Did most of these voters and candidates ever really believe Trump won the election? It hardly matters. Committed partisans never accept the possibility of their side losing a fair fight; they always claim the other side must have employed some sort of trickery, falsehood, or dirty dealing. And from that metaphorical understanding of “steal,” it’s a short distance to theories about spacecraft beaming messages to voting machines. Besides, if the other side is your enemy, you gain nothing by conceding defeat. But you may gain something if the world sees you as committed and implacable.
