Read the Time article[1] on how the US bureaucratic and corporate establishment teamed up to "fortify" the election to make sure Trump wouldn't win, which uses words like "conspiracy" and "shadow election" approvingly. He was expected to win coming into campaign season, since peacetime presidents with good economies almost never lose, so much so that the Democrats ran one of their old war-horses to let him pad his campaign chest in a losing effort, their version of a Dole or McCain. Then Covid brought on mail-in balloting and the opportunities that presented, and the establishment took advantage.
However much you think that did or didn't cross the line from "fortification" to fraud isn't the point. The point is that if they hadn't done so much of it, Trump would have won the election (in the electoral college, which is what matters), and he would be a footnote now, after spending his second term building a few more miles of border wall and probably not a lot else.
