Office Hours: How to explain Trump's takeover of the Republican Party?

The vast majority of Republicans running for offices in November, totaling more than 370 people, have questioned or outright denied the results of the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, according to a New York Times investigation.

Nearly two years after Donald J. Trump was defeated, denial of the 2020 presidential vote has stretched into political races in every state. Hundreds of these candidates are favored to win their races.

I — and probably you — had hoped that the Big Lie would fade over time. But election lies and misinformation have proved strikingly resilient, even in a political campaign season in which more is being said by candidates and their party officials about issues like inflation and abortion.

So today’s Office Hours question is why? How can one man — Donald Trump — have hijacked one of America’s two political parties to believe his baseless lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him?