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President Donald Trump’s wild and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud have emerged as a high-stakes test of Republican loyalty that illustrates the tug of war that is likely to define the future of the Republican Party, whether he wins or loses the presidency.
There is a widespread feeling among current and former Republican officials that the president’s behavior is irresponsible if not dangerous, but a division has emerged between influential Republicans who are willing to publicly criticize him and those who are not.
Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post
President Donald Trump’s wild and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud have become a major test of Republican loyalty.
Boosting his reckoning is an open acknowledgment that Trump’s better-than-expected performance on Election Day ensures that he will remain the most powerful voice in the Republican Party for years to come, even if he loses.
That stark reality did little to silence people like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a second-term Republican who has not ruled out a 2024 White House run. He described the president’s claims as “dangerous” and “shameful.”
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“If there are legitimate challenges, we have a process, this is how it works,” Hogan told The Associated Press. “But just making accusations of election theft and widespread fraud without providing any evidence, I thought it was really bad for our democratic process and it was something that I had never seen in my life.”
“Other Republicans spoke,” he noted, “but certainly not enough.”
In fact, the most aggressive Republican criticism was limited to the small, familiar group of frequent Trump critics, such as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who will not face Republican voters again for at least four years. .
On the other side were Trump allies, including the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who called on Republicans to consider running for the party’s nomination in 2024 to come out in defense of the president.
“The utter inaction of virtually all ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is quite surprising,” he tweeted. “They have a perfect platform to show that they are willing and able to fight, but they will cower from the media mafia.” . “
Several quickly raised their voices, including former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, though some Trump allies saw Haley’s statement on Twitter thanking Trump for helping deliver “victories. Conservatives “on the ballot as reading too much like a kind of political obituary for the president.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, another Trump ally in the 2024 conversation, avoided embracing some of Trump’s more outlandish claims, but vowed to introduce new “electoral integrity” legislation to address some of the complaints the campaign has raised. of Trump.
By contrast, Missouri’s other Republican senator, Roy Blunt, was not afraid to criticize Trump’s inconsistent calls to stop counting ballots in states where he is ahead and to continue counting in states where he is behind. .
“You can’t stop the count in one state and decide that you want the count to continue in another state,” Blunt told reporters. “This may be how you would like the system to work, but that is not how the system works. “
As votes were being counted across the country Friday afternoon, Biden was on the verge of winning the presidency as he blazed open narrow lanes on the critical battlefields of Georgia and Pennsylvania. The changes put Biden in a stronger position to capture the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take over the White House.
With things going in the wrong direction for him, Trump continued to spread unfounded rumors of voter fraud throughout the day, asking the Supreme Court to intervene even as his campaign struggled to produce significant evidence of embezzlement.
Still, there was no shortage of Republican leaders willing to back him, especially after Donald Trump Jr. exclaimed his silence on social media.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters Friday that he was not “granting” Biden’s tight control over the presidency and fully supported Trump’s efforts to challenge the vote count in various states.
Meg Kinnard / AP
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina delivers her victory speech after winning another term in office.
On Fox News the night before, Graham said he was transferring $ 500,000 from his campaign account to Trump’s legal fund and asked others to make donations as well.
Ari Fleischer, a former aide to President George W. Bush, said Trump was simply saying out loud about the voting system what most losing candidates say in private.
“I wish people spoke less grandly. But I’m not going to blame the president for that, ”Fleischer said.
“Be nice to Trump’s behavior,” he urged. “When I saw it last night and saw these heads explode, I just rolled my eyes. … We have always been a noisy democracy. “
Yet history suggests that Trump’s rhetoric and actions go far beyond the normal trappings of democracy. Never before has a sitting president so aggressively undermined the integrity of an American election.
His strategy was completely predictable. With polls showing him lagging behind, Trump raised questions about the integrity of the voting system for much of the year. However, his words from the White House this week were no less shocking.
Even internally, some advisers did not want him to address the nation Thursday night when he made his most outrageous claims.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, highlighted the obvious downside to Trump’s questions about the integrity of the voting process.
“It is very unfortunate that no matter who wins, the other half of the United States will not see this as a particularly legitimate choice,” Johnson said on WTMJ-AM, a local radio station. “I’m not saying it’s legitimate or not. I’m saying this process has been established where people won’t see it as legitimate. And that’s a real problem.”
Trump spent most of Friday behind closed doors at the White House, angered by the direction of the race and insisting that his aides and allies back off. There was no indication that he conceded, no matter what the final vote tally showed.
Hogan, the Maryland governor, acknowledged that Trump would have “an important voice from the Republican Party base” in the future regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election.
“I’m sure it will be a factor to deal with,” Hogan said. “I do not anticipate him going quietly.”
