That 2016 election was like the Kennedy assassination. It was decided by Washington that Trump had to go so it was done. Instead of blaming it on Oswald, the government rigged the election with mail-in voting and blamed it on covid. Everyone watched it with their own eyes. Elections do not make drastic U-turns as we saw on election night. You don't go to bed with one candidate way ahead in battleground states and get up the next morning with a moron winning. That was the stuff of the old Soviet Union. Everyone saw it. The Trump haters just let it go because they were propagandized by Washington and media to hate Trump.
The pandemic is too useful to Washington to allow it to wane. Rigging elections is not new but nationalizing the rigging is new to the US.