MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night ripped apart the long shot Texas lawsuit to throw out votes from four states that President-elect Joe Biden won, calling the Republican attempt to invalidate millions of ballots “patently insane” and “as dumb as you think it is.”
After the Supreme Court denied a GOP bid to overturn Biden’s election victory in Pennsylvania with a one-line ruling, President Donald Trump and other Republicans jumped aboard Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s suit seeking that the electoral votes of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to be set aside. Besides Trump, attorneys general from at least 17 states that Trump won have joined the suit, filing an amicus brief.
The case is seen as yet another dead end in a series of increasingly embarrassing legal defeats for Trump and his allies, something the MSNBC host pointed out at the top of her show on Wednesday.
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“President Trump is now telling his supporters that this lawsuit is the ‘big one,’” the progressive primetime star said, referencing the president’s online boast about the case. “This is the one that’s going to get him the presidency. This is the one that’s going to overturn the election.”
Noting that this lawsuit is possibly an attempt by the embattled Paxton to ingratiate himself with the president in order to secure a pardon over potential charges for bribery, Maddow then tore into the merits of the case itself.
“But this lawsuit is patently, patently insane,” she exclaimed. “This is Texas suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan over how those other states conducted their elections. Now why does Texas have anything to say about that? Excellent question!”
She went on to note that Texas is hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to nullify the four states’ election results and delay next week’s Electoral College vote over the states’ recent changes to their voting laws. All four states, meanwhile, have already certified their election results.
“Now, whether or not you’re a lawyer, whether or not you follow Supreme Court jurisprudence, this is as dumb as you think it is,” Maddow said. “Don’t overthink it. States don’t get to sue other states for how those other states voted. It doesn’t work that way!”
Maddow pointed out that Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who represents Texas, said on Wednesday that he “frankly struggles to understand the legal theory” of Paxton’s suit and that he doesn’t understand why Texas has a say-so in other states’ elections.
After playing a clip of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) saying this most recent attempt to subvert the will of the voters is “simply madness” and “dangerous and destructive to the cause of democracy,” Maddow revealed that Trump is using the “Kamala Harris birther lawyer” to represent him in this suit.
“There is stuff to do. But this is what we’re doing instead,” she concluded with a sigh. “Follow the lead of the Kamala Harris birther guy. Eighteen states and the president saying, ‘No, no, no, we’re going to try to get this election overturned. Supreme Court will do it.’ This is what we’re working on. This is what the Republican Party is working on now.”
Legal experts have shredded this latest Republican legal challenge and said there is almost no chance that the Supreme Court will even consider it, let alone decide to reverse the outcome of the election over the suit. Election law scholar Rick Hasen called it the “the dumbest case I’ve ever seen filed on an emergency basis at the Supreme Court.”
