(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., insisted on Monday that electoral fraud is not a frequent issue and not a threat to America.
McConnell claimed that “there is very little election fraud” during a local Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky, NBC News reported.
“I think we have a very solid democracy,” he said. “I don’t think—of the things that we need to worry about, I wouldn’t be worried about that one.”
McConnell’s claims would seem to undermine the widely held view from supporters of former President Donald Trump that the outcome of the 2020 race in favor of President Joe Biden was illegitimate due to the election-meddling that transpired on a number of fronts.
An abundance of evidence has surfaced to contradict McConnell’s assertions—including video footage of paid activists stuffing unmanned ballot boxes in Georgia, as revealed in the documentary 2000 Mules.
The remarks came on the heels of recent comments from McConnell, widely reported by mainstream media, in which he suggested that, despite talk of a red-wave election, Republicans were less-than-optimistic about reclaiming the Senate because of a lack of quality candidates.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate … Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
— Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell does not sound too confident in Republicans’ ability to retake the Senate pic.twitter.com/XK8G451i01
— The Recount (@therecount) August 18, 2022
Taken together, McConnell’s statements suggest that his vendetta with Trump may be leading him to attempt to sabotage not only Trump-backed candidates but all GOP candidates by encouraging party leaders to disregard concerns over election integrity.
“I do think it’s an important issue,” he said during Monday’s luncheon—before pivoting from Democrats who perpetrated vote fraud to casting blame on the concerned citizens who protested it.
“There were those who were trying to prevent the orderly transfer of power for the first time in American history,” McConnell claimed, vaguely alluding to the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol, “and that was not good.”
However, these issues were “thwarted” by Biden taking power, he added.
McConnell has previously been “ecstatic” to discredit, Trump whose falling out with the then-Senate leader began after McConnell congratulated Biden for winning the Electoral College vote with several challenges still making their way through the court system.
Trump ultimately lost many of them for procedural reasons without ever receiving any adjudication on their merit.
Since then, however, many Republican leaders in red states have taken up the fight for electoral integrity:
- According to Axios, five states have passed laws allowing an audit of the 2020 election, including Arizona.
- The Arizona audit found ‘exceptionally rare errors’ in Maricopa County’s election integrity.
- The Arizona audit also identified a specific Arizona bureaucrat who deleted evidence before the Senatorial Investigation of the election integrity.
- Nineteen states have tightened up electoral integrity since 2020, according to Axios.
