Oops! A Pennsylvania Republican legislator who screamed about election fraud in Trump's loss now admits in an interview with the Pennsylvania Capital Star it was actually Republicans.
"Seth Grove is asked, who committed that fraud in Pennsylvania? Grove answered, 'Right. Republicans. But it's still election fraud. It doesn't matter who commits it. But I will say there's not like this mass amount of fraud that's going to shift hundreds of thousands of votes,' " CNN's John Berman said today.
"When asked about his role in propagating the big lie, Grove responded, 'I can't help people believe everything on the internet.' "
He brought on Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, who was getting death threats at the time, thanks to people like Seth Grove.
"I think people will remember you from when ballots were still being counted in Philadelphia, you were in public saying let us do this, the count is going well, everything is going according to plan. When you hear a Republican lawmaker in your state say out loud, there was fraud, yes, there was fraud but we were doing it, what are you supposed to think?"
"Well, it's certainly frustrating from the standpoint of an election administrator in one of the biggest cities in the country, here in Philadelphia. To hear people say they are so concerned about restoring confidence in the elections, but really the biggest thing that anyone can do to restore confidence in the election and election results is to obviously stop lying about them," Schmidt said.
Bingo.
"So he continues to say that we need to be careful, 'I'm just asking questions about whether the elections are fair. But you point out there's actually something insidious about continuing to say that," Berman said.
"It's really about raising questions," Schmidt said. "There are far more questions than there is evidence of any voter fraud at all on any scale that would have made any difference. Just raising the questions alone seems to be, rhetorically, a tool that's used to kind of conjure up these ghosts or phantoms and then to come up with solutions for problems that don't exist," Schmidt replied.
"To make this more clear, they keep saying we want to know the elections are fair, we think the elections are rigged, we think there's evidence of this, we're asking if there's evidence of fraud. Then they have the gall to say there are all these questions out there about whether the elections are fair, but they're the ones asking the questions with no evidence," Berman said.
Berman then played a clip from an interview he did with Schmidt during the ballot counting.
" 'Bad actors lying to them.' So after everything you went through then, Commissioner, after everything you've gone through, really at the hands of people of your own party, do you still consider yourself a Republican?" Berman asked.
Schmidt pointed out he'd been a Republican "longer than Donald Trump has been a Republican."
"And it's strange that, you know, you're referred to as a RINO and others are referred to as RINOS simply because they know and tell the truth that the election was fair and transparent. That seems to be the litmus test right now, is if you are willing to keep perpetrating or perpetuating that lie."
