Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he will accept the results of the 2024 election only if he believes it’s “fair”—i.e., if he wins. Judging by whom the Republican National Committee chose to feature at the convention, that now appears to be the official party line. Election denial—past and present—is orthodoxy.
The convention, which kicked off on Monday, has been jam-packed with Jan. 6 insurrectionists and conspirators who tried to overturn the 2020 election, The Washington Post reports. The Pledge of Allegiance on Monday was led by Debbie Kraulidis, Illinois activist who attended the Jan. 6 rally before the Capitol riot. Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, who seconded the formal nomination of Trump, helped engineer his state’s slate of false electors in 2020, trying to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there. The deputy policy director of the platform committee for the party is Ed Martin, who was in the Jan. 6 mob outside the Capitol, alongside a handful of other delegates at the convention.
In fact, at least five delegates served as fake electors in Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the election, the Post reports, “including four who have been charged with fraud, forgery and conspiracy.” In other words, convicted felon Donald Trump is in good company.
Then there’s Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s pick for vice president. Vance was famously an early and vociferous anti-Trump conservative, a position that probably made it easier for him to get on the literary circuit and sell his book, not to mention the movie rights to it. As soon as that was accomplished—and he decided to run for Senate—the groveling to Trump began, as did his audition for the position he just secured: Trump’s MAGA heir apparent.
Vance wasn’t in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, so he didn’t have the chance to vote for or against certifying Biden’s win. But he’s made it clear that he thinks the election was stolen, telling an Ohio newspaper in October 2021, “There were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.”
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance told ABC News this past February.
Never mind that the vice president has no part in telling states how to choose their electors. It’s seemingly all Trump needed to hear.
As for the 2024 election? “Sure, if it’s a free and fair election, I will accept the results … whoever wins,” Vance said on CNN in May. Just like big daddy Trump told him.
Election denialism is now gospel in the GOP, and they are absolutely not going to accept defeat this year if Biden wins. They’re also not being very subtle about the violent lengths they’ll go to to reinstall Trump in the White House.
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