Even after reclaiming the White House in 2024, President Donald Trump has refused to let go of the 2020 election. And now, he's offering a brand new argument for why the 2020 election deserves to go in the trash.
This week, Trump took to Truth Social with a post that directly linked the SPLC indictment to the legitimacy of Biden's 2020 victory. "The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the greatest political scams in American History, has been charged with FRAUD," Trump wrote. He described the case as part of a broader pattern of Democratic corruption, calling it "another Democrat Hoax, along with Act Blue, and many others." Then came the meat of his post: "If it is true, the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect!"
Strong words. But what's actually the argument here?
According to federal prosecutors, the SPLC wasn't simply monitoring extremist groups — it was actively paying informants embedded within them to generate and stoke the very extremism it claimed to oppose. The indictment alleges that the group used manufactured and amplified threats to frighten donors and fill its coffers, essentially running a fear-for-profit operation dressed up as civil rights work.
But Trump didn't spell out the reasoning in the post. So the best explanation I can come up with as to why Trump is suggesting that the outcome of the election should be “wiped from the books” is because Joe Biden has spent years crediting the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as the defining moment that pushed him into the 2020 race. And we now know that SPLC money helped plan the Unite the Right rally itself.
Personally, I don’t think the rally had any actual role in Biden’s decision to run. I think he felt entitled to the presidency and felt slighted by being told in 2016 that it was Hillary’s turn. He just needed a compelling story to justify his desire to return to public office, and so he practically built his entire campaign identity around it. No matter what you believe, by Biden’s own telling, without Charlottesville, there's no Biden candidacy.
So a left-wing fundraising machine running a massive fraud scheme essentially engineered the rally that Biden says launched his presidency.
If the charges hold up — and I don’t doubt they will — Biden's founding narrative for his 2020 campaign would be a complete hoax.
The problem is that this doesn’t really go anywhere.
There is no legal mechanism in American law to retroactively invalidate a presidential election or the results of a presidency. Investigators could find all the evidence that the 2020 election was stolen tomorrow, and I dare say you’d be hard-pressed to find a court that would “invalidate” all the laws and executive orders that Joe Biden signed as a result. The autopen situation is a far more compelling and legally plausible basis to invalidate Joe Biden’s executive actions, but even that would face major difficulties in court.
ICYMI: Only a Democrat Would Be This Shameless
And that's the frustrating thing for Trump supporters who've spent years pointing out that 2020 was compromised. There have been plenty of arguments made over the years in favor of invalidating the Biden election and presidency, but this SPLC argument is the weakest I’ve heard.
Trump has every reason to be angry about the 2020 election, and there are legitimate reasons why Biden’s actions should be legally null and void, but this SPLC connection isn’t one of them.
