Jan. 6, 2021: Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.”
On the Hill, the different ideological factions inside the Party were known as the Five Families; the most unruly of these was the House Freedom Caucus, a group of thirty-three hard-line anti-institutionalists. The closest the conference came to a proactive message was its vow to investigate Joe Biden and to fight the scourge of the federal bureaucracy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/economy-default-2022-republican-midterm-elections/671707/
On January 2, 2021, Jordan led a conference call with Trump to discuss how they could delay certifying the election. One of the ideas was to encourage Trump supporters, via social media, to march on the Capitol on January 6th. Jordan spoke routinely with the President by phone during the next few days, including twice on January 6th, and he texted Trump’s chief of staff with advice on how to get Vice-President Mike Pence not to count electoral votes. Hours after the insurrection, Jordan stationed himself next to the House floor to whip votes against certification. Before leaving office, Trump gave him the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jordan, Trump has said, “is a warrior for me.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/jim-jordans-conspiratorial-quest-for-power
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“President Trump is wrong,” Mr. Pence said at the time. “I had no right to overturn the election.”
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Not content with his highly reported attempts to overturn the results of several 2020 state elections, which supported Biden, Hawley also supported the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, giving an arm-raised fist salute to the somewhat-deluded people who stormed the Capitol in hopes of stopping the certification of state’s election results.
In April 2021, Hawley, a leading Big Lie advocate, said Georgia's controversial new voter suppression law is like his own attempt in January to get millions of votes thrown out of the 2020 presidential election.
After voters in the 2022 midterm elections signaled "thumb-down" to GOP election denier candidates, Hawley played the blame game. He fingered Minority Leader McConnell, who early on signaled consternation over election deniers running as GOP candidates. McConnell was right.
Former Senator Danforth views his prior political support of Josh Hawley as "the worst mistake" of my life".
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"And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Tommy Tuberville, it’s that he’ll never let what’s good for Americans, including his constituents, stand in the way of what’s good for him and his political party."
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Newsmax founder Ruddy became a full-time Trump functionary, cashing in on the demand for pro-Trump news, building up his TV network, dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and watching his revenue rise. “He made his pact with the devil,” as Leamer put it. “He knew what Trump was.”
Newsmax went all in as Trump sought re-election (Ruddy made another former National Enquirer editor, David Perel, the editorial director) and Newsmax TV gave credence to every lie told by Trump up to and including speculation that Biden was “cognitively impaired” and that the election was stolen through chicanery involving Dominion Voting Systems.
While the January 6 Capitol riots were under way, Newsmax initially reported that it was only “6 to 10 people” breaching the building and speculated that they were antifa, later providing uncritical airtime to a Trump rioter who declared “this is our house, and we have the right to be here.” Learn More
It all comes home to roost for Sean Hannity.
Dec. 2, 2020: Hannity tears into mainstream media for 'totally, completely' ignoring election fraud claims: 'We will remain independent. We answer only to the truth,' the 'Hannity' host told his viewers.
August 25, 2022: Dominion’s legal complaint lays out how Fox repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the company’s purported role in a plot to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump, and argues that its business has suffered considerably as a result. Those falsehoods — including that Dominion was a pawn of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and that its machines were designed with a feature that allowed votes to be flipped from one candidate to another — aired night after night as Fox hosts like Mr. Hannity and Mr. Dobbs allowed guests to make them on their shows, and in some cases vouched for them.
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- 2017: Promoting Trump’s false ‘voting fraud’ narrative: “Well, I won't reveal private conversations with the president, Judy, but I will tell you that what the president is talking about is registration and voter rolls. He knows there are dead people registered, there are illegal people registered, and he wants to get to the bottom of that without an election on the horizon.
- 2021: “Alternative facts”: Conway praised Trump for his response to the U.S. Capitol riots.
- The very next day: President Trump appoints Conway to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy.
America’s most prominent conservative gathering, founded on ideals of personal liberty and limited government, convened in Budapest in 2021 to celebrate a European leader accused of undermining democracy and individual rights.
CPAC Goes Full Orbán:
The right launders its support for Putin through the Hungarian autocrat.
CPAC's opening 2021 conference "included a look at 'failed' states — PA, GA, NV, oh my! [states President Biden won] and 'successful' states, likely drawing attention to the spate of restrictive voting laws state Republicans are advancing in dozens of states. " Learn More
Under the guidance of Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, the “Election Integrity Network” has built what it calls “permanent election integrity infrastructure” in swing states staffed with people fully committed to election conspiracies. After recruiting thousands of election workers and poll watchers in the 2022 cycle, Election Integrity Network coalitions are now mobilizing far-right activists to advance restrictive voting policies in key states.
Mitchell supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including joining the infamous call when the president urged Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes.
The Nework is the progeny of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the $45 million MAGA institution led by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
In states like Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, CPI’s Election Integrity Network has organized coalitions of election conspiracy theorists, drawing from national groups like Tea Party Patriots and Heritage Action, as well as a range of fringe state-based groups, like Audit the Vote PA and Stand Up Michigan, and with support from local, state, and national GOP officials and entities. Learn More
“There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy, Republican-California, said, according to a recording of the 15 June 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Representative Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia. Learn More