Jan. 6, 2021: Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.”
The New York Young Republican's Club? A combative young Republican group in the state, firmly on the right and Trump-friendly, the club’s 29-year-old president, presiding.
Mr. Wax's kindred spirit? Vish Burra, the director of operations for Representative George Santos, the New York Republican whose long history of lies has been festooned with a nascent embrace of right-wing political positions. In December 2023, Mr. Wax made headlines after he made remarks at a gala in Manhattan — attended by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Stephen K. Bannon, both noted Trump allies — suggesting the Republicans should wage “total war” against the Democrats.The radicalization of some New York Republicans vaulted Carl Paladino, a western New York Republican, to the 2010 ballot for governor. Mr. Paladino’s history of racist, sexist and homophobic comments did not stop him from carrying the Republican banner.
Last year, Mr. Paladino made a bid for a House seat and quickly won the endorsement of Representative Elise Stefanik, the “Ultra MAGA” upstate congresswoman and the third-highest ranking Republican in the party’s House majority.
It all comes home to roost for Sean Hannity.
Dec. 2, 2020: Hannity tears into mainstream media for 'totally, completely' ignoring election fraud claims: 'We will remain independent. We answer only to the truth,' the 'Hannity' host told his viewers.
August 25, 2022: Dominion’s legal complaint lays out how Fox repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the company’s purported role in a plot to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump, and argues that its business has suffered considerably as a result. Those falsehoods — including that Dominion was a pawn of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and that its machines were designed with a feature that allowed votes to be flipped from one candidate to another — aired night after night as Fox hosts like Mr. Hannity and Mr. Dobbs allowed guests to make them on their shows, and in some cases vouched for them.
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Newsmax founder Ruddy became a full-time Trump functionary, cashing in on the demand for pro-Trump news, building up his TV network, dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and watching his revenue rise. “He made his pact with the devil,” as Leamer put it. “He knew what Trump was.”
Newsmax went all in as Trump sought re-election (Ruddy made another former National Enquirer editor, David Perel, the editorial director) and Newsmax TV gave credence to every lie told by Trump up to and including speculation that Biden was “cognitively impaired” and that the election was stolen through chicanery involving Dominion Voting Systems.
While the January 6 Capitol riots were under way, Newsmax initially reported that it was only “6 to 10 people” breaching the building and speculated that they were antifa, later providing uncritical airtime to a Trump rioter who declared “this is our house, and we have the right to be here.” Learn More
Scalise is seemingly less aligned with the hard right on these issues than Jordan, who leads the House GOP’s “weaponization” subcommittee and has spun elaborate conspiracy theories.
But Scalise has echoed much of the same rhetoric:
- In August, he alleged that federal law enforcement is “being abused to go after political opponents.” He also baselessly suggested that Trump’s indictments are politically timed.
- Last year, he claimed that the FBI agents searching Mar-a-Lago went “rogue,” prompting pushback from a Fox News host.
- After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, Scalise called the events at the Capitol “domestic terrorism.” But he voted to reject Biden electors that day and later voted against impeaching Trump.
- Scalise last month called the evidence against Biden “incredibly devastating already,” despite the GOP’s own witnesses at the first impeachment inquiry hearing acknowledging there was little direct evidence tying Biden to anything nefarious.
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Sept. 2013: Bondi, as Florida attorney general, drops probe into Trump University days following $25,000 donation from the future president.
July 2016: Bondi gives a speech at the Republican National Convention, during which she led "Lock her up" chants directed at the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.[39]
Nov. 2019: Bondi hired by the Trump administration to help the White House during Trump's first impeachment proceedings, being given special Government employee status, allowing Bondi to continue working for the Arab lobby.[40][41][42] Her position was described the following month as being to "attack the process" of the impeachment inquiry.[43]
Jan. 2020: Bondi named as part of Trump's defense team for the Senate impeachment trial.
Nov. 2020: “We’ve won Pennsylvania,” Bondi asserted. Trump’s campaign did not win Pennsylvania.
Nov. 2023: Bondi to lead new state chapter of new America First Policy Institute
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Cleta Mitchell, a Republican election lawyer, is at center of Republican-backed dark money groups to enact new voting restrictions in time for the 2024 elections.
She is now working through the “Election Integrity Network” (part of the Conservative Partnership Network) to persuade Red states to drop the proven ERIC system of voter validation and adopt a wholly untested private system ("Eagle AI") prejudicing voters who have recently moved, which wrongly disenfranchises voters (including college students in swing and other states) having recently moved. According to Axios, Trump authorized a $1 million donation from his PAC to support Mitchell’s work. Mitchell seeks to disenfranchise
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Mitchell advised Trump on his 2020 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in whichTrump tried to get Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votesand flip Georgia’s electoral college votes to him.
Mitch McConnell - "no worries" about voter suppression or Trump's continuing threats to American democracy - really?
Senate minority leader McConnell, who blasted Trump in January for his false allegations of election fraud, views federal legislation that would invalidate voter suppression laws inspired by Trump's Big Lie as "a problem in search of a solution . . . "
Asked about Americans ranking threats to democracy higher than other issues, including the cost of living, McConnell told reporters, “I do think it’s an important issue. There were those who were trying to prevent the orderly transfer of power for the first time in American history,” after the 2020 presidential election, “and that was not good.”
But the top Senate Republican does not believe that American democracy is facing immediate danger, citing efforts to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power between the election on Nov. 3 and the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, that were “thwarted.”
“I guess that’s had some impact on the poll. … But look, I think we have a very solid democracy,” McConnell continued. “I don’t think of the things that we need to worry about, I wouldn’t be worried about that one.”
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“You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional."
- Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration Learn More
Conscience-free Matt Gaetz: Ambitiously joined conspiracy to overturn 2020 election, blamed feds for Capitol insurrection & gleefully campaigned for Arizona election deniers
Texts to Meadows as early as three days after Election Day 2020 show lawmakers rallying around the idea of alternate electors. As early as the first or second week of December, the White House’s own counsel was pushing back against the idea. That message was relayed to at least Perry, Jordan, and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), according to Hutchinson.
By Dec. 21, a larger group was meeting at the White House with Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani, where the focus had shifted to the ways former Vice President Mike Pence could buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results. That group attending that meeting included Jordan, Brooks, Biggs, Gaetz, Greene, Gohmert, Perry, and Reps. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Hutchinson said.
Gaetz, a close associate of the Freedom Caucus, but not an official member, has been one of the former president’s most vocal supporters and has spread conspiracy theories about the “feds” being behind the Capitol riot.
According to testimony, Gaetz was one of several members of Congress who requested broad pardons from Trump. Learn More
How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable
April 30, 2022
Nicholas Confessore
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party
How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News — and Became Trump’s Heir
April 30, 2022
Nicholas Confessore
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-fox-news Learn More
In his failed bid to oversee Arizona elections as Arizona's Secretary of State, Finchem baselessly promoted former President Trump's Big Lie of election and voter fraud.
- Finchem fervently supported the "Stop the Steal" movement, which falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 election nationally and in Arizona,
- called for the Arizona legislature to appoint "presidential electors of its own choosing" (fake electors),
- was a chief proponent of the discredited post-election ballot review in Arizona (fake audits), and
- and naturally was enthusiastically endorsed by Trump in his bid to oversee future elections in Arizona.
- Election-denier Finchem characteristically has not yet conceded loss of his bid for Secretary of State of Arizona, premised on a promise to root out non-existent voter and election fraud.