It was a vicious campaign. The Republican challenger to the incumbent Democratic president hurled scurrilous accusations that he was conspiring with others to alter the election outcome.
No, this was not 2024, but the campaign of 1940.
The Republican nominee for president that year, Wendell Willkie, accused Franklin D. Roosevelt of plotting to inspire the onset of World War Two. Willkie falsely accused Roosevelt of telephoning Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, urging them to “sell Czechoslovakia down the river.” Willkie maintained that Roosevelt “courted a war for which the country is hopelessly unprepared” and “emphatically does not want” for the sole purpose of remaining in office.
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