Two things I ask loyal Trump supporters to acknowledge

Amiel Handelsman
4 min readNov 8, 2024

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Dear supporters of Mr. Trump,

Congratulations. Your man won fair and square. Donald Trump is the duly elected President of the United States.

These are facts. I acknowledge them. So do Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, every other Democratic Party official, and a vast majority of Democratic voters.

As a result of this victory, on January 20 Mr. Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President. It will be a peaceful transfer of power. Although protesters will show up and make noise, Harris, Biden, and the entire Democratic Party will ensure that the transition is smooth and peaceful.

This you can count on.

That’s because we see what happened. Your man won fair and square.

Again, congratulations.

Now, I have two requests of you. Two things I am asking you to acknowledge.

  1. Your prediction of a stolen election was inaccurate, and your suspicions unfounded. Democrats did not steal the 2024 election. They didn’t even try.

For months, you’ve been predicting that Democrats would use fraud to illegally win this election. That they’d flood the voting machines with ballots from illegal immigrants, criminals, dead people, and folks who’ve voted multiple times.

This is why the Trump campaign pumped money into “election integrity.” Why, even before the vote counting had begun, its attorneys filed lawsuits across the country claiming fraud. Why it paid activists to shout “election fraud” into every media outlet, channel, station, and podcast. Why, at election night parties sponsored by the Republican Party, many of you worried out loud about a stolen election.

None of this happened. The Democratic Party did not steal the election.

It did not even try.

But it could have — if, that is, Democrats were the conniving cheaters you have described them to be.

The current president is a Democrat. The governors and secretaries of state in most swing states are Democrats. The mayors of nearly every major city in these swing states are Democrats. If these officials wanted to do what you claimed Democrats did in 2020, they would have.

And if they cheated, it might have worked. Look at Mr. Trump’s victory margins. As of this morning, here are the numbers. Wisconsin: 30,000 people. Michigan: 82,000 people. Georgia, 117,000 people. Pennsylvania: 139,000 people.

These are not big margins. If Democratic officials had had the motives and means you attribute to them, they could’ve flipped these states. Kamala Harris would now be President-elect. Right now, I, not you, would be celebrating. You, not I, would be pulling your hair out (assuming that, unlike me, you had hair).

But Democrats did not steal the election. They did not even try.

Your prediction was inaccurate and your suspicions unfounded.

I am asking you to acknowledge this. Would you be willing?

2. You’re no longer 100 percent certain that Biden stole the 2020 election

I’m not asking you to reverse everything you’ve believed for four years.

I’m asking you to admit uncertainty. To acknowledge that maybe what you have been claiming happened in 2020 didn’t actually happen.

Here are a few alternatives to consider: Maybe Biden won the election fair and square. Maybe Mr. Trump lost. Maybe there was no “steal,” no fraud, no theft. Maybe, in 2020, everything was on the up and up.

Many Democrats, journalists, and historians have called Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud “The Big Lie.”

I’m not asking you to say that he, you, or anyone else lied. I believe that your beliefs about a stolen election were sincere.

My request is more modest: to acknowledge uncertainty. Yes, you’ve had reason to believe that Biden stole the 2020 election. But now you have new facts to consider. This year, when Democrats ran things in all the necessary places, they didn’t steal the election. Perhaps it’s time to use this fact to think differently about 2020. Maybe, in 2020, when Democrats had fewer levers of power because Mr. Trump was president, the election was just as honest as the one this year.

Are you willing to admit that perhaps things didn’t happen the way you thought they happened? Are you willing to acknowledge that in 2020 it’s possible Biden actually beat Mr. Trump?

Thank you.

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Amiel Handelsman
Amiel Handelsman

Written by Amiel Handelsman

Executive coach, Dad, husband, reimagining American identity, and taking other fiercely nuanced stands on the world's big messes. More at amielhandelsman.com.

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