The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump’s gripes about 2020 may aid Congress
‘I don’t believe the election was stolen. Anyone who wants to talk about the last election will lose the next election.’ Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas
We saw again this week in Georgia how Donald Trump can’t stop talking about election fraud that never happened in the 2020 election.
Ironically, those never-ending false claims by Trump may actually help push Congress to eliminate the chance of a backdoor electoral vote scheme that Trump wanted to use as a way to reverse his election loss.
In Georgia, Trump’s ongoing election grievances played a starring role in his endorsement of David Perdue in the state’s GOP primary for governor.
“Brian Kemp let us down,” Trump said, again insinuating that Georgia’s Republican governor was insufficiently loyal about claims of fraud.
Trump’s comments were among a flurry of statements in the past week about 2020, as he expressed dismay that Vice President Mike Pence didn’t block certain electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power,” Trump said. “He could have overturned the election!”
Those remarks loomed over the work of a bipartisan group of 16 U.S. senators, who are reviewing efforts to change an 1887 law that governs the counting of electoral votes in presidential races.
Trump was furious, saying the changes were being undertaken by “political hacks, liars and traitors in Congress.”
The Senate’s top Republican disagreed.
“That particular law is clearly flawed and needs to be updated,” said Senate GOP Leader Mitch Mcconnell, who also rebuked Trump for floating the idea of pardons for those convicted in the Capitol riots.
Democrats saw something extra in Trump’s repeated declarations that Pence “could have overturned the election” on Jan. 6 — an admission of guilt about the violence that day.
“Look no further for the Trump smoking gun,” said U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD., a member of the Jan. 6 investigative committee.
The bipartisan talks on electoral vote reforms came just days after the Jan. 6 committee sent subpoenas to two Georgia Republicans, looking to find out how and why GOP leaders in Georgia and six other states sent bogus electoral vote documents to Congress and the National Archives claiming that Trump had won — when he actually lost.
While polls continue to show many GOP voters believe Trump’s fraud claims, a handful of elected Republicans have clearly had enough.
“I don’t believe the election was stolen,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters in Washington, offering a rare public rebuke of Trump by a GOP leader. “Anyone who wants to talk about the last election will lose the next election.”
That’s certainly a test for Trump and Perdue, who have been making fraud claims for 16 months in Georgia, without producing any evidence to back them up.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C., since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta JournalConstitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at http:// jamiedupree.substack.com