair elections are a big risk for Trump’s political future --only 40% of registered voters approve of his performance, and disapproval has grown by double digits in Marist, Quinnipac, Pew, and many other new polls.

Autocrats also have a boundless capacity for revenge if they feel they have been rejected, defeated, or held accountable. The Big Lie is back because Trump has a psychological and practical need to “prove” that his devastating loss in fact never happened.

To that end, MAGA is resurrecting old conspiracy theories about foreign influence, while also trying to “undo” what happened in Georgia, where his plot to overturn voting results failed due to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s refusal to go along with it (the claim of rigged votes was later debunked by court decisions and audits as well).

The purpose of government institutions under autocracy is to fix the personal, political, legal, and financial problems of the leader. Thus was faithful servant Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, present while the FBI searched election offices in Fulton Couty, site of the humiliation, and is apparently conducting her own review.

What Gabbard might “find” depends on which 2020-2021 narrative they choose to revive. None of them are very plausible, but that has never bothered Trump. What matters is having something to justify changes in the name of “election integrity” that will produce the right outcomes in 2026 and 2028. And that the culprit not be Russia.

China Did It: Reviving the 2021 “Coup Power Point” Narrative

“A lot of the cheating, it’s international cheating. You have people, they say, from China…if China or any of these countries are involved that would bring her into it,” President Trump stated when asked by ABC News why Gabbard was in Georgia. This conspiracy theory about Chinese meddling may have been fully refuted by a 2021 U.S. intelligence report, but it has a constituency and was notably central to the “coup power point” on “election fraud, foreign interference & options for 6 Jan” cooked up by former intelligence officer Col. Phil Waldron and presented to several members of Congress on January 5, 2021, to justify imminent “events.”

No matter that, according to John Bolton, Trump had asked Xi Jinping to help him win the election by purchasing agricultural products from U.S. farmers in a timely fashion. The Chinese were a good nemesis to invoke. And so, the idea to blame China went forward. “The Chinese systematically gained control over our election system constituting a national security emergency,” read the suggested propaganda talking points on one PPT slide. “The electronic voting machines were compromised and cannot be trusted to provide an accurate vote count.” Electronic voting should be declared invalid, the PPT continued, and hand counting of ballots given over to “federalized national guard” and “U.S. Marshals.”

“The 2020 Election: Made in China?” was the recommended slogan.

A slide from the “coup ppt”: getting visual evidence “ready” to “show” the American people that their election was “made in China” for Biden.

Thinking like an autocrat, there is nothing much to be gained by making this China narrative the central propaganda theme. Even if Xi, who does not have to bother with free and fair elections, would understand Trump’s push to get rid of them in America, the China relationship is too important (not least because China now props up Russia) to jeopardize. And now there is a far more convenient fall guy: Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who just happens to be in United States custody.

Venezuela Did It (and Maduro Can Fix It)

The coup PPT also mentions Venezuela as a foreign ally of China which shared a desire to acquire “INFLUENCE and CONTROL over the U.S. voting infrastructure.” In fact, the actual conspiracy theory (which was discredited by a judge in 2023) went further, claiming that Venezuela controlled electronic voting software used globally and had thus intervened to cause his defeat by Biden in 2020.

Trump propaganda outlet Fox News had sought to raise public “awareness” of foreign interference by claiming that the voting equipment company Dominion was a front for Venezuelan plots, first to rig elections for late dictator Hugo Chávez, and then for Joe Biden.

This conspiracy theory was revived in November 2025 by Trump and his administration, when “Operation Absolute Resolve,” to kidnap Maduro was already being planned and tested. In late November, when U.S. military resources had been sent to the area, the Guardian reported that the Department of Justice was “interviewing” its major proponents, including former CIA officer Gary Berntsen and Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil. Trump then reposted a podcast interview with Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo that spread these claims. Trump added the message that “We must focus all of our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!,” implicitly endorsing the Venezuela angle.

Less than six weeks later, Maduro had been removed from power and charged with narco-terrorism meant to undermine the United States by importing large quantities of cocaine. For MAGA conspiracy theorists, this was less about drugs than about finally getting justice for 2020. As WIRED reported, the capture revived accusations that Dominion and Smartmatic had rigged the election and Venezuela was behind it all. Ed Martin, a pardon attorney at the DOJ, shared a post to that effect by far-right activist Sean Davis of the Federalist.

Those DOJ “interviews” with conspiracy theorists were rehearsals for a propaganda campaign that will likely build– they need to get their lies to cohere and their talking points aligned.

As for Maduro, by capturing him, Trump has given MAGA militants hope at a time when his personality cult has been badly tarnished. Maduro pulled off in 2024 what Trump could not in 2021: he had the power and military backup to refuse to leave office when he was defeated at the ballot box. Will Maduro now do the right thing for a fellow authoritarian and take the fall, thus confirming Trump’s dictates (stolen from Mussolini), that he is “always right,” that he “has always been right,” including about the 2020 election?

More fatefully, despite an U.S. election working to MAGA’s satisfaction in 2024, a “confession” from Maduro would let the government declare that the system is indeed broken and elections must be “managed,” “nationalized,” run by government security forces (the coup PPT dream), or otherwise given the autocratic treatment.

The more unpopular an autocrat becomes, the more he needs his lies to create the reality necessary to keep himself in power. That is where we are now in the United States.