“The 2020 Election Was Stolen”
An echo chamber refers to situations in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system that does not allow external ideas to penetrate. An echo chamber that was started with COVID was when Donald Trump kept denying that the virus was dangerous and claimed that, “it would be gone in no time, it's like the flu.” The majority of Trump supporters didn’t wear their mask after that, and they believed everything that came out of his mouth. The virus was a big challenge for Trump because it had taken more lives than in all of the World Wars and 9/11 combined, and he still said it was fake. Many workers lost their jobs and everyone had to be put on a stay-at-home order to remain safe from the virus. Since the beginning of the pandemic on March 11, 2020 to now, there have been over 141 million cases and 3.01 million deaths, and while Trump called it a hoax, he ended up getting COVID-19 himself as a result of not wearing a mask or following social distancing rules. Many people who were Trump supporters started becoming divided on the idea of wearing a mask as an everyday need, and they felt that it was a “political issue.” What happened was that Trump’s words were an encouragement to his supporters to not take the coronavirus too seriously. This idea was taken forward and put as an essential belief for Trump supporters.
Millions of Americans became even more divided when the 2020 United States Presidential Election came around. President Joe Biden won by 7,052,770 more votes than former-president Donald Trump. It was a very close race, and it was nothing like anyone had ever seen before, especially since the entire nation was still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump and his supporters thought the election was a hoax, solely due to the fact that he didn’t win. Also, they were accusing the voting sites of throwing away the voting ballots that were going towards Trump. Ideas about voter fraud were circulated in this group and magnified by the echo-chamber effect.
Trump also had to deal with the racial injustice that would rock the world to its core when George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers, including Officer Derek Chauvin who kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. After that, millions of people around the world started contributing to the Black Lives Matter movement, and they were demanding justice for not just George Floyd but also for Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless other precious black lives lost to police brutality. The echo chamber with George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement was when President Trump accused the protestors of being affiliated with a group called Antifa, a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement. While Trump was busy taking pictures in front of a church and holding a bible upside down and as a prop, the George Floyd video caused an uproar of grief, and everyone around the world wanted to share their anger about the video and other African Americans killed by police. He also said that white people are more likely to die in the hands of police than black people. People of color were tired of seeing their own getting brutally murdered for senseless reasons and wanted justice. The black community felt like that would come into fruition just based on the response to George Floyd and after years of murder after murder. As a result of all of the major events of 2020, it's what caused Trump to lose the election and his position as President. People were tired of seeing the President not taking the virus seriously. But remember, Trump continued to be politically applicable until close to the end of his presidency.
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