In a recent survey of presidential scholars, former President Donald Trump finished a dismal third from the bottom, just ahead of perennial duds James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.
He tied Franklin Pierce, whose political timidity helped lead to the Civil War, and placed just behind two other presidential laggards, the pro-slavery John Tyler and William Henry Harrison, who served only 31 days before dropping dead.
But in just seven months since leaving office, the petulant Trump – who always aims for the top – has already bested his 44 predecessors in one way, building a strong case for conducting the most maligned post-presidency in history. (Tyler was buried with a Confederate flag but at least kept his mouth shut, being dead and all.)
Trump has made it his singular mission to undermine the 2020 election he irrefutably lost, promoting a series of conspiracy theories and fact-free allegations used by Republicans nationwide to justify laws making it harder to vote and easier to overturn elections they don’t like, starting in 2022.
Justin Grimmer, a Stanford political science professor, and two fellow researchers have set about debunking many of the baseless assertions grounding those legislative efforts. Their hope, he said, is to explain the facts to those who may still have doubts about the 2020 election, whatever the origin, and to offer a road map for judges who may be presented similar phony claims in campaigns going forward.