Critics and pundits on the right like to portray the anger, resentment, and dissatisfaction on the left from the outcome of the vote as claiming trump "stole" the election.
There indeed were occasional headlines screaming trump "stole" the election (IIRC) and there were screams of "not my president", and even a few weirdos here in maine that were convinced Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins had cheated in their respective elections, but by the time of the Muller report, the allegations were much gentler. None of the investigations or impeachments were about "stealing the election", but rather violations, sometimes flagrant and absurd, of campaign finance laws and other points of how you are allowed to campaign for the presidency.
It turned out that a lot of the way the US has worked for 250 years is literally the honor code, and it's not illegal to be elected by being a huge ass or immoral person. Many people in Trump's campaign staff did end up in jail for campaign related crimes. There is also significant circumstantial evidence that Trump and some republicans are more friendly with putin than the average american hopes for, but turns out that is also not a crime.
Meanwhile party republicans, sometimes including trump, have claimed significant, direct manipulation of voting equipment, tallies, and voter rolls. These claims have gone to court and nearly every one was thrown out as baseless, and occasionally downright absurdist. The claims include millions of immigrants being bussed into places to vote, thousands (or more) of "dead" people voting, accusing vote counting volunteers of "fixing" the count against trump, and countless other things.
Compare: "The democrats managed to invent millions of fake votes" with no evidence to "Trump worked directly with the Russian government or individuals in the Russian government to manipulate the voter base, hack the democratic party's mail server, lie heavily to voters, and possibly hack into actual voting machines in a few states". For the latter, we have evidence that russia did in fact hack the DMC's emails, after Trump openly "asked" them to in a campaign speech, russia probably hacked some servers somewhat related to voting operations in some states (but not voting machines directly, probably), russian disinfo campaigns against american voters (though you can't blame trump for that I don't think), trump campaign advertisements that said shitty things to discourage black people from voting (which isn't a crime, hilary made stupid comments), and enough bad actions and connections in his friends and compatriots to get at least 10 people in prison.
There indeed were occasional headlines screaming trump "stole" the election (IIRC) and there were screams of "not my president", and even a few weirdos here in maine that were convinced Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins had cheated in their respective elections, but by the time of the Muller report, the allegations were much gentler. None of the investigations or impeachments were about "stealing the election", but rather violations, sometimes flagrant and absurd, of campaign finance laws and other points of how you are allowed to campaign for the presidency.
It turned out that a lot of the way the US has worked for 250 years is literally the honor code, and it's not illegal to be elected by being a huge ass or immoral person. Many people in Trump's campaign staff did end up in jail for campaign related crimes. There is also significant circumstantial evidence that Trump and some republicans are more friendly with putin than the average american hopes for, but turns out that is also not a crime.
Meanwhile party republicans, sometimes including trump, have claimed significant, direct manipulation of voting equipment, tallies, and voter rolls. These claims have gone to court and nearly every one was thrown out as baseless, and occasionally downright absurdist. The claims include millions of immigrants being bussed into places to vote, thousands (or more) of "dead" people voting, accusing vote counting volunteers of "fixing" the count against trump, and countless other things.
Compare: "The democrats managed to invent millions of fake votes" with no evidence to "Trump worked directly with the Russian government or individuals in the Russian government to manipulate the voter base, hack the democratic party's mail server, lie heavily to voters, and possibly hack into actual voting machines in a few states". For the latter, we have evidence that russia did in fact hack the DMC's emails, after Trump openly "asked" them to in a campaign speech, russia probably hacked some servers somewhat related to voting operations in some states (but not voting machines directly, probably), russian disinfo campaigns against american voters (though you can't blame trump for that I don't think), trump campaign advertisements that said shitty things to discourage black people from voting (which isn't a crime, hilary made stupid comments), and enough bad actions and connections in his friends and compatriots to get at least 10 people in prison.