Trump's Efforts to Overturn the 2020 Election: An Inside Look

Photo: Saul Loeb Agence France-Presse In the documentary, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham (seen here in 2019) says her former boss Donald Trump’s ego “won’t accept defeat.”

Benoit Valois-Nadeau

Published at 12:28

• United States

This text is taken from the American Election Mail. To subscribe, click here.

American democracy has not been put to such a test since the Civil War. The sixty days between the presidential election of November 3, marked by Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, will remain in people’s minds as a moment of heartbreak for the American nation coupled with a vast media spectacle fueled by the craziest conspiracy theories.

The HBO documentary Stopping the Steal takes an inside look at Donald Trump and his team’s efforts to overturn the election, from the days of uncertainty following the election to the calamitous rally that led hundreds of angry protesters to invade the U.S. Congress.

They experienced it from the inside

To do this, director Dan Reed, who is behind the shocking work on Michael Jackson Leaving Neverland, favors a sober and chronological approach, mainly consisting of “talking heads” and television archives from major American networks. The documentary's main achievement is to have had access to those who experienced from the inside the multiple attempts of the Trump administration to invalidate the results of the election: mostly convinced Republicans and, in many cases, proven Trumpists.

This is the case of the former Attorney General of the United States Bill Barr, his counterpart from Arizona, Mark Brnovich, the former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former White House press secretary and then chief of staff to Melania Trump, Stephanie Grisham, and the chief of staff of Vice President Mike Pencem, Marc Short. So many disenchanted high-ranking officials who tell the camera about the bogus legal attempts and the baseless accusations launched by the tenant of the White House.

“He’s a narcissist and his ego doesn’t accept defeat,” Grisham sums up about her former boss.

But the most striking testimonies of Stopping the Steal remain those of local officials who were directly pressured by Trump and the Republican Party. Like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Donald Trump contacted directly “to find 11,000 votes” before later calling him an “enemy of the people,” or Rusty Bowers, former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who saw conspiracy theorists roar outside his home after refusing to open an investigation into possible vote manipulation in his state in the absence of tangible evidence.

The brief on-screen presence of “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley and other conspiracy theorists unfortunately provides only limited access to Trumpist thinking. For a better understanding of the events of January 6, one will also refer to Four Hours at the Capitol, another of Reed's works.

American politics fanatics will, however, delight in the unflattering portrait of the “shock team” assembled by Donald Trump to lead his judicial guerrilla war, led by the infernal (and downright wacky) trio of Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.

So many lawyers, and the documentary unfortunately does not specify this, who were ultimately found guilty of malfeasance to invalidate the results of the election at various levels.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also comes out covered in ridicule from the film, which does not spare us his famous (and awkward) press conference, during which, with his hair dye dripping down his temples, he accused Venezuela, Cuba and the Democrats of having hatched a vast conspiracy.

Towards a second round ?

Despite everything, by having elected officials who knew how to say no to Trump testify, Stopping the Steal suggests that there is still some common sense left within the Republican Party and the American judicial system.

A good thing, since, as As several speakers suggest, another Trump defeat next November would lead to a new campaign of disinformation and demonstrations whose outcome is very difficult to predict.

“January 6, 2021 is just a trailer for what could happen if Trump loses again,” says Stephanie Grisham at the end of the documentary.

Will the dam hold up a second time?? The answer will be in November.

Stopping the Steal

Dan Reed, available on HBO and Crave