Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / The implications of Trump loyalists and election deniers winning GOP primaries

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The implications of Trump loyalists and election deniers winning GOP primaries · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: In Arizona. Yesterday, three prominent election deniers won their Republican
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  Speaker 1: primaries for governor, Secretary of State, and attorney general. If
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  Speaker 1: they win in November, they will play key roles in
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  Speaker 1: overseeing elections and defending voting laws. Arizona is one of
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  Speaker 1: many states where candidates who denied or questioned the twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty election results are on the ballot. For more on this,
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  Speaker 1: were joined by Stephen Richer. He was the Republican elections
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  Speaker 1: recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, from twenty twenty one to
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. He's now a senior fellow at Harvard
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  Speaker 1: University's Kennedy School. Stephen, welcome back to the News Hour.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, and we're still talking about the same things, it.
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  Speaker 1: Seems here we are.
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  Speaker 2: Well. Listen.
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  Speaker 1: Three election deniers in Arizona last night. All played a
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  Speaker 1: role in the efforts to try to overturn those twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty election results that was the one in which President
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  Speaker 1: Trump lost the election. They all won their primaries last night.
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  Speaker 1: What do you take away from that? What does that
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  Speaker 1: say to you?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, these were just people who casually believe believe.
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  Speaker 3: That Donald Trump won the twenty twenty election, or at
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  Speaker 3: least mention it in passing. These were people who were
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  Speaker 3: integral to January sixth, as Andy Biggs was, who filed
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  Speaker 3: the Kraken lawsuit in the state of Arizona, as Alex
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  Speaker 3: Coulden did, and who oversaw the Cyber Ninjas audit in
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  Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, as Warren Peterson, the AG candidate did.
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  Speaker 3: So these are leaders in the movement, and it's reflective
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  Speaker 3: of the fact that the Arizona primary Republican primary base
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  Speaker 3: is still in the raptures of election denialism, and it's
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  Speaker 3: still a requirement here to win in a primary.
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  Speaker 1: So primaries are one thing, the general is another. When
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  Speaker 1: you look back at election deniers and how they fared
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  Speaker 1: in past elections in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: they almost universally lost in those general election races. Do
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  Speaker 1: you have any reason to believe that twenty twenty six
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  Speaker 1: is going to be different.
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  Speaker 3: I think those people would say, look at President Trump
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  Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four.
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  Speaker 2: He overcame.
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  Speaker 3: Obviously, he was the election denier in chief, and he
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  Speaker 3: won Arizona in twenty twenty four, and so they would say,
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  Speaker 3: we're now so much better than the.
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  Speaker 2: Democrats on the issues that even if.
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  Speaker 3: Not everyone loves this, then we're going to win in
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  Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, I still think it's a net negative
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  Speaker 3: for them, And that played out in twenty twenty two certainly,
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  Speaker 3: and it played out to an extent in twenty twenty four.
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  Speaker 1: We know that this kind of rhetoric, though repeating the
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  Speaker 1: lies about the twenty twenty election, it has real world implications.
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  Speaker 1: So if there are more people, or even a consistent
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  Speaker 1: number of people who continue to believe that, how does
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  Speaker 1: that impact our election security, how people choose to participate
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  Speaker 1: in it, or what they tolerate at election sites.
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  Speaker 3: It's so easy to dismiss this as simply a political game.
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  Speaker 3: Oh well, politicians lie, you know, they all say. But
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  Speaker 3: this has real world downstream effects, the very least of
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  Speaker 3: which is that a lot of people won't have confidence
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  Speaker 3: in our elections, and that at the minimum is simply sad.
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  Speaker 3: But more importantly, it means that there will be confrontations
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  Speaker 3: at voting locations.
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  Speaker 2: It means that it will be harder to recruit polling workers,
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  Speaker 2: or the worst is.
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  Speaker 3: That it will translate into threats of violence or actual
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  Speaker 3: violence in Maricopa County. We had to invest millions of
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  Speaker 3: dollars into security over the last few years and during
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  Speaker 3: the twenty twenty four cycle because of all of the
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  Speaker 3: nonsense that flowed out from these election deniers.
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  Speaker 1: While I have you, Steven, I want to ask you
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  Speaker 1: about some news we reported this week out of New Jersey,
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  Speaker 1: where Governor Mikey Cheryl announced yesterday that more than six
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  Speaker 1: thousand people had been accidentally registered to vote in New
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  Speaker 1: Jersey despite declaring to the DMV that they were not citizens.
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  Speaker 1: About four hundred of them actually ended up voting. President
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  Speaker 1: Trump has been talking about this. He posted that news
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  Speaker 1: this morning and called it evidence of what he called
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  Speaker 1: a crooked election system. How do you look at this
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  Speaker 1: from your perspective.
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  Speaker 3: It's not good, But let's be honest about what it
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  Speaker 3: is is.
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  Speaker 2: It is a software glitch.
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  Speaker 3: It is not a bunch of non citizens who are
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  Speaker 3: trying to unlawfully circumvent the controls of the process.
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  Speaker 2: In fact, those people all said that they were not.
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  Speaker 3: Citizens, and yet the software moved them over into the
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  Speaker 3: citizenship category. And so I don't think it fits into
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  Speaker 3: what President Trump is currently saying. However, it is disappointing
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  Speaker 3: and it's even more disappointing that, according to the governor,
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  Speaker 3: this was simply buried for two years and we're only
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  Speaker 3: hearing about it now. And so I hope that the
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  Speaker 3: governor produces more information about how they discovered this, what
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  Speaker 3: was previously done, and what's going to be done moving
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  Speaker 3: forward to make sure that we continue to keep non
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  Speaker 3: citizens voting in our elections to a very very very
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  Speaker 3: very small number.
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  Speaker 1: Just to back this up a little bit, I want
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  Speaker 1: to remind people here you know what it was like
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  Speaker 1: to have to stand up to pressure from the president
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  Speaker 1: and others as a election official back in twenty twenty.
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  Speaker 1: It took individual people refusing to give in to political
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  Speaker 1: pressure to try to change or overturn election results. When
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  Speaker 1: you look at the system and where it is now,
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  Speaker 1: are you confident those individual people will be in those
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  Speaker 1: positions to stand up to pressure if it's there in
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six or twenty twenty eight.
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  Speaker 3: You know, ten years ago, I would have hoped that
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  Speaker 3: most people had a line in the sand and that
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  Speaker 3: the well being of American democracy was a line in
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  Speaker 3: the sand for any politician. I think it's this distinct minority,
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  Speaker 3: and I think those people who raised their head, who
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  Speaker 3: held that line in the sand. In twenty twenty and
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  Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, and in twenty twenty four, fewer and
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  Speaker 3: fewer of them, at least on my side, on the
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  Speaker 3: Republican side, are in office. And that's just it's a
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  Speaker 3: real shame, and it could potentially have some negative consequences.
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  Speaker 1: Steven Richard, now at Harvard University's Kennedy School, Paul, was
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  Speaker 1: good to have you in your perspective. Thank you so much.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you