Rand Paul Was Dragged For Still Refusing To Say The 2020 Election Wasn’t Stolen

For much of November and December, the Republican party was busy either asserting voter fraud in the 2020 election or keeping quiet, hoping not to enrage outgoing president Donald Trump. That changed on January 6. After the failed MAGA coup, which resulted in five deaths, much of the GOP suddenly gained some nerve, belatedly standing up to Trump and his cronies’ baseless fraud claims. But there’s still a handful pretending as though there’s something to these assertions, and lately they’ve been going on news shows and humiliating themselves. One of them is Rand Paul.

The Kentucky senator went on ABC’s This Week, where he became increasingly agitated when host George Stephanopoulos kept grilling him on his position. It started with the host asking his guest to say if he believed the election was stolen. It was a yes or no question, but Paul gave a longwinded answer anyway, suggesting that the dozens of failed lawsuits followed by Trump and his minions were unfairly thrown out and that “the debate over whether or not there was fraud should occur.”

But Stephanopoulos wasn’t having it. “I have to stop you there,” he said. “No election is perfect. But there were 86 challenges filed by President Trump and his allies in court, all were dismissed. Every state certified the results.”

Paul seized upon the fact that a disturbingly large number of registered Republicans still believe the election was stolen, despite the complete lack of evidence to suggest why, and even after numerous Trump associates admitted there was no proof. Stephanopoulos still stood his ground, outright saying “they were fed a ‘big lie’ by President Trump and his supporters.”

After that, Paul tried to make it a partisan issue, saying liberals have been calling people like him liars when “there’s two sides to everything.” But his host wasn’t having that either. “Sir, there are not two sides to this story. This has been looked in every single state,” Stephanopoulos replied.

And so there you go: Rand Paul refused to say the election wasn’t stolen but he also refused to say it was stolen, and he said he won’t be “cowed” into, well, taking a stand on either.

One of Paul’s first public critics was fellow senator and former presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, who cracked, “As I listened to Rand Paul, George, I just kept thinking, man, this is why Joe Biden won.”

Even fellow Republicans thought he was making things worse.

Some took issue with his belief in equivocation, even if the two sides aren’t equal.

Others had some helpful examples about how “both-sides-ism” is bad.

Meanwhile, around the same time Rand Paul was asserting voter fraud, fellow Republican Chris Christie was essentially telling people like him to finally shut up already.

(Via The Daily Beast)