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 golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.