Cornyn, Cruz are on familiar ground with Trump’s claims
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump continues to claim falsely that he won the Nov. 3 election, some of his most prominent Texas allies are acknowledging that they don’t expect to see him in the White House after January 20.
“It will probably be Joe Biden,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn told reporters on Monday, offering his strongest pushback yet to the president’s assertions. “I haven’t seen anything that would change the outcome.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who has described Trump’s legal challenges of the election results as an “uphill battle,” has yet to go so far. But Cruz has voiced frustration with the president’s legal team, saying they need to make more of an effort to prove their case not just in court, but “also in the court of public opinion.”
“As best I can tell, their legal team is not doing that at all — other than screaming, ‘it’s all fraud,’ they’re not actually laying out cool, calm, methodical evidence, which is what it’s going to take to change the path we’re on right now,” Cruz said in an interview with conservative radio host Michael Berry. “I can tell you in the Senate, nobody knows what they’re doing.”
For Cornyn and Cruz, the final weeks of Trump’s term have resumed the same rhythm that has held for much of his presidency.
It tends to go like this: Trump says, does or tweets something
unexpected. Reporters quiz the Republican senators looking for signs they are breaking with the president. There are few, or none. Cruz and Cornyn rephrase Trump, putting the matter into context or amplifying it as they stake out their positions. Then it settles until Trump starts something new.
‘Par for the course’
Neither senator likely feels much pressure to contradict Trump’s unfounded allegations of being cheated, which the president’s critics — including some Republicans — have said threaten to undermine democracy.
“I think if anything, Republicans feel pressure to support the president’s legal options,” said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP consultant. “There are different ways they’ve tried to thread that needle. Right now the difficulty is a lot of Trump’s voters share his concerns and they’re obviously listening to what he says and taking it seriously.”
As is often the case, Cruz this time has taken to Fox News and right-wing radio programs, podcasts and web shows nearly daily to present himself as one of Trump’s fiercest allies — or, in this case, as one of the most vocal advocates for the president’s right to have his day in court.
It’s an echo of Cruz’s role as high-profile Trump defender during the president’s impeachment trial, when Cruz launched a podcast to present the president’s case.
“There are lots of claims of voter fraud. I don’t know which claims are accurate and which aren’t,” Cruz said on an episode of his podcast that aired this week. “We ought to allow the legal system to actually hear evidence, to examine the data.”
Trump and his attorneys have yet to provide evidence of widespread fraud and a federal election integrity group that is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security last week issued a statement calling the Nov. 3 election “the most secure in American history.”
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” members of Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee said in a joint statement.
Cornyn, meanwhile, has largely avoided the issue of the election results unless pressed, saying little after giving a speech on the Senate floor last week in which he voiced “complete, complete confidence” in the nation’s election system, even as the president was tweeting it was rigged against him.
The senator has rarely criticized the president and has said he’s chosen to keep his disagreements with Trump private. As he was running for re-election last month, Cornyn described times he’s pushed back on the president. Among them, Cornyn said that about a year ago, he called Trump and told the president he no longer believed that protections for some immigrants brought to the country illegally as children should be “used as leverage to try to get other things we want on immigration.”
Whether Cornyn is having similar conversations with Trump about the election results is unclear.
“It’s pretty much par for the course over the past four years,” said Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “It’s how each of them has approached the president, with Cornyn keeping his reservations generally private, but at the same time almost never serving in the role as a cheerleader for the president, whereas Cruz is more likely to be that type of full-throated supporter, but at the same time is always careful not to cross the thin line that goes between remaining credible and becoming uncredible.”
Different approaches
Political observers say the approaches reflect the individual goals of Cornyn and Cruz. And with Senate Republicans laser-focused on winning January runoffs in Georgia to keep their majority in tact, it’s unlikely much will change over the next several weeks.
“Sen. Cornyn is a lifer in the Senate. He’s gunning for minority or majority leader and needs to keep a level head to make deals in the future in those roles,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “Sen. Cruz wants the keys to the White House and courting the base by backing President Trump seeds the ground for 2024.”
Cornyn and Cruz have each argued in their own way that not allowing the president to air his grievances — in court and online — will make it more likely his followers will never accept the results.
“It’s almost like they’re persecuting heretics,” Cruz said of those urging Republicans to push back on Trump. “They scream at you, ‘You’re undermining democracy.’ That’s nutty. No, democracy means if there are legal challenges you resolve the legal challenges.”
As Cornyn put it: “Every American should have confidence in the free and fair elections that led to that result.”
“I think this is perhaps the single most important reason to let the process that’s currently under way run its course,” Cornyn said in his floor speech. “If one side or the other — or more importantly the voters who ultimately voted for the candidate who loses — feel like the process is unfair or has been jammed through … are they likely to accept the result of the election, or will they feel cheated?”