The Jan. 6 Committee’s Compelling Case Against Trump Continues
Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | June 16, 2022
The first two hearings by the House January 6th Committee already have presented a compelling case that former President Trump attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election.
The Committee’s evidence shows that Trump had to have known his claims of voter fraud and miscounted votes were not true and had no basis in fact.
Most of the witnesses so far – in person and in taped interviews – were Republicans, many of whom had been working in senior positions in Trump’s campaign or Administration. They disagreed with Trump’s claims that he won the election and made this known to him.
Ironically, perhaps the most powerful testimony against Trump came from his former Attorney General William Barr who had misused his position as Attorney General to serve as Trump’s biggest protector.
Barr testified that he repeatedly told Trump after the election that his allegations of voter fraud in the presidential election were not true. Barr described Trump’s claims of voter fraud and a stolen election as “rubbish,” “nonsense,” “garbage,” “bull—-” “crazy,” and “idiotic.”
Trump set the stage for his Big Lie about the 2020 election by making a total of 30,753 false or misleading claims during his four years as President, according to The Washington Post Fact Checker team.
As the late Senator Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Trump during his presidency worked hard to destroy the idea that facts matter. This effort became critical to his attempted presidential coup.
No one who believes in facts can ignore the truth that there has not been a shred of factual evidence produced supporting Trump’s claims that voter fraud and vote miscounts affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
By pure demagoguery, however, Trump has managed to persuade tens of millions of Americans that his bald-face lie that Biden stole the election is true.
In spouting his nonstop Big Lie in a desperate effort to hold onto the presidency, Trump has done enormous damage to the credibility of our elections, the cornerstone of our democracy. Polls show that some 70 percent of Republicans believe that Biden was not the legitimate winner in 2020.
Trump also has done enormous damage to the essential values in our society of truth and facts.
The damage to these values and to the integrity of our elections is continuing as Trump and his collaborators continue to spread the Big Lie about a stolen 2020 presidential election as we head into the midterms.
We have a huge battle on our hands to restore the public credibility of our elections and to restore our nation’s value of facts and truth over a demagogic autocrat.
This is a battle that must be won to preserve our democracy.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
