OP/ED: Trump Called 2020 Rigged—Now He’s Rigging 2026, and MAGA Voters Are Just Fine With It

Aug 4, 2025

By Brian Hews

For four straight years, Donald Trump has screeched from every podium, every golf cart, and every courtroom hallway that the 2020 election was stolen. “Rigged!” he yelled, while fundraising off the lie, sending his base into a frenzy, and inciting a literal attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But now, with the 2026 election looming and his poll numbers sagging, Trump isn’t complaining about election interference—he’s engineering it. Right out in the open. In Texas.

And the silence from the MAGA crowd? Deafening. Hypocritical. Disgusting.

Let’s be clear: the voter suppression blueprint happening right now in Texas is a coordinated effort—led by indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton, rubber-stamped by the Republican-controlled legislature, cheered on by Governor Greg Abbott, and fully embraced by the same MAGA voters who once cried foul over imaginary fraud.

Last week, Texas Republicans eliminated polling locations in heavily Democratic—and heavily Black and Latino—neighborhoods. They’re gutting access to mail-in ballots, empowering partisan poll watchers to intimidate voters, and criminalizing clerical errors made by volunteers. These aren’t security measures. These are voter suppression laws—modern-day Jim Crow tactics with a MAGA trucker hat slapped on top.

Where’s the outrage? Where are the cries about democracy being hijacked?

Oh, that’s right—it only counts as “rigged” when Trump loses. When Trump’s enablers in Texas game the system before a single vote is cast, it’s “election integrity.”

Give me a break.

Greg Abbott has become a political Trump go-fer, lighting democracy on fire while claiming he’s protecting it. And Ken Paxton—who’s still under indictment for securities fraud and just barely escaped impeachment—is out there trying to prosecute voter fraud that doesn’t exist, while ignoring the blatant, systemic fraud he’s helping to commit.

Let’s be real: Texas Republicans don’t think Trump can win fair and square. That’s why they’re rigging the ground game. They’re not hiding it. They’re proud of it.

And MAGA voters? The same folks who called for hangings on January 6, who screamed about voting machines, and who still chant “Stop the Steal” at gas stations and gun shows? They’re watching this authoritarian takeover and nodding along.

They’ve traded democracy for a red hat.

If this were happening in Venezuela or Iran, the GOP would call it election tampering. But in Texas? It’s just “patriotism.”

This is how democracies die—not with tanks, but with state legislatures, voter roll purges, and complicit citizens who only care about elections when they win.

To the MAGA voters in Texas and across the country: if you really believed 2020 was stolen, then you should be screaming even louder now. But you’re not. You’re perfectly fine with rigging the next one—because it’s your guy doing the rigging.

This isn’t about Trump anymore. It’s about the rot he left behind. And in Texas, that rot is running the show.

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