House Minority Whip Steve Scalise continued peddling what has become known as “The Big Lie” on Sunday when he refused to admit that the 2020 election wasn’t “stolen” from former president Trump. This baseless claim has been a recurring refrain for Trump loyalists since before the election results were certified.
In spite of the fact that U.S. courts have repeatedly rejected claims of widespread voter fraud including double-voting, voting by non-citizens, and votes cast on behalf of dead people as false, loyal Republicans have continually repeated these claims. Even Trump’s attorney general William Barr announced that the Justice Department had found no evidence to support these claims.
Failing that, Scalise and other Republicans are no claiming that several battleground states – including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – implemented illegal election procedure changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Supreme Court disagrees, however. The court threw out a lawsuit on the issue brought by the Texas attorney general, and Republicans lost 59 out of 60 lawsuits in lower courts on the issue by January 6th, the date when Congress met to certify the election results.
However, when pressed by ABC News Host Jonathan Karl, Scalise would admit that Joe Biden was president – but not that the election wasn’t stolen. “Once the electors are counted, yes, [Biden’s] the legitimate president,” Scalise said. “But if you’re going to ignore the fact that there were states that did not follow their own… laws, that’s the issue at heart, that millions of people still are not happy with and don’t want to see happen again. The Constitution says state legislatures set the rules for elections. That didn’t happen in a few states.”
That interpretation of the Constitution is inconsistent with Supreme Court rulings, including one upheld on Monday. These claims are similar to ones believed to have encouraged the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol which resulted in the deaths of five people and left the peaceful transition of power in ruins.
Scalise’s comments come just before Trump is scheduled to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). There, he is expected to reassert himself as the leader of the Republican Party – although there has been some talk that he has considered starting a new party, unhappy with Republican leaders who have begun to pull away from repeating his false claims.
