Lynn is CEO and co-founder of RepresentUs.
The Jan. 6 committee hearings are exposing the grotesque underbelly of what many of us witnessed in real time that day: the ongoing and unrelenting attacks on our democracy. Yet despite the overwhelming evidence of treasonous wrongdoing, despite tapes, emails, video and confessions, millions of Americans passionately believe in the Big Lie.
The truth is that there was a coordinated effort leading up to Jan., 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Incredibly, that effort was explicitly encouraged by the outgoing president. A year and a half later, a lot of the same folks who tried to overturn the 2020 election are still at it – laying the groundwork to undermine the 2022 and 2024 elections. That’s the truth.
So why can’t we get America — all of America — to accept that truth?
The answer is clear. We not only need to tell the truth, we need to tell the whole truth. It’s time for the media, influencers, politicians and concerned citizens across America to stop harping only on the Big Lie and get comfortable with the Big Truth.
What’s the Big Truth?
The Big Truth is that American democracy is a beautiful, powerful force for good. Not just in the ideal, but in practice. Our Founders looked to democracy when crafting our republic. Democracy was at the root of America’s ascendance in global politics. It has raised more people out of poverty, brough more security to the world and helped America become the world’s richest country, Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill.”
The Big Truth is also that our democracy is in deep trouble. It’s been backsliding for decades, and the American people know it in their gut. Time and time again, special interests and political operatives are getting ahead while everyday Americans pay the price. Some 90 percent of races for the U.S. House are so badly gerrymandered, one party wins before any votes are cast. The two-party system’s death grip on elections stifles the new ideas and fresh thinking that would move our society forward. Special interests with armies of lobbyists bundle millions in campaign “donations” to curry favor from lawmakers.
The Big Truth is that no matter which political party they’re with, members of Congress shouldn’t be trading stocks, shouldn’t be taking donations from lobbyists, shouldn’t be drawing their own congressional districts, and shouldn’t be conspiring to pick winners and losers. They should be working for us. Some do, but on the whole, they don’t.
Because of that, America’s trust in our most important institutions continues to erode. We’re at the point where those institutions are on the verge of collapse.
The Big Truth is that a sophisticated team of political operatives took advantage of the erosion in 2016 to galvanize a new anti-democracy movement here in America. In the final weeks of the 2016 presidential race, former President Donald Trump’s campaign issued its closing argument via a campaign ad that blanketed the airwaves, boasting: “Our movement is about replacing the failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people.”
This was the message America needed to hear. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign had been playing it on repeat. Disaffected voters needed a home, and those campaigns were speaking to them.
They weren’t wrong. The system is corrupt, and the system is failing the vast majority of Americans. That’s the Big Truth. The Big Truth is also that the 2020 presidential election was won fair and square. It wasn’t stolen.
As Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said in the Jan. 6th committee’s first hearing, “President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information – to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him. This was not true.”
Those of us who love American democracy know it needs some fixing, but we also know it’s worth protecting. So we’ve got to get comfortable with the truth: The system is broken. The game is rigged. The political elite hold too much power and We the People are being silenced. And the 2020 election was not stolen. That’s all true.
It’s also true that the system can be fixed. RepresentUs and our pro-democracy allies have won more than 160 victories in cities and states across the country to fight corruption, end gerrymandering, and give voters more power in our elections.
There's a lesson here that seems to be taking America far too long to learn: Sometimes, more than one thing can be true at once. And when that’s the case, telling the whole truth is what earns us the credibility to be heard. So we need to start telling the Big Truth, and we need to start now. The good guys are losing this messaging battle right now. And right now, our democracy can’t afford the loss.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.