CNN’s Dana Bash pushed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to admit the 2024 election was “free and fair”—though questioned why the GOP could do so only after Donald Trump won while letting false claims of election fraud run rampant when he lost in 2020.
Bash asked the Ohio congressman on Sunday’s State of the Union to answer for his party‘s repeated suggestions of election fraud during the 2020 election, a thread that became a party focal point due to Trump’s repeated false assertion that he won the 2020 election. Trump reiterated that claim even after his electoral victory last week when he claimed his incoming chief-of-staff Susie Wiles was “an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns”—only one of which he won.
“I haven’t seen you or your colleagues claiming any election irregularities, no rampant voting fraud this time,” Bash said. “It seems to me that Republicans claim voting fraud and election integrity when you lose and not when you win.”
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Jordan, who repeatedly suggested malfeasance in the 2020 election, tried to deflect, bringing up various policy positions he said helped propel Trump to his win. But Bash pressed him further on the issue, noting that Republicans have abandoned all claims of voter fraud even after Trump claimed there was rampant “cheating” in Pennsylvania before results came in.
“I think the Democrats got to ask, why did we go from getting 81 million to getting 70 million?” Jordan responded. “What happened to those 10 million people? Maybe they needed—maybe it’s not smart to run an election where you have no vision, no record to run.”
Bash then posed the pivotal question: “Do you believe the 2024 election was free and fair?”
“I do,” Jordan said.
“And why was it different from 2020 when he lost? Is that the only difference?” Bash shot back.
Jordan then tried to raise various issues, claiming there “were all kinds of concerns with how the 2020 election was carried out,” citing signature verification issues of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania despite dozens of court cases and investigations affirming the 2020 election was free and fair. (The Pennsylvania Supreme Court also ruled ahead of the 2020 election that mail-in ballots could not be rejected over signature issues alone.)
Bash ended Jordan’s fact-light statements with a fact-based assertion: “There was no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020.”
