These Republicans knew the 'big lie' was absurd. What does that say about the rest of their party?
Former attorney general William P. Barr was one of Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants. He roiled the department helping the former president’s criminal friends, and his public praise of Mr. Trump redefined effusive. So the week after the 2020 presidential election, when he unleashed U.S. attorneys across the country to investigate voting irregularities, it seemed as though he was preparing to use the Justice Department’s powers to bolster the lie that the Democrats had stolen the election.
In fact, “he had already concluded that it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election,” according to ABC News’s Jonathan D. Karl in a piece the Atlantic published on Sunday. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it,” Mr. Barr told Mr. Karl. “But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bull---t.”
Justice Department inquiries consistently showed the Trump camp’s claims were just that. All along, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged Mr. Barr to rebuke publicly the river of mistruths and conspiracy theories gushing from Mr. Trump and his allies. Mr. McConnell apparently knew these claims were damaging the country — and, perhaps more concerning for him, bad for Republicans’ chances to keep control of the Senate in January’s Georgia Senate runoff elections.
Even so, it was not until Dec. 1 that Mr. Barr finally announced publicly what he had known for weeks, telling an Associated Press reporter, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” It took Mr. McConnell even longer to denounce Mr. Trump’s lies. One can only wonder, if Mr. Barr and Mr. McConnell had spoken out sooner, whether the “big lie” might have struggled to deepen and fester among Republicans the way it has.
But at least they acknowledged reality, a fact that to this day distinguishes them from a shockingly large number of their fellow Republicans. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has been practically drummed out of the party for being one of the few voices willing to speak out against Mr. Trump’s toxic lies. Arizona Senate Republicans are running an abortive “audit” of the vote in their state, a mockery of process and common sense bankrolled and conducted by election conspiracists. GOP lawmakers in other swing states are pushing for similar circus recounts. Many Republican candidates are already running on the “big lie” in the 2022 election cycle. GOP state legislatures are raising barriers to the ballot box and asserting control over election procedures on the pretext of promoting “election integrity,” raising the prospect that they will interfere in the casting or counting of votes in future elections based on another slew of Trump-like lies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/28/these-republicans-knew-big-lie-was-absurd-what-does-that-say-about-rest-their-party/
= new reply since forum marked as read
