Getting people to watch a documentary about the Big Lie is tough: Who wants to relive that horrific chapter in American political history, especially as we continue to write new, perhaps less egregious, chapters?
Despite the title, the film is as much about another election that put Joe Biden in office and infuriated then-President Trump as it is about what lies ahead of us. Premiering on HBO at 9pm on Tuesday, the 90-minute film explores the depth and veracity of Trump’s plan to overturn the election results through first-hand testimony from those who were there.
Testimony from former Trump appointees, staffers and Republican elected officials who worked and served behind the scenes in the months before and after the election highlights Trump’s audacious plan to steal the election and what it took to stop him and his allies from succeeding.
Directed by Dan Reed, “Stopping the Steal” takes viewers back to July 2020, when the president’s popularity was declining and the election was looming. “By the end of the summer, President Trump starts preparing his excuses if he loses,” says Alyssa Farrah Griffin, who served as White House strategic communications director and assistant to the president in 2020. The film then cuts to a summer press conference where the former president declares, “This election is going to be rigged. It’s going to be stolen or rigged.”
The film chronicles Trump’s efforts to stay in office at all costs, building up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection. News and events we already know – like Trump’s vaguely threatening call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he said he needed the presidency, or Trump’s admission that he privately knew he’d lost to Biden – are shed in new light through the testimony of those who stood between Trump and his evil plans.
“Before the election, we could always appeal to his self-interest: ‘Mr. President, this is a bad idea.’ for youThat must hurt you“‘Appeal to the president’s self-interest and that’s going to work. That helped keep things within guardrails,'” said former Attorney General William Barr, who served in the Trump administration.
Barr said Trump’s “destructive” campaign tactics reached a new level of viciousness shortly after Biden was projected to have won the election. “It was very dangerous when he (held a press conference) at 2 a.m. and claimed there was fraud. That’s when I started to become very concerned,” Barr said.
Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump campaign official and White House official, says the president’s staff likely knew about the false claims of election fraud when he made them, but they went along with it because no one wanted to be the target of his wrath. “I’m sure that anyone who was around the president at the time, whatever they were thinking in their mind, was saying, ‘Oh my goodness, it was stolen,'” Grisham says.
The film juxtaposes testimonies like Grisham’s with footage of Trump and his Big Lie team (which includes Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell) spouting allegations of vote tampering by poll workers, “illegal immigrants” and dead people voting, and the hacking of Dominion Voting Systems’ electronic voting machines.
None of that was true, of course, but that didn’t stop them from pressuring local officials in key battleground states like Arizona and Georgia. “I supported Trump all along … and then it started. The steal,” said Rusty Bowers, a former Arizona House speaker.
Bowers was under intense pressure from the president and Giuliani to go along with an illegal plan to replace state electoral votes with candidates that would help Trump win. The Arizonan recalled a face-to-face meeting with Giuliani in which Bowers asked for evidence of election fraud: “Rudy, do you have any evidence? Yes, I do!” (Jenna responded by saying), “Yeah, I left it at the hotel.”
Like many others who have denied the false accusations, Bowers was subjected to doxxing and blackmail by Trump supporters, and the film makes it clear that Bowers was one of several Republican officials who stuck to their guns, often at a high cost.
Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich was also an ardent Trump supporter in the run-up to the 2020 election. “President Trump did a great job,” he says in the film. “I was with him, and he called me and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be the most popular guy in America. You can run for president. All you have to do is say there was fraud or find fraud.'” Brnovich didn’t cave to Trump’s demands, but he also didn’t investigate the issue of the fake electoral college scheme.
But the film’s other participants risked everything to protect our democracy, including Raffensperger, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointees Clint Hickman and Bill Gates, and Georgia Elections Director Gabriel Sterling. Marc Short, then-Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence, also offers fascinating insight into his former boss’s precarious and shaky position.
Among the characters in the film who continue to insist that the Big Lie is true are John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer and insurrectionist, and the self-proclaimed . You may remember seeing the footage of Chansley on January 6th, shirtless, wearing a furry horned helmet and red, white and blue face paint, and there’s no need to quote him here.
“Stopping the Steal” isn’t a cautionary tale, because we’ve lived through this story. But it’s a powerful reminder of what we should be prepared for. “I think January 6th was like a movie trailer,” Grisham says. “That’s one of the things I’ve learned about Donald Trump: You think he’s done this and there’s nothing more to it, but there’s always more to it. He’s going to do everything he can.”
