‘Do you hear me? Rigged’: Trump still insists on a stolen election five years later

The switch-up arrived quickly and with a vengeance. Bret Baier’s handling of Donald Trump’s election denialism reveals how quickly journalistic standards can crumble in the face of authoritarian pressure.

During Monday’s Fox News interview, when Trump declared, “If the election weren’t rigged, this would’ve never happened. And let’s see whether or not Fox lets you put that in. OK? Do you hear me? Rigged,” Baier—who once challenged such claims—cowered to his bully and moved on.

The contrast with Baier’s June 2023 interview proves striking. Then, he forcefully interrupted Trump’s fraud allegations, stating plainly, “You lost the 2020 election,” and pushing back with, “Mr. President, that’s all been looked into.” Now, facing a turbocharged, Musk-provisioned Trump presidency, that journalistic backbone has dissolved into clam chowder.

This matters beyond Fox News’s programming choices. Trump’s persistence in pushing election fraud mirrors tactics deployed by autocratic leaders globally (past and present) who, as democracy scholars note, “propagate and amplify falsehoods deliberately and with abandon and ruthless efficiency” through coordinated networks and channels to delegitimize opposition and erode faith in democratic institutions.

While Trump’s claims may seem tame compared to history’s most brazen autocrats—like Trujillo in 1930s Dominican Republic or Duvalier in 1960s Haiti—his voters have shown disturbing comfort with his escalating rhetoric. Just look at Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who echoed Trump in claiming, “What was the problem that caused that whole crisis, basically? Lack of trust in the election,” while falsely asserting, “There were people who voted three, four times. Dead people voted. It was a free-for-all.”

Even after Bolsonaro in Brazil and Keiko Fujimori in Peru recently demonstrated how election denial destabilizes democracies (and economies), Republican voters continued embracing Trump’s false fraud claims. The telling 2022 midterm exit polls showed Republican voters remained loyal, significantly backing their candidates despite—or perhaps because of—Trump’s remarkable influence over the party. Among the broader electorate, Trump’s favorable rating sat at just 39% versus 58% unfavorable. Yet, his base’s unwavering support through 2024 suggests they don’t just tolerate authoritarian tendencies—they are actively looking for them in the daytime with a flashlight. These people live through Trump as their avatar out of their perceived lack of agency.

The electoral consequences of embracing “the Big Lie” emerged clearly in those midterms. As one Republican operative involved in the election admitted, “It was a Trump problem. Independents didn’t vote for candidates they viewed as extreme and too closely linked with Donald J. Trump.” NBC reported Trump’s influence rivaled Biden’s impact on voters’ choices—28% cast ballots specifically to oppose Trump as a looming specter (who obviously wasn’t even in office) compared to 32% opposing Biden. Allegedly independent voters broke for Democrats by 49% to 47%, defying typical midterm patterns where the opposition party dominates among swing voters.

Republicans are staring down a dilemma for the 2026 midterms. As a party, you either embrace Trump’s unsubstantiated claims and risk hemorrhaging crucial independent voters, or you challenge his narrative and face his wrath—itself backed by a tangible fear of the White Walker-like threat of physical white nationalist violence. The 2022 results (and this first month of Trump 2.0) suggest the former path leads to electoral disaster.

When Trump ended Monday’s interview by mocking Baier, “Let’s see whether or not Fox lets you put that in,” he revealed more than intended. Less than years after 2020 and less than two after Baier poked the bear, America’s dominant conservative network increasingly treats evidence-free election denial as unremarkable.

This evolution from confrontation to acquiescence maps precisely onto the authoritarian playbook. First, come outrageous claims, then fierce resistance, followed by grudging tolerance, and finally, quiet acceptance as the abnormal becomes routine. Baier’s shift from challenger to enabler, while somewhat predictable given the change in the power dynamic (Trump was out of office), thus represents more than one journalist’s compromise. It tells us how democratic institutions bend under sustained authoritarian pressure—not through melodramatic collapse but via hushed normalization.