Trump's 'big lie' has grown even more sinister: analysis

For years, former President Donald Trump has been feeding his supporters conspiracy theories about the 2020 election having been stolen or rigged against him, all of which culminated in his now criminally charged plots to overturn the vote, and the subsequent violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

But Trump's "big lie" about the election is now mutating, warned columnist Heather Digby Parton for Salon — and it's being used to cover up and gaslight voters about his old lies.

According to a YouGov poll conducted in summer, wrote Parton, just 38 percent of Republicans believe there was a plot to overturn the election at all — and only half of those believe that Trump himself was involved in that plot.

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That is alarming, she continued, given that all of this completely took place in the open.

"There is simply no doubt that Donald Trump was attempting to overturn the election. They didn't try to hide it," wrote Parton. "139 Republican House members explicitly voted to overturn the results of the electoral college on January 6 at the behest and direction of Donald Trump, even after the violent mob stormed the capitol in an attempt to stop the counting of the certified electoral votes."

Among those Republicans, writes Parton, were newly anointed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), and indeed, "his status as an influential election denier for filing a widely derided amicus brief seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states Biden won was key to gaining the unanimous vote for Speaker just this week."

The most likely of Trump's four criminal trials to move ahead before the election, Parton wrote, is the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that it will affect most Republican voters even if he's found guilty and sentenced to jail because they are impervious to the truth when it comes to their Dear Leader," she concluded. "The Big Lie gets bigger and bigger as time goes on and Republicans seem powerless to resist it."