ON JANUARY 11, 2021, five days after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, CNN published an article titled “Experts Warn That Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ Will Outlast His Presidency.” It quoted Timothy Snyder, a historian who wrote the 2017 bestseller On Tyranny. “The idea that Mr. Biden didn’t win the election is a big lie,” Snyder said. “It’s a big lie because you have to disbelieve all kinds of evidence to believe in it. It’s a big lie because you have to believe in a huge conspiracy in order to believe it. And it’s a big lie because, if you believe it, it demands you take radical action.”
In the two years since, the phrase “Big Lie” has become central to the story of how Trump incited violence at the Capitol. Opening the sixth House Select Committee hearing on the coup attempt, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said that Trump’s “multipart pressure
