After almost two years of being called “election deniers” for aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s failed coup attempt, supporting his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, and chiseling away at the democratic process by insinuating that any election they lose is automatically suspect—Republicans have finally come up with a snappy comeback.
It’s essentially the juvenile clapback, “I know you are, but what am I”—best known as Pee Wee Herman’s 1980s-era go-to retort.
Sen. Ted Cruz brought it to the mainstream this week during an appearance on The View, when he read some quotes from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats calling their past election defeats illegitimate. The hosts took the bait, replying that at least Dems didn’t set out to murder the Republican vice president and sack the Capitol at the behest of the President of the United States.
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Senator Ted Cruz is the guest on The View on Monday, Oct. 24, 2022.
Lou Rocco/ABCThat, predictably, led to a prepared Cruz riposte about “antifa riots,” and the whole segment quickly devolved into a screaming shitshow.
A viral clip from the Republican National Committee showing “10 Minutes of Democrats Denying Election Results” also continues to be widely shared by the right-wing Pee Wee Hermans of Twitter.
The montage mostly consists of Clinton and others talking about Russian interference in the 2016 election, which they said makes Trump an “illegitimate president.” There’s also a smattering of Dems talking about possible vote-counting malfeasances in Ohio in 2004. Appearing near the end are some even dustier clips of liberals saying that George W. Bush in 2000 was “appointed” by the Supreme Court, rather than “elected.”
And of course, there’s Stacey Abrams’ repeated claims that her defeat to Brian Kemp in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was illegitimate. She has long alleged that Kemp, in his then role as secretary of state, suppressed the vote by wrongly canceling over a million voter registrations and closing hundreds of polling sites during his tenure in office. But as USA Today’s fact checker noted, “those actions can be explained as routine under state and federal law, and an expert explained there's not much empirical evidence supporting the assertion that Kemp either suppressed the vote or ‘stole’ the election from Abrams.”
Abrams never officially conceded her defeat, which Republicans have fairly used as evidence that she’s an “election denier.”
Ok, so what?
Is the point that Abrams and Clinton are sour grapes losers, therefore Trump’s coup attempt, ongoing Republican efforts across the country to seize control of election processes, and widespread intimidation efforts—all stemming from a demonstrably false theory that the 2020 election was stolen in a multi-state conspiracy (that supposedly included Republican elected officials)—are fair play?
Here’s the thing. Al Gore conceded the 2000 election after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount. John Kerry conceded the 2004 election the very next day, and objections to the certification of Bush’s reelection were quickly batted down by Democratic leadership. And Clinton, for all her subsequent “illegitimate president” talk, also conceded the next day.
None of them pushed a lie—and this is not debatable, it is a lie—that makes every U.S. election for the foreseeable future a potential civil war flashpoint. Trump will never concede, and directed a violent mob toward the U.S. Capitol to take over Congress and overturn our election. Spot the difference?
Here’s a very small sample of things we know for a fact, in large part thanks to the Jan. 6 Committee hearings (which mostly featured testimony from Trump administration officials, MAGA diehards, and police officers).
There was coordination in the high echelons of Trump’s inner circle with the neo-fascist groups who tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Trump nakedly abused his power by leaning on local officials after the election to “find votes” for him to win—a request that, under any other presidency, would have been, and should have been, treated as an impeachable offense. And numerous people in his administration—from his loyal attack dog attorney general, Bill Barr, to his own daughter, Ivanka—tried to make the president listen to reason, face the unimpeachable facts, and accept that he lost a thoroughly vetted, free, and fair election.
Trump, a loser of the sorest kind, would do no such thing. And now he has inspired a movement hellbent on salting the earth.
I could go on for thousands of words, but for the sake of brevity, here’s a very small sample of what’s happening just weeks before the midterm elections as result of Trump’s depraved idiocy.
There are at least 345 election deniers on ballots across the country—including candidates for governor, Congress, attorney general, and any number of offices that oversee elections. That represents a majority of 2022 GOP candidates, and 60 percent of Americans will have at least one Big Liar to choose from on Election Day.
There are organized efforts in Arizona to intimidate poll workers and early voters, as MAGA stalkers try to find the fictitious “mules” they’ve been led to believe stole the 2020 election. And the state’s election-denying Republican gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, continues to peddle the lie of “corruption in the system,” and suggests making it harder to vote as the solution to the nonexistent crisis.
Trump and his QAnon congressional caucus are still raising the bar for what’s considered violence-inciting rhetoric, with the former president saying Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has a “death wish” and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene telling her supporters, “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings.”
And a coordinated campaign of harassment by election deniers has forced out a majority of Nevada’s election supervisors and mid-level election staff. This is also happening in numerous states that Trump narrowly lost.
Complain about Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton all you went, condemn antifa violence to your heart’s content (I’ve done it many times myself), but don’t call yourself a patriotic American if you’re willing to be led around by the nose by a low-rent criminal like Trump, while he gleefully torches the country rather than admit he lost.
Democracy only works if there’s faith in the process. Trump’s Big Lie—to its true believers—obliterates any hope that Republicans can lose legitimately (though, of course, any GOP victory is clearly above reproach). Without faith in democracy, the stability of society itself is imperiled.
Criticizing the outcome of the 2000 election, decided by one of the most controversial 5-4 Supreme Court decisions of all time, does not exist in the same universe as Trump’s coup attempt. A brief revolt by a tiny number of Democrats in 2004 would have stayed mostly forgotten if not for its utility to Big Lie whatabouters and Trump sycophants. And even if Clinton, Rachel Maddow, and a host of liberal and mainstream media outlets recklessly hyped “Russiagate”—the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Trump is a Kremlin agent—it is also simply a fact that Russia did interfere with the 2016 election.
You know who did not interfere with the 2020 election? Poll workers, voting machine companies, vote counters, election officials of both parties, and the media.
And let’s please not forget that this whole “illegitimate president” thing started among conservatives with Bill Clinton in 1992—when he was elected without winning 50 percent of the popular vote, because independent Ross Perot siphoned off enough votes from Clinton and then-President George H.W. Bush to prevent anyone from winning an outright majority. (Conveniently, after both George W. Bush and Trump lost the popular vote but won the presidency, Republicans no longer gave much thought to the popular vote as a measure of legitimacy.)
Then, of course, there’s Barack Obama—who for eight years dealt with racist conspiracy theories that he was actually born in Kenya and therefore, an illegitimate president. The person most responsible for propagating that very big lie? Donald Trump—who found the winning formula to develop his MAGA movement in racism, violent rhetoric, and constant lying.
You want to make the case that Democrats undermined faith in the democratic process by refusing to consider Trump legitimate? Fine. Their bitter recriminations and refusal to reflect on the fact that their candidate lost what should have been an unlosable election to a frighteningly ignorant, corrupt, failed businessman turned reality TV show host aren’t exactly profiles in courage.
But there is no remote equivalence to what Democrats have said or done and what Trump and Republicans continue to do to this day—destroying the American tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. To call these Republican comebacks “false equivalence” is a disservice to the comparison; there is zero equivalence.
Even loyal Republican company man Mitch McConnell, in refusing to be a party to Trump’s coup attempt, warned on Jan. 6 that if one side refuses to accept election results, our democracy will enter “a death spiral.”
That is what is at stake here. And anyone conflating dumb Democratic gripes with the sustained assault on American democracy by Trump and his Republican collaborators isn’t a bad faith actor—they are the worst faith actor.
