In fact, some election deniers might be slowly waking up to this reality. Or maybe—and let’s hope this is the case—they’ll use the 2022 midterm results as an excuse to further radicalize their nonvoters.
Right-wing activist and gormless manchild Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, is one of these characters. He recently appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room, where Bannon’s guests come to commiserate with him on his recent death, bring fragrant spices to anoint his moldering corpus, and try to coax him to cross over into the light. But in this case, Kirk was more interested in standing over the election he helped murder and wonder aloud how any of this could have possibly happened.
Watch:
KIRK: “Look, 400,000 people that showed up for Donald Trump or voted for Donald Trump in 2020 did not show up or vote for the midterm election. Now, I believe it’s because a lot of people do not trust the system.”
Hmm, wonder why that would be. Could it be GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake suggesting before the election that only a Kari Lake win could possibly be legitimate? Or the fact that if Trump had a dollar for every time he baselessly alleged election fraud he might actually be a billionaire?
Or maybe it was Kirk himself.
As the website The New Civil Rights Movement pointed out, Kirk has gone out of his way to sow mistrust in our elections. Sure, he might have thought he was galvanizing opposition to the Biden administration and energizing his base, but the results speak for themselves.
As the site notes, in January, Kirk hosted top election denier Mollie Hemingway on his show. Hemingway is the editor-in-chief of The Federalist, a wacky right-wing website, and the author of Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.
Here was the thumbnail description of Hemingway’s appearance:
On the one-year anniversary of Joe Biden’s installment into the Oval Office, Charlie was joined by Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist and author of the exceptional new book, “Rigged,” the definitive dossier on all the malfeasance of the 2020 election, for an important and timely discussion ahead of this years midterms surrounding election integrity. Mollie shares a disturbing story about establishment Republicans who have decided to simply move on from caring about voter fraud before explaining where the current state-by-state fight for election integrity stands as we inch closer to 2024.
In other words—let’s all go out and chase ghosts instead of just voting and getting our people to the polls.
Then, in April of this year, Kirk hosted former Trump campaign official and Citizens United president David Bossie, another election denier, for a segment he titled “’RIGGED’ — An In-Depth Examination of the 2020 Election with David Bossie.”
In fact, Kirk was baselessly tweeting about electoral fraud mere days after the 2020 presidential election:
For the nontweeters:
The same people who spent the last 4 years falsely saying Russians rigged our elections are now saying there’s no way an election could be rigged by illegal ballots and voter fraud. How does that work?
Yeah, except Russia did have a coordinated campaign to influence our elections. And the Trump campaign knew about and welcomed it. And Trump’s own campaign manager shared internal polling data (i.e., colluded) with a Kremlin-connected Russian. But sure, keep whining. After all, Democrats have a Senate majority to protect in 2024. We’ll need you on our side again, Chuck.
The Republican Party continues to flail and point fingers at one another. The traditional media pretends it did not completely blow it on predicting a “red wave” a few weeks ago. On today’s episode, Markos is joined by Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg was one of the few outsiders who, like Daily Kos, kept telling the world that these midterm races were closer than was being reported. The two do a little gloating about being right in their optimism coming into the 2022 midterm elections, give their analysis of Democratic candidates’ successes, and point to signs that the Republican Party is terrified as we head into the 2024 election cycle.
Sen. Raphael Warnock is still defending his Georgia seat, and the Dec. 6 runoff is coming fast. If you can—and if you aren’t too tired from saving America on Nov. 8—please rush a donation to Team Warnock now! You can also write letters to Georgia voters with Vote Forward! Let’s finish up strong!
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
