Republicans must stop this madness by dispelling Donald Trump’s lies

President Donald Trump convinced a large number of his supporters that the presidency was being stolen from them and then he stoked their fears on Wednesday with more impassioned lies.

“We will never give up,” Trump told a large crowd gathered in Washington D.C. to protest lawmakers who were about to receive electoral votes officially installing Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. “We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about.”

Hours later, protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The New York Times reported hundreds of protesters broke past fences outside the Capitol and clashed with law enforcement officers. Some were able to get past security and into the building prompting proceedings in Congress to be suspended as Vice President Mike Pence was evacuated from the building and lawmakers were locked down.

RELATED: Photos show pro Trump mob clashing with police, storming U.S. Capitol

The Washington Post and Associated Press reported someone was shot inside the Capitol, although details were not available.

Let there be no mistake, Trump is responsible for this madness. If he truly loves America and not just the power this country bestowed upon him in January 2017, he will announce he was wrong and concede defeat in a free and fair election. He must tell Americans the truth; he lost in November; there was no fraud, and Biden is the rightful president.

We have yet to see any compelling evidence that this theft alleged by Trump has occurred. What we’ve found is all of the claims of widespread election fraud have been disproven. A viral video of suitcases of ballots being counted late in the night in Georgia has been put in context by the full video which shows election officials sealing those ballots up in the secure containers before returning to count them later when the Republican secretary of state ordered ballot counting to continue through the night instead of pause. We found that hand counts in other states and a routine audit of ballots in Colorado have shown definitively that Dominion software and hardware did not “switch” votes from Trump to Biden.

Congressmen Ken Buck and Doug Lamborn — as seasoned Republican politicians — must stand up to the president for the sake of America. They are our last hope as Democrats have been doing their best to extinguish Trump’s insidious fire with truth and facts for months now. Buck called on Republicans to not undermine the Electoral College, but he fell short of what was actually needed and that was addressing the root of claims that give these protesters the idea their actions are justified. Lamborn put out a statement urging Trump supporters to go home, but he has yet to push back on the lies that if believed would provoke someone to storm the U.S. Capitol building.

There is no moral equivalence to Democrats in 2016 who exposed a Russian plot to divide and deceive Americans using thousands of fake social media accounts and Republicans who today use their power to spread unverified and often fake claims that the 2020 election was stolen via an orchestrated conspiracy to rig the results.

Trump supporters who have bought into this conspiracy theory will not be convinced by the media’s diligent effort to set the record straight — Trump has spent too much of his time in office convincing them we are the enemies. The onus is now on Republicans to fix this mess. We plead with Buck and Lamborn to do the right thing for this country and tell the truth. We’d plead with Colorado’s newly elected Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert, but sadly we think she actually believes Trump’s lies. The president has made a fool of her just as he did to those who stormed the Capitol Wednesday in Trump’s name.