Trump Says GOP Lost Senate After His 'Rigged' Election Gripes Discouraged Voters
In a startling, though perhaps unintended, admission, former President Donald Trump explained Saturday that the GOP lost twin Senate races in Georgia — and its Senate majority — when Republican voters stayed away from the polls because they were discouraged by his complaints of a “rigged” presidential election.
It was exactly the scenario feared by mainstream Republicans: that Trump would so undermine faith in the American voting system that Trump’s Republican supporters, who were the most likely to believe his inaccurate claims of a fraudulent election, wouldn’t bother voting in the Senate special elections in Georgia two months after American voters picked Joe Biden as president.
“What happened is we had two senators running, a couple of months later, and you know what happened to them?” Trump said at a Phoenix rally. “Republicans said, ‘We’re not going out to vote, because this was rigged, this election was rigged,’” he noted, parroting his own claims about the election.
There is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the presidential election.
Trump saying Republicans didn’t turn out to vote in senate races in Georgia because they believed the election rigged pic.twitter.com/8tUKRg1Vl9
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 24, 2021
Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won both Senate seats up for grabs in January. Those losses cost the GOP its control of the U.S. Senate.
Late last year, ahead of the Georgia vote, former state Sen. Chuck Clay warned the GOP faithful about Trump’s conspiracy theories: “We’ve got to get a grip on ourselves, people. What we can’t have is this sense of just conspiratorial madness that I think certainly does the body politic harm — and I don’t think helps our candidates.”
Republican pollster and strategist Frank Luntz warned last November: If Trump “continues to disillusion voters ... by saying that the elections were rigged and that your vote doesn’t matter, this could have severe consequences for the administration in trying to keep those two [Georgia Senate] seats Republican.”
Trump critics noted on Twitter that the admission revealed again what everyone knows about Trump: He would eagerly sacrifice his party to salve his ego and serve his own interests.
Translation: Needing people to believe the big lie is more important to me than Republicans retaining a majority in the Senate. It was then, even more so now. I’m not for Republicans, I’m for myself, and so are my supporters. pic.twitter.com/OIo3wpEhP0
— John Powers (@ReportingfromNY) July 25, 2021
In 2015, during the Republican primaries, Donald said the elections would be rigged…if he lost. In 2016, he said the election would be rigged…if he lost. In 2020, he said the election would be rigged…if he lost.
Well, Donald did lose…
and we got January 6th.— irajoe (@irajoe8) July 24, 2021
Trump is the reason Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats.
— Bob Sampson (@bobsalpha1) July 24, 2021
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.