Tshibaka, Dunleavy, Palin accept Trump's lies about stolen election
The so-called “Complete and Total Endorsement” of former President Trump goes only to those candidates willing to smile and swallow Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In the news coverage of the campaign to replace the late Don Young, Alaska news organizations need to get the candidates on the record about whether they accept Trump’s lies that the dozens of recounts and court rulings were all part of a massive conspiracy.
Two weeks ago, Trump showed what it means if a candidate gets out of line—he revoked his Complete and Total Endorsement of right-winger Mo Brooks in Alabama. Brooks claims the election was stolen, but said it’s time to focus on 2022 and 2024.
"Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went 'woke' and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, 'Put that behind you, put that behind you,' despite the fact that the election was rife with fraud and irregularities," Trump said, in removing his political blessing.
“I am hereby withdrawing my endorsement of Mo Brooks for the Senate."
It is also possible that Trump is just abandoning another guy who looks to be a loser—Brooks is way down in the polls—and this is not an election lie purity test.
The three Alaska Republican candidates Trump has endorsed have refused to question Trump’s lies or mutter anything about how it’s time to move on—Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and former Gov. Sarah Palin.
In failing to correct Trump, they are lying to Alaskans.
To no one’s surprise, Trump endorsed Palin Sunday, claiming she “lifted the McCain presidential campaign out of the dumps despite the fact that she had to endure some very evil, stupid, and jealous people within the campaign itself. They were out to destroy her, but she didn’t let that happen.”
Palin has eagerly embraced Trump’s lies despite the lack of evidence of fraud. She started claiming the election was rigged in late 2020.
A year ago, she gave an unhinged account in an interview on British TV in which she repeated many lies about the 2020 election, refused to answer simple questions and rambled at length.
Her technique is to never stop to pause as the words tumble out of her mouth, which makes it almost impossible for interviewers to correct false statements without talking over her. But interviewers have to do that to get at the truth and slow down the litany.
Pressed repeatedly by the hosts to back up claims of fraud, she claimed many dead people voted in 2020, a lie that has been throughly debunked. She also claimed there were more votes than voters in “certain districts.” That was all she could come up with.
And she would not say that Joe Biden won the election. It is painful to listen to this interview, but I recommend it.
Referring to Trump, she said, “The president has been insisting, so many Americans have been insisting, that our elections are run legally and transparently and there were shenanigans obviously—in so many of the polling areas,” she said. “The president has insisted that we look into where all these votes had come from.”
“And obviously there were shenanigans,” she said. “And there were. And there always is.”
Asked if she accepted the election of Joe Biden, she said, “I want to see that our elections and every polling place is run cleanly. Now I was a governor and as a governor in charge of elections. . .”
Hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid interrupted her various times to ask if she accepted the election of Biden, but she wouldn’t answer.
“This is crazy. You guys invited me to come on. Let me finish please,” Palin said.
“Let me finish. Now I’m talking about elections and I know that shenanigans do take place in elections. As a governor, I witnessed that also. And we always having to crack down, through Division of Elections, and the lieutenant governor’s office, the bureaucrats who were in charge of it. Because for instance, we had Barack Obama’s right-hand man voting in Alaska and he hadn’t been in Alaska about 20 years.”
(This was a reference to Obama aide Pete Rouse, who had long connections to Alaska and voted absentee in 2008. Alaska election officials said it was not fraud.)
Morgan said they weren’t talking about Obama, that Palin could not filibuster them and he asked again if Biden won.
“Can we please finish with the topic?" Palin said, referring to Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riots.
Palin continued to refuse to say whether Biden had won the election until the sixth or seventh time it was asked.
“Well evidently he did because he’s sworn in as our president. But no one will convince me nor anyone else with common sense and a sense of justice, no one will convince us that there were not shenanigans going on. And there was fraud,” said Palin. “Numbers prove that. Nobody can argue the numbers.”
When Morgan said no one had produced any facts to prove there was widespread fraud, she screamed, “What?”
“No, no, no, no. Piers, now don’t interrupt me while I finish this point,” she said.
“Where’s the fraud?” Morgan said.
“Listen, how many polling areas had to produce their voter rolls and they showed that there were say more votes than there were voters in certain districts?” Palin said.
“Is that not a problem right there?” Palin said.
“Where has a single court in America upheld fraud?” Morgan asked. She didn’t answer.
“Ok, you’re asking about fraud. I’m telling you where the shenanigans were. What about all the dead people who voted?”
Palin said she did not know if “the degree of the fraud was so great that it caused a different outcome.”
Morgan said that Palin was talking nonsense, which irritated her.
‘How is it nonsense when I’m telling you facts about some voter fraud?” she said. “Oh, it hasn’t been proven, really? Piers, just look into that one issue, just one issue. That being the dead people who voted. And then come back and tell me, that no they didn’t vote or yeah, they legitimately voted from the grave. Just tell me that,” Palin said.
Morgan said she sounded “totally bonkers” and was perpetuating a total load of nonsense.
“How am I perpetuating nonsense when I am telling you examples? Wonderful, great, I am giving you examples though trying to make it easy on you. You guys sound bonkers, to tell you the truth because you won’t listen to your guest who is letting you know where the voter fraud was made manifest. It certainly was,” she said.
There is no evidence to back up any of Palin’s claims about the stolen election. She began ranting about dead people voting in 2016, echoing Trump’s lies and promoting her own brand of nonsense.
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Piers Morgan, co-host of Good Morning Britain, interviewed former Gov. Sarah Palin at length a year ago. Palin, who claimed at other times that the 2020 election was rigged, refused several times to directly answer a question about whether Joe Biden had been elected fair and square.