Chris Smith still blaming antifa
It’s no surprise that Jeff Van Drew’s objections to certifying the electoral college votes immediately after a violent insurrection on January 6th garnered a lot of attention. However, NJ’s other Republican, Chris Smith, has been flying under the radar.
Smith is not Van Drew. He voted to confirm the election results and condemned the violence. But before we credit Smith, we should note that he has never condemned the lies that brought us that shameful day, and in some cases, is still sustaining them.
Trump has been lying about fraudulent votes since immediately after the 2016 election. Smith never spoke against this dangerous rhetoric. In fact, whether it was cheating in an election, denying foreign election interference, or sowing doubt about election security, Smith consistently enabled or quietly accepted Trump’s attacks on our democracy.
When Trump began claiming the 2020 election was rigged, stolen, or otherwise rife with fraud, the best Smith could muster was an irrelevant comparison to Al Gore, noting that Gore did not concede until Dec. 13th after a ruling from the Supreme Court. Smith also gave a nod to Trump’s baseless claims by saying Trump could “exhaust every legal avenue” while pursuing “definitive confirmation” of the election outcome. Otherwise, Smith worried political divisions in our country would worsen.
Of course, we had “definitive confirmation” of the election results, and intimating that we didn’t was irresponsible. For Smith to not see that Trump declaring the election “stolen” would worsen divisions in our country took a remarkable level of ignorance.
Immediately after we learned that Trump asked Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find 11,780 votes” - and well past Smith’s own benchmarks of December 13th and multiple court rulings Smith was asked to comment on Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. He declined.
It is impossible to reconcile Smith’s response to Trump’s lies and the events of January 6th without concluding that Smith is culpable and a coward. How did Smith not see the inevitable danger of Trump’s falsehoods? Smith, along with most of his party, failed to understand a basic principle of the Trump era that it doesn’t matter if the corrupt scheme succeeds, the real damage is done by letting absurd narratives take hold amongst millions of Republican voters.
Instead, Smith is still paying lip-service to Trump’s lies by calling for a “top-tobottom review of election law and administrative policies to ensure that elections are free and fair” because “the future of our nation depends on it.” In doing so, Smith is contributing to the artificial “doubt” about the election his Republican colleagues created and used as justification for objecting to the results.
Worst of all, Smith hasn’t learned the lesson of January 6th, 2021: That using your position of authority to propagate unfounded nonsense is dangerous. When asked on January 6th if the mob in the Capitol were merely posing as Trump supporters, Smith responded “I saw very strange things, some strange designs on tattoos, for example a hammer and sickle. Some very strange things. It may have been Antifa. We just don’t know. I’ll leave that to the police to ascertain.”
That sounds like it came from Trump himself. One week later, Smith voted against impeachment.
It was always obvious that the people who stormed the Capitol were Trump’s supporters. Trump invited them to the rally and told them to march down the street. Even Mitch McConnell has acknowledged Trump’s responsibility. But when asked two weeks after the riot if he would correct his false statements about Antifa, Smith stood by his original statement.
Trump is gone, but Trumpism will linger. To move beyond it, we need leaders who will speak the truth to conservative voters before demonstrable and dangerous lies pervade the right’s ecosystem. Smith will not be this leader, he stood with Trump every step of the way.
Smith was either foolish enough to believe Trump’s lies or - despite forty years in Congress - lacked the courage and integrity to counter them. Either way, the shame of January 6th and the entire Trump era will now forever be a part of Smith’s story.