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Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — September 15, 2022

By September 15, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

More Than Half Of GOP Senate Nominees Are Election Deniers 

  • CNN: More Than Half Of Republican Senate Nominees Have Rejected, Cast Doubt Upon Or Tried To Overturn The 2020 Election Results: More than half of the Republican nominees for the 35 US Senate seats being contested in the 2022 midterms have challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election — rejecting, raising doubts about or taking steps to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. A CNN analysis found that at least 19 of this year’s Republican nominees have contested or refused to affirm the 2020 results. The list includes five incumbent senators and 11 other candidates who have at least a reasonable chance of winning in November. The success of election deniers in Republican Senate primaries around the country — from the southern border to the northern border; in swing states, conservative states and liberal states; among established officeholders and first-time candidates — is yet more evidence of the broad support among party voters for former President Donald Trump’s lie that the election was stolen.

Republicans Rally Around Extremist Slate In New Hampshire 

  • Politico: Despite misgivings, GOP rallies behind MAGA Senate candidate in N.H.:  Republicans got the nominee they dreaded in New Hampshire’s Senate race. Yet hours after Army Gen. Don Bolduc emerged victorious from the primary, the Senate GOP struck a new tone: Maybe he’ll do, after all. As Republicans’ confidence has dimmed in other top Senate battlegrounds, the party appears to be reluctantly getting behind Bolduc, unwilling to turn their backs just yet on a state where the Democratic incumbent is underwater — and where President Joe Biden remains deeply unpopular. “I think we’ve got to do what we can,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said in an interview, acknowledging Bolduc was the “voters’ choice” in his party’s primary on Tuesday. “Every one of these on the map could be the difference between the majority or not.” Bolduc — who lost the state’s 2020 Senate primary — ran as a Trump loyalist, denying that Biden was legitimately elected and expressing support for abolishing the FBI, among other controversial stances.
  • Vice: Election-Denying MAGA Republicans Just Swept 2022’s Last Primaries: A trio of election-denying MAGA Republicans won their primaries in New Hampshire Tuesday night, the latest proof of former President Donald Trump’s enduring grip on the GOP—and a potential blow to their chances in three key congressional races. The most important result in the battle for Congress came as lightning-rod Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc defeated state Senate President Chuck Morse 37 percent to 36 percent to win the right to face Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan this fall. Bolduc’s got a big mouth and a penchant for right-wing conspiracy theories: He’s called New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who backed Morse, a “Chinese Communist sympathizer,” claimed that COVID-19 vaccines amounted to “Bill Gates saying we should put chips inside people,” continues to insist that Trump actually won the 2020 election, and said he was open to eliminating the FBI after the recent raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. […] Hard-line MAGA Republicans also won two crucial primaries for New Hampshire’s pair of competitive House districts. Pro-Trump hard-liner Bob Burns defeated moderate Keene Mayor George Hansel for the right to face Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster in a slightly Democratic-leaning district. The Cook Political Report immediately moved Kuster’s race from “tossup” to “lean Democrat” after Burns’ win. Burns is a longtime GOP operative who was on Trump’s presidential campaigns as well as the Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee’s presidential bids, and ran as an anti-abortion rights hard-liner who wants stricter voting laws. And in the state’s other House district, 25-year-old former Trump White House aide Karoline Leavitt beat former Trump State Department Aide Matt Mowers and Gail Huff Brown, former Sen. Scott Brown’s wife. Leavitt won with endorsements from New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who she also used to work for, as well as Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and has vocally insisted the 2020 election was stolen from Trump

Trump Called In To Pro-January 6 Rally At DC Jail, Promised Help For Rioters 

  • Washingtonian: Trump Called in to a Pro-January 6 Rally at the DC Jail: Former President Trump called into a small rally held in support of January 6 prisoners at the DC Jail Tuesday. He phoned Micki Witthoeft, whose daughter Ashli Babbitt was killed during the assault Trump supporters led on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. His appearance via telephone forced a quick end to a rally segment when a speaker named “John, aka DJ Jerome, the MAGA muscleman” called in and made jokes about Prince Andrew adopting Queen Elizabeth’s corgis. Trump appeared to describe the imprisonment of January 6 suspects as “a terrible thing that has happened to a lot of people that are being treated very, very unfairly” and complained about Michael Byrd, the US Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt, appearing on television, which he said was a “disgrace.” “We’re with you, we’re working with a lot of different people on this and we can’t let this happen, this has never happened before,” Trump said. Again apparently referring to the January 6 prisoners, he said “It’s a disgrace to our country and it just cannot be allowed to happen.”

In The States 

ARIZONA: New Video Shows Mark Finchem Accusing Mike Pence Of A “Coup” 

  • Daily Beast: New Video Shows Trump’s Pick to Run AZ Elections Accusing Pence of ‘Coup’: Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona, has enthusiastically championed a number of conspiracy theories—none more so than the conspiracy of a stolen 2020 election, which is the animating force behind his campaign to run Arizona’s elections. But in a recent campaign speech, Finchem pushed the envelope, even by his own standards. Just days before he won the August primary, Finchem was caught on tape blaming former Vice President Mike Pence for everything from orchestrating a “coup” to unseat Donald Trump after Jan. 6, to allegedly spying on the Trump campaign in 2016, to scheming to “steal” the presidency in 2024.

COLORADO: Colorado House Candidate Tries To Hide His Belief That The 2020 Election Was Illegitimate 

  • Five Thirty Eight: This Candidate Thinks The 2020 Election Was Illegitimate. But He’d Rather You Didn’t Know That:  Roughly 200 Republican candidates running for Senate, House, governor, attorney general or secretary of state have indicated publicly that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate, despite all the evidence to the contrary. That number, though, is almost certainly an undercount. For example, according to audio the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shared with FiveThirtyEight, Army veteran Erik Aadland, the Republican candidate for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, told members of the Mountain Republicans Club on June 21 that he was concerned by how the 2020 elections were “undermined by fraud, how they were corrupted, and now how we have an illegitimate government in power.” FiveThirtyEight could not independently confirm the audio’s authenticity or the circumstances of its recording, though the voice in the audio is similar to Aadland’s. However, FiveThirtyEight was able to independently confirm that Aadland spoke at the monthly meeting of the Mountain Republicans Club, a local conservative group, in Evergreen, Colorado, on June 21. His campaign did not respond to several requests for comment. We also reached out to the Mountain Republicans Club to ask about the event, but received no response. Many candidates, like Aadland, may now be hesitant to say the 2020 election was fraudulent out of fear that it could cost them at the polls. The voice purported to be Aadland’s admitted in that leaked audio to being strategic in how he talks about the 2020 election, saying, “I don’t always use this kind of language on the campaign trail because I am so deliberate with what I say, because the consequences of not winning are so significant. So I am strategic. I don’t go out and talk about election integrity on and on and on because it’s not an issue that wins us this race.”

What Experts Are Saying

Jon Steinman, communications & advocacy at Protect Democracy, and Ryan Goodman, NYU law professor and founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security: ICYMI: discussion with Redditors about the Select Committee on January 6, what to expect from the upcoming weeks and months, and their publication, “Citizens Guide to January 6th.” Reddit | Tweet 

Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the States United Democracy Center: “Here’s something we all can agree on: People who don’t believe in our free, fair & secure elections should not be trusted to run them. #SUAction| Timely, important research from our team @statesunited.” Tweet 

Noah Bookbinder, president of CREW: “Frightening that a major party nominee for secretary of state in Arizona, who if he wins would oversee elections in that state, recently accused former Vice President Pence of orchestrating a coup in 2020.” Tweet 

Julian Zelizer, Princeton University professor of history and public affairs (Audio of radio interview): As criminal investigations against former President Donald Trump mount, a familiar question arises again: Will Republican leaders pull away from Trump? Here & Now’s Anthony Brooks talks with Julian Zelizer, Princeton University professor of history and public affairs. WBUR 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections

NBC: Satanic panic is making a comeback, fueled by QAnon believers and GOP influencers

New York Times: How a Spreader of Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories Became a Star

Vice: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Has Teamed Up With a White Nationalist

Votebeat: Lawsuit alleges True the Vote hacked data and targeted small election vendor with racist, defamatory campaign

January 6 And The 2020 Election

CNN: Mark Meadows complied with DOJ subpoena in January 6 probe

CNN: Jeffrey Clark told DC Bar that DOJ search of his home linked to false statements, conspiracy, obstruction investigation

Politico: Jan. 6 committee seeks new trove of John Eastman emails

Politico: Hidden hand involved in Stewart Rhodes’ bid to derail Oath Keepers Jan. 6 trial

Other Trump Investigations 

Daily Beast: Trump Lied About Secret Service Concerns to Throw Off New York AG

Politico: ‘Every day feels like something else is piling on’: Trump world bears down

Opinion

Philadelphia Inquirer (Editorial): In Mastriano’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a chilling template for future races

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): Surprise wins by MAGA cranks will make 2022 harder for the GOP 

In The States 

Denver Post: Lauren Boebert is part of a dangerous religious movement that threatens democracy, experts say

KCUR: Amid his own fraud investigation, Johnson County sheriff caught telling poll worker to ‘be slippery’