Begich continues to duck any question about Trump's election lies, while Palin accepts all of Trump’s falsehoods

It’s no surprise that Sarah Palin swallows Donald Trump’s lies about who won the 2020 election, while Democrat Mary Peltola does not.

Palin’s 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.

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.

Peltola says there is no doubt that Biden won the election.

But the third candidate in the special election to fill out the remaining months of Don Young’s term has steadfastly ducked the question.

Last October, according to the Associated Press, Begich refused to say whether he believes Trump’s lies.

“The election was adjudicated through a constitutional process, and we have the result that we have,” Begich said at the start of his campaign.

Eight months later, Begich remains unable to answer the simple question with a direct reply.

Alaska news organizations have failed to make this clear to the public and have failed to press him on the question.

Instead, they let him get away with ducking the issue, talking about this and that, but never about the matter at hand.

Asked by Alaska Public Media News if Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square, Begich would only say: “Unfortunately, Biden is the President. It’s clear that we have a crisis of confidence in our election system and there needs to be more transparency.”

This is not Begich and his handlers being clever, it’s about Begich showing his lack of political courage.

As I wrote here in May, Begich is trying to appeal to those who believe Trump’s lies without saying whether he believes Trump’s lies.

Typical of his long-winded monologues is this rambling word exercise he inflicted on a Fairbanks radio audience after a caller wanted his opinion on Trump’s claims.

“It’s an interesting question. Oddly enough, I get this question from media constantly. It seems like every, every media outlet asks me this question in almost exactly the same way, which I have always found kind of odd. But I think it’s time for us to move forward as a country. We have the courts for a reason. These are the venues in which challenges may be brought to elections or any other matter. And the courts have weighed in. There hasn’t been anything that’s been able to stand up in a court of law. I think more concerning to me are the manner in which elections were changed, the protocols and methods were changed in many of the swing states through executive orders, whether that be for a secretary of state or lieutenant governor or governor, changing the methodology of the voting, the windows during which voting could occur and bypassing the state legislatures in many cases, which have the constitutional authority to ratify that process.”

Begich claimed “Alaska did that too. I think that we need to make sure we honor the constitutionality of the process by which elections federally are managed.”

Begich is being dishonest with voters by spewing such nonsense. Trump lied. He continues to lie.

Another Republican candidate for the U.S. House seat, Tara Sweeney, at least will come out and say that Biden won the election fair and square, which counts as courage in Trump’s party.

But then Sweeney went on, in Begich-like fashion, to say that Trump “was within his right to demand an investigation into voting irregularities to determine whether voters’ rights were protected.”

It’s not that Trump demanded an investigation. It’s that he has lied repeatedly about the election because he won’t admit that he lost.

Begich and Sweeney need to be pressed on this matter by Alaska news organizations.