WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The House\u2019s second-ranking Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election wasn\u2019t stolen, standing by\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s lie\u00a0that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of mass voter fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months since Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling during a national television interview to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote, instead\u00a0sticking to his belief\u00a0that the election results should not have been certified by Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been very clear from the beginning,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look at a number of states, they didn\u2019t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. They don\u2019t say the states determine what the rules are. They say the state legislatures determine the rules,\u201d the Louisiana congressman said on \u201cFox News Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pressed by moderator Chris Wallace on whether the election went beyond a few irregularities to be considered \u201cstolen,\u201d Scalise responded: \u201cIt\u2019s not just irregularities. It\u2019s states that did not follow the laws set which the Constitution says they\u2019re supposed to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump left office in January a few weeks after a mob of his supporters\u00a0stormed the Capitol in a violent riot\u00a0in an attempt to prevent Congress from formally declaring Biden the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Trump mulls a 2024 presidential bid, he has been intensifying efforts to shame \u2014 and potentially remove \u2014 members of his party who are seen as disloyal to\u00a0his bogus claims that last year\u2019s election was illegitimate. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who is vying to become speaker if the GOP takes control after the 2022 midterm election, continues to defend Trump and his false assertions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At\u00a0a rally Saturday in Iowa, Trump spent almost 30 minutes arguing falsely that he had won Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds stood by and welcomed his return to their state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, no election was stolen from Trump. His former attorney general, William Barr,\u00a0found no evidence\u00a0of widespread election corruption. Allegations of massive voting fraud also have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and an arm of the Homeland Security Department during the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scalise on Sunday appeared to be referring to the legal argument, made in several lawsuits backed by Trump before and after last November\u2019s election, that the Constitution gives the power of election administration exclusively to state lawmakers. The suits sought to invalidate a number of pandemic-era accommodations including expanded mail voting that were put in place by governors, state election officials and judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The high court ultimately\u00a0turned away the cases, declining to rule on the matter. There\u2019s no indication in any of the suits that changing the COVID-19 accommodations would have altered a state\u2019s election results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who is serving on a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, on Sunday slammed Scalise for spreading Trump\u2019s \u201cBig Lie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMillions of Americans have been sold a fraud that the election was stolen,\u201d Cheney tweeted. \u201cRepublicans have a duty to tell the American people that this is not true. Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The House\u2019s second-ranking Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}