They have to use this language to stay out of legal trouble. Saying things you know aren't true is indeed lying, but you have to prove that they know it's a lie.

Intention to deceive is the key part, and hard to prove. So journalists play it on the safe side and just keep to the facts: they repeated false claims / statements.

Sipping a white russian while wearing a dirty bathrobe and insisting that election results are just, like, your opinion man.

I'm sure The Dude would not abide this comparison

‘big tech rigged the election’

Isn’t Vance fully in bed with Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and a cavalcade of similarly minded fash-brained techbros?

That's the G and the P in GOP. They are literally trying to rig the election with the help of a bunch of billionaire tech bros, but it's totally okay because "Democrats did it first"

And since the last election was over 1,000 news cycles ago, nobody will question whether that's actually what happened.

He’s gonna say they aren’t “big tech”.

I get the impulse to push back with this "well then he isn't eligible to run cause he's had two terms" but it just enables their argument. "The election was stolen so he never got to Serve his second term blah blah blah"

The dudes a fucking clown and a crook and has no business in the white house, but saying stuff like this just gives them ammo for their bullshit.

Edit: I know they're going to find something to bitch about regardless, but my point it let's not make it as easy as this. Let them keep grasping at straws like they have been with Walz.

Edit 2: Just realized I responded to the post and not the comment that I'm talking about. Edited to add clarity...

I think this is too much of a complex thought for them. They'd be lost in the first few words anyway, trying to drown you out with a mountain of shit so as not to have to listen to you.

Anyone surprised is a moron.

Election denialism isn't about intelligence, its about propaganda. Keep repeating that any election you lose is illegitimate, and you build a groundswell of popular support for your next attempt to overthrow an election whose results you don't like.

Also, a very real possibility that Trump wins this thing and still insists the elections were rigged. With a six-seat SCOTUS that seems willing to play ball on dismantling democratic institutions, its possible for an incoming Trump regime to force out downballot Dem officials in any state that's remotely contested.

And the best part is that it'll all be "legal" from a purely textualist reading of the actions, because the folks interpreting the law are all Trump cronies.

at this point if you're a politician siding with trump, you're either all-in on him winning, or your career in politics is finished by default anyway

trump says jump, they say how high