Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
Numerous audits and in-depth investigations led by Republicans have confirmed there is no evidence of voter fraud and machine rigging in the 2020 presidential election. Even former President Donald Trump has finally admitted he lost the election.
It is vitally important for voters to trust the 2024 election process. Post-election analysis, truth-telling by Trump and GOP-led investigations into the 2020 race should erase voters’ concern about the integrity of the upcoming election.
First, recall how Cassidy Hutchinson (assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff) testified before the Jan. 6 select committee that Trump told Meadows and other White House staff that he lost the 2020 election. Hutchinson’s testimony has never been proven to be false.
Second, on Aug. 4, Trump — in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman — admitted that he lost the 2020 presidential election. Trump also said he “lost the 2020 election” on two other occasions: Aug. 23, at an event near the southern border, and on Aug. 30, at the Moms for Liberty summit.
Third, the 2020 election deniers may purposely be ignoring that eight prominent, life-long Republicans, all attorneys, published a 72-page, research-based document in July 2021 in which they concluded that Joe Biden won the election fair and square. All voters should read, at a bare minimum, the introduction and executive summary of “ Lost, Not Stolen.”
Fourth, Ken Block, a data analytics expert and Trump campaign consultant, was hired by the Trump campaign to find voter fraud in the 2020 election. In a deposition taken by the Jan. 6 committee, he revealed the same results as noted in “Lost, Not Stolen” — that there were no voter irregularities anywhere in America.
Fifth, when white nationalist Nick Fuentes — Trump’s guest at a Nov. 22, 2022, Mar-a-Lago dinner — learned that Trump admitted he lost in 2020, he blasted Trump on his Sept. 6 podcast, requesting voters to not back Trump this year. An infuriated Fuentes stated, “So, why did we do Stop the Steal?” Trump’s Stop the Steal conspiracy theory has been touted 526 times on his Truth Social social media platform and will be a permanent stain on America’s revered voting process.
Lost, not Stolen
The eight Republican attorneys conducted a deep legal review of all 64 court cases filed by Trump and his supporters to contest the 2020 results. The final report, with 280 reference citations, provided unequivocal evidence that Trump lost. They found there was “ no credible evidence that fraud changed the outcome even in a single precinct, let alone in any state.”
The attorneys “also examined, point by point, every fraud accusation made in social media and in the public forum by those who claimed the election was stolen.” They found no improper vote counts, no voting machine rigging, no absentee ballot fraud, no voter identification fraud and no blocking of observers during the vote count.
The report’s authors include three prominent retired federal judges ( Thomas Griffith, Michael McConnell and J. Michael Luttig), former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, longtime congressional senior aide David Hoppe and former Sens. John Danforth (Mo.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.).
They urged “fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election.”
It’s interesting that 81 percent of adults surveyed in an ABC News/Ispos poll will accept the results of our upcoming Nov. 5 election. This means 19 percent of Americans — the ill-informed and gullible — have accepted Trump and GOP officials’ Stop the Steal pretense. Furthermore, 67 percent of Americans feel Trump isn’t prepared to accept the outcome unless he wins.
Patriotic Americans should feel sad for the 2020 election deniers, who have been hoodwinked, led down a dark rabbit hole, and given disinformation, misinformation and blatant propaganda. The 2020 Stop the Steal conspiracy theory movement has been proven — beyond a shadow of doubt — to be fallacious.
You should feel very comfortable voting on Nov. 5. Why? Close and contested elections are a part of American history, and all states have processes in place to handle just such situations. It is critical that citizens understand how these systems work so that they trust the results. Trusted elections are the foundation of our democracy.
On Nov. 5, don’t fret. Vote!
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.