Category Archives: Donald Trump

As the work of the Jan. 6 committee winds down, with a ninth hearing Thursday and a final report expected soon, there are signs that its work may have moved public opinion in a few ways.

First, the number of Republicans who believe the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump has dropped below the two-thirds mark. That still leaves a lot of Republicans who believe something that is not true, but the group has shrunk by several percentage points.

Over the course of nine public opinion surveys by Yahoo News/YouGov between January 2021 and early June 2022, the average number of Republicans who believed incorrectly that the 2020 election was rigged was 66%.

Donald Trump in Minden, Nev., on Saturday. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

But in three Yahoo News/YouGov polls conducted since the Jan. 6 committee held its eight hearings from June 9 to July 21, the number of Republicans who believed Trumps big lie had fallen to 60%.

As for Trumps behavior around the event, survey data shows that attitudes about his role in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, have not shifted a lot.

But there has been a decrease of several points in the number of Republicans who are worried about the future of democracy. That may correlate to the lower number of Republicans who believe that the 2020 election was rigged.

Meanwhile, Democrats have grown more concerned about the viability of democracy by a few points.

Another significant data point is that Trumps lead over his closest statistical rival for the Republican nomination for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has narrowed over the last year.

Across eight Yahoo News/YouGov surveys in 2022, Trumps support has stayed in the mid-40s all year, but DeSantis has crept up about 10 points, from the mid-20s to the mid-30s.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Its plausible that the hearings conducted by the Jan. 6 committee have had an impact. The closest margins between the two came in surveys conducted during and after the committees hearings.

In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted a week after the last hearing in July, Trump led DeSantis 44% to 35% among likely voters.

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The only time Trumps support spiked up closer to 50% was after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home for top-secret documents in early August. But the most recent poll found his support back down to 46% and DeSantis at 34%.

Opinions about Trumps responsibility for Jan. 6 have not moved much.

Three surveys by Yahoo News/YouGov in the summer of 2021 found that, on average, 42% of U.S. adults believed Trump was a great deal to blame for the attack. Another Yahoo News/YouGov survey in July 2022 found that number basically the same, at 43%.

Similarly, an Economist/YouGov survey in July 2022 found that 41% of adult U.S. citizens believed that Trump had a lot of responsibility for the Jan. 6 takeover of the Capitol. Thats the same number who held that opinion a week after the insurrection.

A hearing of the House select committee held on June 16. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In the Yahoo News/YouGov surveys, Democrats went from 72% who blamed Trump a great deal to 75%, and Republicans went from 10% to 14%, a marginal increase. There was some notable movement among Republicans on the question of whether Trump was not at all to blame. That number decreased, from 51% to 43%.

Voters views on whether democracy is in trouble have also not moved that much. There are high levels of concern among all voters. But some polling shows that Democratic worries have increased slightly over the past nearly two years, while Republicans have grown slightly less anxious.

In January 2021, a CBS News poll found that 16% of 2020 Trump voters believed democracy and the rule of law were secure and 84% believed democracy was threatened. At that time, 32% of 2020 Joe Biden voters believed democracy was secure and 68% believed it was threatened.

Since then, Republican alarm has gone down only a few points, to 81% in a June 2022 CBS News survey, and Democratic concern has gone up a few points, to 73%.

In December 2021, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 87% of Republicans were worried about the future of U.S. democracy and 84% of Democrats felt the same.

A protest in support of counting all votes, Nov. 5, 2020, in Philadelphia. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

In September 2022, another Yahoo News/YouGov survey found that 82% of Republicans still felt concerned about the future of democracy, while 83% of Democrats did. Democratic fears among Biden voters, specifically, had increased from 88% to 90% over that period, while Trump voter concerns had decreased from 89% to 83%.

This may represent some impact from the Jan. 6 committees work, since one of its emphases has been that the 2020 election was not rigged or stolen, and that Trump knew this from the very beginning. The committee has relied on testimony from Trumps own former advisers on the campaign and at the White House, as well as many other Republican officials.

If the Jan.6 committee reduced the number of GOP voters who were deceived by Trumps false and unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election, it might also have eased their concerns about the reliability of future elections.

There have been numerous articles in the media about the possible threat of Republicans overturning future elections to benefit their own party, so the higher levels of Democratic concern about the future of democracy may reflect a growing awareness of this.

Voters cast their ballots in the Florida primary, Aug. 23. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

But other polling data indicates that many Democrats are focused on the ability of voters to cast ballots, rather than the prospect of politicians meddling with results after ballots have been cast.

A Pew poll in August found that 83% of Democrats were confident that the fall elections will be conducted fairly and accurately but that only 66% think all citizens who want to vote ... will be able to. In that same survey, 55% of Republicans believed the election will not be fair, and only 45% thought it would be fair.

Still, the wording of that question does not speak to whether voters are worried about a fair election being overturned after the fact by politicians claiming fraud without evidence.

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The number of Republicans who believe Trumps 'big lie' has fallen since the Jan. 6 hearings - Yahoo News

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) Former President Donald Trumps son Donald Trump Jr. will campaign alongside Ted Budd, who is running for Richard Burrs Senate seat, at a Keep NC Red rally in Greensboro.

The Greensboro rally is scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday at Illuminating Technologies.

Trump Jr., the former presidents oldest son, has been a vocal supporter of his fathers political efforts as well as Republican candidates. And this will not be his first time in North Carolinas political arena, previously appearing for Make American Great Again events in 2020 and a campaign rally in Lexington in 2018.

The appearance comes a month after the former president stumped for Budd at a rally in Wilmington.

Budd, who has represented the 13th Congressional District since 2016, and Cheri Beasley, former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, have beenlocked in a virtual tie in their bids to replace retiring Republican Richard Burr of Winston-Salem, a race Democrats see as key in their efforts to maintain control of the Senate. Libertarian Shannon Bray, a Department of Defense employee from Apex, andGreen Party candidate Matthew Hoh, a retired State Department employee from Wake Forest, also are on the ballot.

Following his appearance in Greensboro, Budd will head to Edenton to tour the town with the Edenton mayor.

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Donald Trump Jr. to join Ted Budd at Keep NC Red rally in Greensboro - WGHP FOX8 Greensboro

Things arent looking good for Donald Trumps social media platform TRUTH Socialdespite the former presidents own bouts of rampant posting.

The fate of the social network is hanging in the balance, as delays continue to plague a $1.3-billion merger that would potentially secure its future. The latest delay came on Monday as a key vote was postponed to November, and some investors have already backed out.

TRUTH Socials biggest problem is Trump himself, as TIME has previously reported, because his messages engage a more narrow audience than can sustain its business, according to politics and technology experts. That fact continues to hold true as Trump increasingly amplifies QAnon extremism on the platform. The sites business prospects are deteriorating at the same time that Trump faces a slew of legal, financial, and political perils.

These mounting woes have all come together to create the perfect storm of chaos surrounding the planned merger between TRUTH Social parent Trump Media & Technology Group and blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corp.

This has been a very unpredictable deal, says Kristi Marvin, the founder of data and analysis firm SPACInsider.

The arrangement is currently under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Digital Worlds shareholders must vote to extend the mergers deadline by a year in order to keep the deal alive.

Neither TRUTH Social nor Digital World responded to TIMEs requests for comment.

Read more: TRUTH Socials Biggest Problem Is Trump

TRUTH appears to be looking for converts among the followers of QAnon. Over the last few months, Trump has begun explicitly promoting QAnon content on TRUTH Social. He has shared a barrage of QAnon-related posts and reposted messages, allegedly from Q, the anonymous account that originated the QAnon movement on far-right message boards.

Trump has previously courted QAnon conspiracy theorists, who believe, among other baseless claims, that a cabal of top Democratic politicians and famous liberal elites run a global child-sex-trafficking ring that Trump will ultimately defeat. But he has recently begun ratcheting up his appeals to the group, says Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

Amid Trumps shift to more overt QAnon signaling, TRUTH Social has also started showing more ads targeting QAnon believers. Its a move that the platforms leadership foreshadowed months ago. Kash Patel, who has served on TRUTH Socials board, suggested in June that the platform was trying to integrate QAnon into its overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.

The push for a bigger audience could slowly be working. Trumps following on TRUTH Social has grown from 3.27 million users in June to 4.17 million as of Tuesday. But thats still a fraction of the roughly 86 million followers that Trump had on Twitter before being permanently banned in January 2021.

Trump was already courting the QAnon crowd, but his advances are becoming much more direct, Beirich says. This is him more tightly binding himself to that particular cohort, she says. And TRUTH Social seems to be doing the exact same thing in hyping up more and more QAnon material.

Trump has also incorporated apparent QAnon endorsements into campaign rallies. At a Sept. 17 rally in Ohio, he spoke over music that resembled a song known as the QAnon anthem. Members of the audience held up one finger in response, a gesture interpreted by some as a reference to the QAnon slogan, Where we go one, we go all.

Trumps aides told the New York Times that the song played at the rally was called Mirrors and was not the QAnon theme song, Wwg1wga, in question.

Given the continued popularity of QAnon, Beirich says Trumps increasing overtures to its followers suggest hes trying to shore up his base. A report published earlier this year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that nearly one in five Americans and one in four Republicans believe in QAnon conspiracy theories.

He knows that QAnon adherents are tightly tied to him because hes their savior in their mythology, so its easy to rally them, she says. This is a group that he can easily activate by using these signs, symbols, and references. He can get them to turn out because theyre still very much on his side.

But as a business move, Beirich says the overtures to followers of Q are unlikely to help TRUTH Social compete with more mainstream social platforms. Theres a lot of talk about TRUTH Social not being on solid footing, she says. If this is the crew youre reaching out to to shore up your business, it means you havent been able to build any kind of mainstream audience. Youre not attracting anyone but extremists and youre admitting that fact by going further down the QAnon road. Thats going to keep people who dont want to be exposed to this stuff off the site.

As Trump and TRUTH Social increase their outreach to people with more extreme views, the platforms business prospects have also suffered.

On Monday, Digital World moved to once again adjourn a shareholder vote on whether to extend the deadline for the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to complete its merger with Trump Media. The vote was originally scheduled to take place Sept. 6 but was adjourned to Sept. 8, then Oct. 10and now Nov. 3. The recent delay suggests the company failed to get approval from the necessary 65% of shareholders for a one-year extension on its $1.3 billion deal to take Trump Media public.

Part of the problem is that the deal has attracted many uninformed retail investors, says Julian Klymochko, CEO of Accelerate Financial Technologies. Digital World has struggled to get these individual investors to participate in the shareholder vote. Without enough participation, the extension wont be approved.

If you look at the Digital World and Trump deal, its driven by political leanings, he says. Youve seen that stock resonate with those who are anti-woke and more right-wing in nature. At the end of the day, theyre Trump supporters and, by and large, retail investors who have been compelled to buy the shares for a political stance and not any sort of sentimental view on the value of the Trump Media business.

Digital World has turned to other options for extending the deal as it waits for the shareholder vote. The SPACs sponsor injected $2.9 million into the deal last month to extend the merger deadline three months beyond its initial Sept. 8 expiration date. The sponsor could opt to extend another three months in December with another contribution.

The vote is now scheduled for November 3, and a successful shareholder vote would allow Digital World to push the deal deadline for a full year without its sponsor contributing any more money.

Digital World has warned that it may have to liquidate if the merger deadline is not extended for a full year, which would mean that Trump Media, and by extension TRUTH Social, would not receive its expected funding.

Digital World has also disclosed that the SEC probe into its planned merger with Trump Media could materially delay, materially impede, or prevent the consummation of the deal.

The SPAC said in a December 2021 filing with the SEC that securities regulators were investigating whether the leadership of Digital World and Trump Media engaged in negotiations before Digital World went public in September 2021, which would have been illegal. In a subsequent June SEC filing, Digital World disclosed that a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York had issued subpoenas to each of its board members related to the planned merger.

Theyve had a significant amount of legal setbacks with all sorts of investigations and subpoenas from various federal organizations, law enforcement, etc., Klymochko says. That presents a lot of challenges in getting this deal closed.

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.

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The Fate of Trump's TRUTH Social Hangs in Balance - TIME

MSNBCs Lawrence ODonnell on Monday spotted the moment he believes Donald Trump essentially confessed to illegally storing classified government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

At a weekend rally in Arizona, Trump admitted: I had a small number of boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago guarded by Secret Service and my people and everybody. I mean its safe.

The former president later added: There is no crime. Its not a crime and they should give me immediately back everything that theyve taken from me because its mine, its mine.

ODonnell said that with those comments, Trump has in front of thousands of witnesses proved beyond a shadow of a doubt his criminal intent to continue to illegally possess government records, including classified records.

Donald Trump, with that statement, made it clear that he had the criminal intent and planned to never return the governments property to the government, he continued.

Trumps rally comments blew apart his potential defense that he simply didnt know the documents were there, said ODonnell, who pointed out that the excuse may have created enough reasonable doubt in the mind of a jury to acquit Trump if hes charged.

Trump was essentially taunting Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict him, said ODonnell.

Watch the video here:

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Lawrence ODonnell Says Donald Trump 'Confessed' With This 1 Rally Line - Yahoo News

Jimmy Kimmel said Donald Trump is like spam come to life for the increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories the former president has been spreading at his rallies.

Some idiot tells him something, and he runs with it, Kimmel said. He just keeps repeating it and none of that would excuse intentionally stealing and leaving classified documents laying around your golf course.

But he said Trump is making his outlandish claims and repeating those conspiracy theories for a reason.

The whole thing is him priming the pump to get people to riot when he inevitably goes to prison, Kimmel said. Which I... hold on a second.

Kimmel then paused mid-monologue for a moment of prayer:

Ill save it for tonight, he said as the audience cheered.

He also had an answer for Trumps latest puzzling assertion from a weekend rally when he claimed two years ago, everything was so good in our country... and now?

Remember when we had to ration toilet paper and the parking lots were makeshift morgues? Kimmel asked. That was two years ago.

See more in his Monday night monologue:

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Jimmy Kimmel Stops The Show With A Prison Wish For Donald Trump - Yahoo News

A video claiming that a book from the 1890s could be proof that Donald Trumpand his son Barron are time travelers has been doing the rounds on TikTok. TikToker Lindsay Ivan, who goes by @lindsayivan, claimed that Ingersoll Lockwood's book 'Barron Trump's Marvelous Underground Adventures' has "too many coincidences" with the family of the former US president.

The video has garnered more than 3,000 likes. Lindsay said, "Donald Trump and his son are time travelers, and I'm about to show you why. First starters, let's take a look at this book from the 1890s. It's called Barron Trump's Marvelous Underground Adventures. The book is about a young boy named Barron Trump, who finds a portal and time travels."

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The Tiktoker continued, "Donald Trump's son is named Barron Trump. Not only that, in the book, Barron is guided by a man named Don - Donald Trump. But wait, there's more in another book by the same author. It's about an unlikely presidential candidate that won the election. Not only that, but the book talks about the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The address in the book is the same address where the Trump towers currently stand."

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The user added, "Like what are the odds? This is too weird. In the book, there's also a character named Laugh Pence, aka. Similar to Mike Pence. What's going on? There's way too many eerie coincidences here."

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Many users agreed with her, drawing passages from the book to support her claim. One user said, "Shes correct do the research." Another added, "Ive been saying this for years. It is a lot of similarities." A third commented: "Too many coincidences indicate no coincidences at all."

Meanwhile, Trump has been in the news due to the FBI raiding his Mar-a-Lago home, reportedly as part of an investigation into whether he took classified documents with him when he left the White House. He was seen leaving Trump Tower in New York on Monday, August 8, 2022, giving a thumbs up to those who were gathered.

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In his announcement about the FBI raid, Trump did not specifically mention what the agents were looking for, but said that his home was "under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents." "They even broke into my safe!" he said.

The investigation focuses on material that Trump brought with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, the New York Times reported. The FBI was specifically trying to find out if he has classified information in his private possession, which would be a violation of federal law. Trump reportedly took 15 boxes of material with him in January 2021 after leaving Washington, DC, but the boxes were returned to the National Archives in January 2022. The FBI still tried to find out if the former president had additional presidential records or any classified documents at his South Florida estate.

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This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.

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Bizarre video claiming Donald Trump and his son Barron Trump are time travelers goes viral on TikTok - MEAWW

Elon Musk's renewed efforts to buy Twitter could pave the way for President Donald Trump's return to the platform that permanently banned him a year earlier.

If Musk follows through on the deal and if he stands by his prior plan to reverse Trump's ban the Republican ex-president could potentially resume tweeting in time to make an impact on the November midterm elections.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in April but then tried to scrap the deal, this week signaled through a regulatory filing that he once again wants to proceed with the original transaction. News of the deal, which is still not finalized, sent Twitter's stock soaring.

Before getting cold feet on the deal over the summer, Musk said he planned to lift Trump's Twitter ban if he took over the company. "I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump," Musk said in May.

Twitter had shut down Trump's account in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when a violent mob of Trump's supporters, spurred by his false claims of a rigged election, stormed the U.S. Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee their chambers for safety.

Trump, who now posts on a similar platform he backed called Truth Social, has said he won't return to Twitter even if he is allowed back on. "I was disappointed by the way I was treated by Twitter. I won't be going back on Twitter," Trump told CNBC in April.

But with Musk's $44 billion Twitter buyout now back on the table, some believe Trump won't be able to resist the allure of regaining an account that boasted nearly 90 million followers at its peak.

"Of course he will" return to Twitter if he can, Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella said of Trump.

The former president is "a Twitter addict" who "loves the instant gratification" it offers, Bardella said, while noting that Truth Social has so far failed to garner a similar level of user engagement.

Trump's Truth Social account, created in February, currently has 4.15 million followers.

Twitter's suspension of Trump "took away his megaphone," said Jonathan Nagler, co-director of NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics and a professor of politics. The tech giant's move "lessened his ability to push bogus election fraud claims" and "incite action against election officials," he said.

"Truth Social, as far as anyone can tell, has had nowhere near the impact or reach that his Twitter account has had," Nagler said.

Spokespeople for Trump, Musk, Twitter and Trump's company behind Truth Social did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

Musk has not yet reiterated that he will lift Trump's Twitter ban if the latest buyout plans come to fruition. With sources telling CNBC that a deal could happen as soon as Friday, it's possible Trump could be allowed to resume tweeting before the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

If so, Trump's frequent musings about the midterms could soon be back on Twitter, reaching an audience that was once more than 20 times the size of his Truth Social following.

What's more, Twitter is used much more heavily by most media organizations and politicians, both in the U.S. and around the world. But Nagler warned Trump may not want to be "100% beholden to Musk, the world's richest man," as his social media enabler.

"Elon Musk could change his mind as well," Nagler said. "We're trying to predict the behavior of two people, both of who seem quite agile in their ability to shift what they plan to do."

Still, Nagler said, Trump is likely to rejoin Twitter if given a chance. "That would be my guess," he said. "At the end of the day, Trump likes to be heard ... my guess is that would win out."

Some of Trump's conservative fans cheered the news that Musk was once again pushing to buy Twitter. But not everyone is so sure it will benefit his allies.

"I think it's going to cut both ways," Nagler said. Trump's tweets could possibly mobilize parts of his base to turn out to the polls, but "his increased visibility could be a reminder to moderates of why they do not want Republicans in office," the professor said.

Bardella argued that Republican candidates have struggled "every time that Donald Trump has been the center of attention."

He pointed to the 2018 midterms and the more recent Georgia special elections, which led to Democrats clinching a slim Senate majority. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, meanwhile, unseated a Democrat in a blue-leaning state by keeping Trump at arm's length during the general election, Bardella said.

"The last thing that Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy want the elections to be is a referendum on Donald Trump," Bardella said. "Republicans have made it very clear, they want the conversation heading into the midterms to be about the economy, inflation and crime. They don't want it to be about Donald Trump."

Musk's comments about the need for Twitter to be "politically neutral," and his recently revealed correspondence with people pushing him to fight "woke-ism" and censorship on the platform, could also indicate how the site might change the way it previously handled Trump's tweets.

During the 2020 election, Twitter tried to combat misinformation by labeling certain accounts' tweets with warnings and providing links with credible election information. Trump's tweets were tagged multiple times, as the then-president regularly amplified a wide variety of conspiratorial claims that his reelection chances were being threatened by rampant election fraud.

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Here's what Musk's potential takeover of Twitter could mean for Trump - CNBC

As the first Proud Boys memberpleads guiltyfor their involvement in the January 6 attack, its worth remembering Donald Trumps role inciting groups like the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol and try to overturn an election.

Donald Trump told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by.

Reuters: Debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and tell them to stand down and not add to violence during recent protests in U.S. cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Trump agreed to do that, asking, Who would you like me to condemn? Biden interjected: The Proud Boys. Trump then urged the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by, but quickly turned the conversation to antifa, a left-wing anti-facist ideology, whose adherents he has blamed for violence at protests in recent months.

The Proud Boys began planning for the riot after Trump tweeted that his protest in DC would be wild with one saying they needed to get radical and get real men.

The Washington Post: Whats immediately apparent is that the Oath Keepers were preparing specifically for the day of the riot before the Proud Boys were; in fact, the Proud Boys only seemed to turn their attention to that day after President Donald Trump tweeted his encouragement for people to be in Washington on that day for a protest that he promised would be wild.

The Washington Post: A Proud Boys member encourages Tarrio to get radical and get real men after the Trump tweet [] Tarrio and other Proud Boys form a new chapter of the organization called the Ministry of Self Defense (MOSD). The focus, Tarrio says, is national rally planning.

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Donald Trump Told The Proud Boys To Stand Back And Stand By - Democrats - Democrats.org

This story is part of the ABC News series "Democracy in Peril," which examines the inflection point the country faces after the Jan. 6 attacks and ahead of the 2022 election.

The nation's democratic process has been dangerously tested after the 2020 presidential race and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, polls show and experts warn, leaving many Americans with little faith in the election system.

Heading into the consequential midterm elections, when voters will decide which party will control Congress next year, more than two-thirds of Americans think our democracy is in danger of collapse, according to a an August poll from Quinnipiac University.

An ABC NewsWashington Post poll conducted in January -- more than a year after the insurrection -- found only 20% of those surveyed saying they're very confident about the election system. Even fewer Republicans, just 13%, said they were very confident in the process.

"After every election, especially a presidential election, there is some sense among the people who voted for the losing candidate that the election was not quite fair," Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News.

"But 2020 is different," Burden continued. "Republican voters have been stuck with very low levels of support."

That's in large part due to Donald Trump, Burden and other elections observers said, as well as his GOP allies who continue to emphatically spread falsehoods about the integrity of the 2020 election.

In fact, 60% of Americans will have an election denier on the ballot this November. Out of 541 total Republican nominees running for office, FiveThirtyEight found 199 who've fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

So, what can be done to restore trust in the system? The path forward is unclear, experts ABC News spoke with said.

"It's a very hard problem," Burden acknowledged.

What would be the most successful fix is also the thing least likely to happen: for Trump and his allies to change their message.

"Donald Trump, as somebody who knows how to bring a crowd, whenever he leans into some of this election conspiracy stuff, he is tapping into a very, very animated part of the Republican base," explained Eli Yokley, a senior reporter at the data firm Morning Consult, which also tracks confidence in U.S. institutions.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 3, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Yokley said it will be "incumbent on policymakers not to lean into voters' worst instincts" for trust to be restored.

Because Republicans are also generally more skeptical of mainstream media and traditional news sources, it's going to be most impactful for those lacking faith in the system to hear it straight from the former president and his closest associates.

"Those kinds of authoritative voices for Trump's followers have to be what's going to deliver the message because other sources like the current president or the mainstream media or fact checkers just aren't trusted in the same way," Burden said.

But Trump, as recently as Oct. 1, at a rally in the battleground state of Michigan, continued to call the 2020 election "stolen" and said Democrats "cheat like dogs" to win.

"I don't believe we'll ever have a fair election again," Trump said, prompting boos and shouts of agreement from his crowd. "I don't believe it," he repeated.

While Trump and his allies continue to spread lies about the 2020 election, state and local elections offices are picking up the slack to combat disinformation.

Arizona's Maricopa County -- the largest county in the battleground state and the site of intense scrutiny both during and after the 2020 election -- launched a campaign in 2021 titled "Just the Facts" in response to the increase of misinformation spreading about elections administration.

The website and an accompanying newsletter answers questions about how elections are administered, how officials build the ballot, how they count the ballots and ensure accuracy of the equipment used. This cycle, the campaign will also provide information about the upcoming races and how to participate successfully, according to Maricopa County Elections Department spokesperson Megan Gilbertson.

"It's imperative for election experts to provide a trusted source of information to voters about the you know, the facts about elections administration," Gilbertson told ABC News. "And so I think that initiatives like this are attainable for elections offices."

The city of Atlanta has launched the Atlanta Votes initiative, a similar online tool aimed at educating voters and increasing turnout. The Connecticut legislature has provided $2 million for internet, TV and mail education efforts on the election process, and to hire an election information security officer. Colorado has also hired a team called the "Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit" to monitor sites for misinformation.

A voter fills out their ballot at Bedford High School during the New Hampshire Primary on Sept. 13, 2022 in Bedford, N.H.

Scott Eisen/Getty Images

The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a national clearinghouse for information regarding election administration, similarly revamped the information on its site to make it more digestible to everyday Americans, Chairman Thomas Hicks told ABC News.

"I always say that election officials are public servants," Hicks said. "None of us are doing this to get rich, and so we're doing this for the love of our country and for our democracy."

Hicks said the commission has also worked with other organizations and has spoken to Twitter and Facebook about combating misinformation.

The tech platforms took some steps tackle misinformation in 2020 but some experts said the actions weren't enough. YouTube, Google and TikTok have announced election plans for 2022 that include bolstering trusted news sources and flagging or removing posts containing falsehoods about the process.

But it's difficult to stop individuals who are spreading disinformation, Burden said.

"We have the First Amendment in the United States that protects people's right to say things they believe, even if they're factually incorrect," Burden said. "If they think they don't trust the system, they're certainly allowed to say that. So it's a difficult problem to solve."

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Experts say Trump, election deniers eroding trust in democracy. Can it be restored? - ABC News

As the October 30, Brazillian presidential runoff draws closer far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro during an interview commented that if Donald Trump was still the US President he could've averted the Russia-Ukraine war that has been on for more than seven months now.

Speaking to the news magazine Veja, Bolsonaro also said that he had a good in-person meeting with Trump's successor Joe Biden. However, he asserted that if his close ally Trump was still in office, many issues currently bedevilling the world could've been avoided.

Watch |Brazil Presidential runoff: Will the country see a smooth power transition?

"Some think that the war in Ukraine would not have happened if he were still in power," he said adding, "I agree with that."

However, he failed to elaborate on how the former President would have done so.

As per Reuters the remarks could add to tensions with Washington and are sure to rile the white house.

Also read |Bolsonaro, Lula garner significant endorsements as they prepare for Brazil's presidential runoff

Recently, Trump also endorsed fellow right-wing populist Bolsonaro, calling him "one of the great presidents of any country in the world ... respected by everybody throughout the world."

Bolsonaro and Trump have long been allies, with the former an ardent admirer of the latter. Even when Trump saw his international popularity fall after the fallout of the 2020 US election, Jair Bolsonaro remained a fan. He was also among the last world leaders to recognise Joe Biden's victory, echoing Trump's US electoral fraud allegations till the end.

Also read |Brazil: Opinion poll shows Lula with 51% support, Bolsonaro 43%, amid fears of going wrong again

Bolsonaro is also prone to alleging electoral fraud in his home country. There are fears that if Bolsonaro's rival leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were to overtake him, the right-wing leader might take a leaf out of Trump's book and refuse to accept the result.

While talking to Veja he once again kept up his unfounded questioning of Brazil's electronic voting system, while declining to give a clear answer on whether he would accept the results if he lost in the second round.

"There's a feeling in public opinion that there was something dodgy," he said adding "I'm always worried."

(With inputs from agencies)

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`The war in Ukraine would not have happened` if Donald Trump was `still in power,` says Jair Bolsonaro - WION