Over the weekend, the Left and their pals in the legacy corporate media once again made a big deal about the supposed “extremism” and “threat to Our Democracy” represented by conservative members of Congress who refuse to bend the knee and admit that the 2020 presidential election was fully on the up-and-up – something which we’re supposed to once again be scandalized about.
This has been offered as a justification for opposing Mike Johnson’s ascension to House Speaker; he’s an “insurrectionist” who tried to “overthrow” an election. That’s a bit overwrought, as what Johnson did was to write an amicus brief in the Texas v. Pennsylvania case, essentially noting that several of the swing states Joe Biden relied upon to win an Electoral College victory by an incredibly narrow margin deliberately and materially departed from their own election laws using COVID-19 as a justification.
Johnson’s central argument was that the Constitution vests the control of elections in state legislatures, and when those legislatures establish laws governing the time, manner and place of elections in their respective states those laws can’t be changed unless the legislatures change them.
And this wasn’t done in those swing states in question. Instead, you had secretaries of state and the courts making material changes to election laws and processes without the input of the state legislatures, and the result was a chaotic and much less reliable vote count which stretched out beyond the normal parameters of election returns. You had strange occurrences like the counting of votes being suspended in multiple states at the same time, you had sudden inexplicable jumps in numbers for Joe Biden and you had accusations of widespread voter fraud which, despite the protestations of the legacy corporate media types, have been well-documented far beyond anything they’ve conceded.
Johnson’s argument is not that the election was stolen. Johnson’s argument is that state election laws were not followed, and because they weren’t followed the normal course of election certification wasn’t appropriate and that there should have been additional oversight and scrutiny placed on those vote counts.
Maybe Biden won anyway. Maybe not. But with the mail-in ballots and the poor chain of custody of so many of them, and the suspect nature of the vote-counting in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, we can be less sure about the true winner of that election than we have been in past elections.
To include 2016, following which the Democrats did everything they could to rob Donald Trump of legitimization when he had clearly won an Electoral College victory.
Nothing about a refusal to sanction those departures from state election laws is “insurrectionist” or “extreme.” Most Americans now question the reliability of American elections, and most Americans believe there was fraud involved in Biden’s 2020 victory whether they believe it was stolen or not (most Republican voters do believe it was stolen).
And yet this is something the Left believes must be suppressed at all costs, and anyone not willing to suppress it has to be driven from the ranks of the desirable.
So Steve Scalise, the House Majority Leader, did a segment on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” and he was hotboxed about the 2020 election no less than nine times. Scalise didn’t back down, so Fox 8 in New Orleans ran with the lede of “House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) refused nine times to say the 2020 presidential election was legitimate during a combative interview Sunday (Nov. 5).”
This is absurd. Scalise didn’t bring up 2020 at all. Stephanopoulos kept after him like a rabid dog on the question. From the transcript…
STEPHANOPOULOS: [Retiring Colorado congressman Ken Buck] said that you’re one of those leaders who hasn’t been unequivocal in saying it was a clean election, that Joe Biden did not steal the election. Your response? SCALISE: Well, Ken, I’ve worked with, on a number of issues, including getting spending under control, getting our economy back on track. He’s talked about that 2020 election as well. You and I have, I think, have talked about that, too. At the end of the day, getting our country back on track is our focus. And that’s what we’re focused on right now. That’s why we’re moving bills out of the House to address our open border, which, by the way, you don’t see this administration wanting to confront when you have people on the terrorist watch list coming across our open border. We want to get our economy moving again by getting energy prices under control. We just passed a bill Friday that gets no press coverage, that stands up to Iran’s ability to sell their oil on world markets. They’ve made $80 billion since Joe Biden took office, selling their oil on world markets, and then using that money to fund Hamas and other terrorist organizations. We passed a strong bill with a very bipartisan vote Friday to push back and impose tough sanctions so Iran can’t keep making that kind of money. Let’s make our energy in America, not let Iran and other bad, hostile countries get that money that they use to fund terrorism. Those are bills we just passed. That’s what our focus has been on, getting our country back on track and supporting our allies and going after our enemies who are emboldened right now by the weakness from this administration. We need stronger action right now.
That was how the 2020 election issue was brought up. Scalise didn’t want to talk about it and deflected to things the House is actually doing. How far did he get with that? Well…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you say unequivocally the 2020 election was not stolen? SCALISE: What I’ve told you, there are states that didn’t follow their laws. That is what the state constitution – the US Constitution — requires. You know, I’ve seen in my own state, where we had to send our elections commissioner to jail years ago for fraud and corruption. And we cleaned up our act in our state. Every state ought to follow the laws that are on their books. That’s what the US Constitution says.
Which is the same message that Johnson has had from the beginning. No accusations about Dominion Voting Systems, or gunfights at server farms in Germany, or votes being counted in Serbia, or postal trucks bringing hundreds of thousands of ballots from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, or mules handling mail-in ballots at drop boxes. Some of those accusations aren’t so fanciful; the point is Steve Scalise isn’t engaging in any of that. He’s simply noting what Johnson noted – there were states who didn’t follow the law, and the effect was a less reliable electoral count than is our standard, and as a result we don’t really know who won.
But he might as well have been talking to the wall. The hotboxing continued…
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not what I asked. I said, can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen? SCALISE: Look, Joe Biden’s president. I know you and others want to talk about 2020. We’re focused on the future. We’ve talked about 2020 a lot. We’re talking about how to get our country back on track, how to get our economy moving, how to stand up to the bad actors around the world. Xi is not slowing down in China. He’s looking at Taiwan. You see what’s going on in Russia. You see what Iran is doing to work with Hamas and other terrorist organizations. This administration needs to pick up the pace. They’re not standing up to the bad actors around the world they need to. We’re passing bills to address this through the House. The Senate needs to take action. The president needs to take action as well. That’s what we’re focused on in the House. STEPHANOPOULOS: Congressman, I know that Joe Biden is president. I’m asking you a different question. Can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen? SCALISE: What I’ve told you, and you’ve — you’ve seen this — there are states that didn’t follow the laws that are on their books, which is what the US Constitution says they have to do. STEPHANOPOULOS: So you — so you just refuse to say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen? SCALISE: So, you want to keep rehashing 2020. We’re talking about the future of (INAUDIBLE) threats this country. STEPHANOPOULOS: I just want an answer to the question, yes or no? SCALISE: We’ve asked – look, we’ve talked about this before. But, again, will you acknowledge that there were states that didn’t follow the actual state legislative enacted laws on their book, which the US Constitution says they’re supposed to do? Do you know that?
It took a minute for Scalise to get there, but he eventually got around to putting the question back in Stephanopoulos’ face – would he defend the irregularities of the 2020 election?
And as it turned out, of course he would.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I know that every single – I know that every court that looked at whether the election was stolen said it wasn’t, rejected those claims. And I asked you a very, very simple question. Now I’ve asked it, I think, the fifth time that you can’t appear to answer. Can you say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen? SCALISE: I told you – I told you there were a handful – there were a handful of – there were a handful of states that didn’t follow their laws. The rest did. The rest followed. And, again, states that Trump won, states that Biden won that did follow their laws, there were a handful of states that didn’t follow the laws that were on the books. They went to secretaries of state to change the rules of the game and then the voters didn’t know what the rules were because ultimately the state laws weren’t followed in those states. That’s not what the US Constitution says. At some point, we should go back to following the Constitution, George. STEPHANOPOULOS: The courts have all followed the Constitution. They all rejected the claims you just made. And I just want to say, again, for the record, you cannot say — you cannot say that the 2020 election was not stolen? SCALISE: Or they said there was no standard. They’re – some of them they didn’t reject some of those (INAUDIBLE) standing.
The fact that courts threw out lawsuits on technical grounds was not, in fact, a validation of the irregularities of the election. In Wisconsin, for example, the Supreme Court found that the election was not executed according to state law. That court didn’t offer an executive remedy; it left the decertification of Wisconsin’s 2020 election results to the state legislature, and the Republican-controlled legislature didn’t step up to the plate. But Stephanopoulos’ narrative, that the courts universally validated those irregularities as hunky-dory, is a lie. That isn’t what happened.
And he went back to the same stupid question…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes or no, was the 2020 election stolen? SCALISE: What I’ve told you is Joe Biden’s the president of the United States. And right now, he’s failing the country on so many fronts that matter to families. We’re talking about what matters to families today. You can keep talking about 2020. I’m talking about what’s wrong with our country today, how to fix the problems, how to secure America’s border. You don’t want to talk about that because Democrat mayors across the country are talking about how broken our border is, to the point where people on the terrorist watch list from some of these hostile countries are coming into our country today, not just bringing drugs that are killing young people but people that actually want to do us harm. And this president won’t take action. We’ve passed legislation to fix this problem, to secure our border. The president doesn’t want to negotiate with us or with Democrat mayors who are telling him it’s a major problem, to big cities like New York, that we should all be concerned about. So the president can keep talking about the past. You can. We’re going to talk about the future and how to help these families who are struggling across America with high gas prices, high prices when they go to the grocery store, every other problem that they’re concerned about. That’s what we’re focused on in this House. STEPHANOPOULOS: Thanks for your time this morning.
Scalise did what he could t0 give a real interview and instead Stephanopoulos attempted to ambush him about long-ago spilled milk.
This is why Republican politicians ought to treat legacy media operatives like Stephanopoulos the way Nick Saban treats the sports reporters who attend his press conferences: start out with disdain and progress quickly to open abuse at the first sign of friction.
George Stephanopoulos isn’t interested in an informative dialogue in front of the American people, he’s interested in driving home Democrat talking points. Either Steve Scalise kowtows to a lower election standard, which is what the demand that he sanction the 2020 election amounts to, or he’s a dangerous extremist and domestic terrorist who shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress.
This doesn’t have to be given any respect. It isn’t worthy of any. What wouldn’t be a bad idea is for Republicans to boycott that show until Stephanopoulos is fired. But of course that’s unrealistic, because the Mitt Romneys, Lindsey Grahams, Chris Christies and Adam Kinzingers of the world will always gleefully go on ABC’s air to trash other Republicans for disagreeing with the ruling class’ self-serving narratives.