Republicans Have Muffled Trump’s Election Lies at the R.N.C. Here’s Why.

The conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election have largely been absent in prime time. But false claims about elections are still circulating.

Listen to this article · 6:05 min Learn more

Share full article

Republican activists are signaling how they might legitimize a Trump victory in an election system they have said is broken.

On the main stage at the Republican National Convention this week, some Trump campaign trademarks have missing. There have been no celebrations of Jan. 6 rioters and no talk of election “mules” smuggling ballots. Even references to Democrats “cheating” in elections are so spare they could be easy to miss.

But across the street it was a different story.

There, in so-called media row, the hive of right-wing activists galvanized by former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election was buzzing. Podcasters chatted about plans for paper ballots and hand counts. Mike Lindell, the pillow company founder who is one of the most prominent promoters of conspiracy theories about election fraud, gave interviews about rigged voting machines. Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s leading lawyer in the effort to subvert the 2020 election, held court nearby.

Republicans have largely kept this cohort on the fringes of its big, prime-time show, while more politically palatable messages take center stage. Though the majority of the Republican base still distrusts the validity of elections, despite no evidence of widespread fraud, some in the party blame losses in the 2022 midterms on candidates who held the most extreme positions on voting and democracy. Democrats made combating Republican “extremism” a core message in 2022, and it remains one of President Biden’s most consistent attacks.

And, with polls showing a widening lead for Mr. Trump, some in the denial movement are signaling how they might legitimize a victory in a system they’ve decried for years.

Some denizens of media row accepted their party’s strategy as practical and savvy. There is no reason to risk driving away skeptical voters who are just casually tuning in and uninitiated in the finer points of their election theories, they say.

ImageRudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s leading lawyer in the effort to subvert the 2020 election, spoke with journalists on the floor of the convention.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.