I see some historical parallels to moments in France and China.

Let an unforeseen disaster (2020) serve as an excuse to enable subsidy/loan fraud nationally, wait a few years and then selectively prosecute the fraud only in the provinces with political opponents whilst leaving the national character of the fraud obscure.

To be fair, he did say that this crackdown and investigations would happen everywhere. He definitely didn't need to single out Democratic states, that's just dumb. Though the most recent fraud exposure pieces have shown rampant fraud in both MN and CA.

JFC. Not even famously scurrilous British journalists can bring themselves to say "Trump lies". "Baseless" or "false" or "unsubstantiated" claims, but never lies.

I can only conclude that Trump has some magical spell he casts over those who listen to him that prevents those listeners from detecting lies.