AS PRESIDENT Trump continues to lie about last month’s election, national Republican leaders are trying to stake out what they imagine as a middle ground: While Joe Biden is the president-elect, the 2020 election was marred by substantial fraud and election irregularities. In fact, this is also a lie, and their dishonesty damages U.S. democracy.
At a Wednesday Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) declared that it is “not sustainable” for a large proportion of Americans to believe the election results are illegitimate. He then set about encouraging this false belief by dignifying debunked attacks on the vote’s integrity. Mr. Johnson insisted that pro-Trump forces have raised “legitimate concerns” about “violations of election laws,” “fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing,” and “corruption of voting machines and software that might be programmed to add or switch votes.”
Former Trump election security chief Christopher Krebs told the panel that the election was highly secure and that attacks on local voting officials were deeply unfair. Yet Mr. Johnson trotted out Trump lawyers who alleged massive numbers of illegal votes and blamed losses in court on negligent judges refusing to look at their so-called evidence. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) declared that “the fraud happened.” Other GOP senators emphasized that their constituents thought the vote was rigged. The overall message, about perhaps the cleanest presidential election ever run in the United States: We cannot prove that fraud changed the outcome, but we cannot rule it out, and Americans should be angry regardless. Continue reading.
