During an appearance on Fox News Sunday over the weekend, host Chris Wallace put House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) on the spot over the integrity of last year’s election. Repeatedly, Wallace asked Scalise — who is a high-ranking member of leadership for House Republicans — whether he believed that last year’s presidential election was somehow rigged for Biden, and repeatedly, Scalise refused to directly answer the question. The implications of Scalise’s refusals to answer obviously are that he is at least somewhat accepting of the outright falsehood that last year’s election was rigged against Trump.
No court anywhere in the country has accepted the notion that the election was rigged — every single court case seeking to prove election-rigging has failed. Every single one. As Wallace initially put it to Scalise:
‘Clearly, there were irregularities in the last election. There are irregularities in all elections… Do you think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump?.. [And] making this charge, that the election was stolen: do you think that hurts, undermines American democracy?’
Scalise evasively replied as follows:
‘Well Chris I’ve been very clear from the beginning. If you look at a number of states, they didn’t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. [It doesn’t] say that the states determine what the rules are. [It says] the state legislatures determine the rules.’
To be clear, it’s not a given that the key part of the Constitution’s requirements is that state legislatures in the absolute strictest sense are to be responsible for leading the handling of elections. In addition, not every state legislature in the United States even operates in the same fashion — and when the Constitution was put together, the majority of current state legislative bodies didn’t even exist. At that point, Wallace cut in, noting that the presidential election results in every single state were certified by authorities in the states — and Scalise just kept going. He added as follows:
‘Right, but at the end of the day, are we going to follow what the Constitution says or not? I hope we get back to what the Constitution says.’
Wallace attempted to get Scalise to directly answer his question, asking:
‘So, you think the election was stolen?’
Scalise refused to directly answer the question, instead repeating his argument about states supposedly failing to follow their own rules for elections. Eventually, Wallace once again repeated the question — and Scalise again refused to directly answer it. In other words, self-confident rhetoric from Republican leaders like Scalise clearly appears to be a smokescreen for a fundamental disconnection from the basic truth that last year’s presidential election was not somehow rigged for Joe Biden. Watch Scalise’s comments below:
Steve Scalise on Fox News Sunday repeatedly refuses to acknowledge that the 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/EME1lBK1vA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2021
