Since President Donald Trump’s red mirage faded to a win for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has posted a spree of tweets claiming Democrats have stolen the election amidst what is typically a time to transition power.

On Tuesday, Trump fired Chris Krebs, director of cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, via a tweet after Krebs debunked claims of voter fraud. 

Trump has since posted tweets claiming he has won the election and continued to encourage the rhetoric of voter fraud. According to Zack Bonner, lecturer in the political science department, there were no issues with voter fraud in the 2020 election and is exceedingly rare at any level of election.

Mack Shelley, chairman of the political science department, said there has never been a president to respond to election results with this degree of petulance.

“The way that Trump has been dragging his feet is certainly different,” Shelley said.

For the past two weeks, the Trump campaign has gone to court to challenge the election results with little success and has yet to prove any fraudulent results. While that remains to be a fact, individual views on the outcome vary.

Biden and others marched to “stop the steal.” Throughout all the information, factual or false, news media outlets project these perspectives.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto cut off a briefing from White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany as she began to make claims of illegal voting.

Cavuto said unless McEnany had details to back up Democrats cheating the election, he couldn’t in good accountancy allow those charges to be made.

Recently, “Watters’ World,” a show hosted by Fox News featuring Jesse Watters, tweeted that something didn’t feel right about the presidential election and Joe Biden didn’t earn it. During one of Watters’ shows, Watters questioned the integrity of mail-in voting in liberal voting precincts while telling voters how he felt about the results.

“They spied, they smeared, censored and impeached him, so what makes you think they wouldn’t cheat him?” Watters said on the show.

Social media outlets have also left their imprint on election information as well. Twitter and Facebook now identify posts that may be misinformation or disputed raising concerns of censorship. Trump’s tweets about election results have been trailed by this flag.

Julie Roosa, an adjunct assistant professor of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication and a First Amendment specialist, said because so many people receive their news from social media, the line between the role of the press and media is blurred.

“We do all have a responsibility to work on our own media literacy [so that] the news we listen to has variety and we aren’t just looking for new sources that confirm beliefs we already have,” Roosa said. “But instead, we have this kind of rich news diet that allows us to have access to all sorts of information so we can be informed and make up our own minds.”

Roosa said news organizations are coming to terms with how to report news in the midst of misinformation and disinformation. 

“I think a lot of news organizations try to decipher and determine when false information is shared, how often do we need to call that out and bring attention to it versus focusing on our job as providing truthful information that is verifiable,” Roosa said.

Shelley said right-wing media outlets played a major role in Trump’s rhetoric. 

“The right-wing news media, more or less the extreme version, kind of feed off rumors and things that are not really factual or at least partly true,” Shelley said. “It doesn’t take much to start a rumor and use it as something to run for election on or to beat up on whoever is in power.”

Bonner said it is OK to challenge the results of an election, and there are legal remedies to do so.

“However, I think without putting any plausible evidence or documentation forward, I think [accusations are] very bad for democracy in general and for the idea that we do have free and fair elections,” Bonner said. 

Some Republicans have congratulated Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris while acknowledging the election results. 

“When the Republicans seem to be in general agreement that there wasn’t any major departure from a free and fair election, that makes it really hard for Trump to continue to dig in his heels,” Shelley said. 

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was one Republican who congratulated Biden and Harris in a tweet after the results were released. Following his state, Romney also told reporters the transition process should begin for the good of the nation, according to NBC.

After winning, president-elects have a right to access highly classified intelligence briefings about pressing national security issues, but Biden has yet to do so. 

“In terms of the new administration being able to hit the ground running, this throws a big kink in things,” Bonner said. 

Shelley said it wouldn’t bode well for Biden to take office only to be blindsided by events involving other countries because he wasn’t prepared.

“There is some concern of whether Trump will be transactional about some of the inside knowledge he has about international events,” Shelley said. “Just even thinking of that as a problem is even mind-boggling in itself.”

Bonner said in the face of the pandemic, constituency and preparedness can be beneficial.

Trump’s term expires Jan. 20, but his legacy will continue. Some Republicans have taken upon a pro-Trump platform when running for election.

“Ceasing to be president does not mean you lose 88 million followers on Twitter,” Shelley said. “There is still plenty of activism behind the Trump brand.” 

Bonner said Trump will have an impact depending on how active he remains once he is out of the office, and there may be smaller caucuses within the party that support his agenda. 

Roosa said objectivity remains key as news consumers, and there is an obligation to fact check, question and seek out additional information before sharing it.

“I think that is the greatest responsibility, probably in these days of all of this information overload, is for each of us to take these steps,” Roosa said. “Not just relying on the news side of the business to do that for us, but we, ourselves, have to be responsible for our own media literacy.”