You seem to be forgetting the 3.5 year long wall of propaganda we were inundated with claiming that Donald Trump was a Russian puppet and Russia hacked our election. You had prominent, important elected officials accusing those that disagree with that assessment of "carrying water for Putin", " doing the bidding of a dictator", things like that. You had many of the same people calling for unrest in the streets until Donald Trump is removed from office.

If that isn't a sustained effort to paint the 2016 election as illegitimate I don't know what is.