Originally published at: How the 2026 Midterms Are Recycling 2020 Conspiracy Theories - TPM – Talking Points Memo
In Rough Edges, Mike Rothschild writes about fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. With a potential midterm wipeout just three months away, Republicans have been recycling past conspiracy theories to an epic extent, mining the greatest hits of a decade…
Lies, racism and hatred for the left propelled these lousy traitors into the white house they are not about to stop now.
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I should point out one thing to the author of this article. Unlike our opponents on the right who have no examples or proof of their conspiracy BS, their cult leader Donald John Tr#mp actually engaged in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden.
Special Council John L. “Jack” Smith testified before the House Committee that:
…There was “proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power…”
So yeah, maybe we are being paranoid. But maybe we have a reason for doing so.
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/05/g-s1-137440/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-oath-keepers
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From the article:
Even the left isn’t immune from such recycled conspiracism. Liberal conspiracy theories about Trump “cancelling” the 2026 election are becoming increasingly popular, echoing conspiracy theories from both sides about elections being canceled in 2012, 2016, and 2020. (Though it should be noted that Trump has made allegedly humorous remarks about cancelling the midterm, despite having no power to do so.)
Yes, but he also has “no power” to tear down part of the White House, but he did it anyway.
Or fire thousands of Federal employees and shut down vast parts of the Federal Government, but he did it anyway.
And on and on, things that he has no formal power to do that were done anyway.
I don’t think that thinking he might mess with elections is paranoid behavior.
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Even if Trump has no power to cancel elections run by the states, he’s making great efforts to control these elections, specifically by demanding states send him personal data on voters, by ordering the Post Office to systematically disenfranchise certain voters by denying them a ballot, by threatening to arrest election officials in liberal cities and counties. And I certainly expect him to send out the National Guard to one or more blue cities where he will pretend there is a “threat” of some kind.
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Seriously. If anyone in 2010 had told me we’d be siding against Russia and threatening the sovreignity of Greenland because we were led by a pedophile who struck secret deals with the Saudis, I’d have looked at them in pity as a way out there conspiracy nut.
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Not comprehending how a county-by-county red-blue map of the US works is at the base of all of this. Willful or otherwise, illiteracy does a lot of the work here.
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Yes, I guess this was a weak sauce effort to appear “fair and balanced”. Trump has made it crystal clear that he wants and intends to mess with the upcoming midterm elections. To package this as some sort of a leftist conspiracy theory mars and degrades an otherwise good article. Why people like the author don’t see what’s coming is beyond me. Trump did his best to stage an insurrection in 2020, and was stopped mainly because the military and people in his Cabinet (and the courts’) told him no. He’s made sure those people are now gone, replace by incompetent loyalists who wouldn’t dream of telling him no. C’mon Mike, you can do better…
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I think the Republican Party is a marketing operation. Their political issues are really tactics like the voting conspiracies and racism. I could see and smell the fraudulent voting issues coming from some random Midwestern states over a decade ago, a trial balloon for bigger things to come.
I grew up in Ohio and it is hard to overestimate the power of immersion in paranoia and propaganda. Centuries of fundamentalist religion give examples. I was liberated by moving to the Left Coast and immunization by a college education. Conspiracy theories exist on the Left but are a pale shadow of the dedicated media outlets, church operations and bought politicians of the Right.
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Someone on social media pointed out something I had somehow missed:
Originally reich-wingers insisted that Covid was a hoax, meant to both trick them into getting “possibly lethal” vaccinations and inconvenience them with mask mandates, social distancing, etc.
Now, however, they’ve taken to proudly wearing masks and insisting that Dr. Fauci (presumably with the help of Dr. No, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Wu and a shady assortment of Chinese grad students in Wuhan, China) manufactured SARS-CoV-2 in a vast conspiracy to kill millions of people.
Why they can’t quit? They have nothing else.
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