This weekend on Twitter, The Lincoln Project shared another reminder of the dangers posed by Trump, who still — just to be clear — won’t even unequivocally denounce the riot at the Capitol, despite the deaths associated with it.
“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Judge J. Michael Luttig says in the video, which shows footage from recent public testimony Luttig gave before the January 6 committee in the House. What if Trump goons inclined to block the certification of election outcomes they don’t like obtain prominent positions where they can exert control over the electoral process? Recently, Jim Marchant — an election conspiracy theory-believer — won the Republican primary for the Secretary of State position in Nevada, a swing state that was among those contested after the 2020 elections. The current Secretary of State in Nevada, who’s term-limited, is Republican, so it’s clear a GOP’er can win the spot.
If Marchant wins in November, he’d be in a position to refuse to go along with the certification of election results and therefore stymie the process. “Then and now, it’s America or Trump,” an on-screen message in the video from The Lincoln Project says. The clip also features footage from January 6. Watch below:
Judge J. Michael Luttig chose America.pic.twitter.com/box0HTcEpd
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 18, 2022
Trump is evidently paying close attention to what the House riot committee is doing. “The Unselect Committee of political thugs & scoundrels is trying to use disinformation and outright lies to RAILROAD people into the arms of the Justice Department. They are doing everything within their power to criminalize politics, an absolute no no!” Trump said over the weekend on Truth Social, his alternative social media platform. Obviously, that’s a false characterization of the riot panel’s work, but it shows just how embedded the problems the panel is looking into really are among Republicans. It’s not just Trump and Marchant — around the country, Trump has backed determined Republican candidates who’ve shown their commitment to lies about the electoral process, and despite all this and the total lack of real-world evidence for Donald’s election-related conspiracy theories, most prominent Republican leaders remain basically allied with the former president.
One of the key reasons Trump’s illegal plans actually failed after the last presidential race is there weren’t enough people in positions of power to go along with them — but what if that changes? Would a GOP and Kevin McCarthy-led House really back the certification of electoral votes Trump sought to block? A couple or a few more national election cycles into the future, and Congress could also be mostly populated on the GOP side by those willing to buck the democratic process, extending the procedural threat to the federal level. Even if the courts eventually tamp down GOP obstruction and get an election winner into power, what would happen in the meantime? How long would that take?
