Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who has repeatedly tried to have it both ways when it comes to former president Donald Trump’s “big lie,”was heckled by a fervent MAGA supporter and election denialist at a recent fundraising event for saying the 2020 election wasn’t stolen.
While speaking at the Illinois GOP Fundraising dinner in Rosemont, Illinois on Wednesday evening, Crenshaw was asked by an attendee if he believed in “election integrity” and whether he thought last year’s presidential election was rigged against Trump. (Dozens of Trump-backed election fraud lawsuits have been tossed out of court and multiple state and local election officials, along with former Attorney General William Barr, have confirmed there was no widespread fraud that would have impacted the vote.)
“There’s certain states with problems, but don’t kid yourself into believing that’s why we lost, it’s not. It’s not,” Crenshaw responded, prompting Bobby Piton, a fringe Illinois Senate candidate who believes Trump will be reinstated this year, to fire back from the crowd.
ADVERTISEMENT
Piton, a QAnon booster who served as an “expert witness” during Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s sham election fraud hearings last year, insisted there was “plenty of proof” that of widespread voter fraud and that states like Arizona will soon flip back to Trump, citing the largely discredited ballot “audit” in that state. (Piton has been consulted on the so-called audit.)
“It won’t, and you’ve got to flip all five states to make it happen,” Crenshaw responded, as Piton asked if he knew how Democrats were “stealing” the election.
“It’s just something you’ve got to accept. Is there a lot of voter fraud? Yeah, there probably is. Enough that Trump won? Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” he concluded, adding that Piton was “kidding” himself if he believed Trump would be reinstated.
“It is disgusting to hear denials from a sitting do-nothing and intellectually dishonest Congressman in our House of Representatives,” Piton later posted on Facebook. “Crenshaw has done nothing but shill for the Democrats and refuse to even see or hear the evidence of fraud.”
This latest Republican-on-Republican confrontation over Trump’s baseless claims the election was rigged comes as MAGA-boosting pillow salesman Mike Lindell’s three-day “cyber symposium” to prove Trump was robbed has spectacularly imploded, as Lindell’s lead cyber expert recently admitted they have no proof the election was hacked.
