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Trump Supporters Ratchet Up Dangerous Rhetoric After McConnell Floor Speech

BY December 16, 2020

It may have been over a month late, but Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a Senate floor speech on Tuesday finally acknowledged and congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for their election win over Donald Trump.

Some thought McConnell’s words, coming the day after the Electoral College certified the Biden/Harris ticket’s landslide victory, could have been a signal to other Trump election loss deniers to finally admit reality. Turns out, not so fast.

As White House press secretary/Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany continues to insist that Trump still has legal options to pursue to overturn the election, some Republican lawmakers are calling for ever increasingly drastic and dangerous efforts to keep Biden from being sworn in on Jan. 20.

YouTube will block election misinformation and conspiracy theories
[Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
One GOP North Carolina state senator, Bob Steinburg, on Tuesday urged Trump to declare a national emergency and suspend civil rights to remain in power. In an interview with Raleigh, N.C., TV station WRAL Steinburg said, “There’s something going on here bigger than what anybody is willing to talk about. I don’t like conspiracy theories at all. But something’s going on here that’s bigger than meets the eye.”

He went on to claim that the Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s challenges last week, including the far-fetched Texas lawsuit, because “somebody’s got something” on the highest judicial officers in the country. He also claimed that he was told so by FBI and CIA agents who live in his district. In addition to calling on Trump to suspend civil rights by declaring martial law, the 72-year-old state senator also said the president should invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to deploy U.S. military forces on American soil.

Another Republican state legislator, Sen. Amanda Chase of Virginia, echoed Steinburg’s call for martial law. Chase has announced her candidacy for governor of Virginia.

According to the most recent Washington Post tally, only 37 out of the 249 Republicans in Congress had publicly noted that Biden won. Most of those deniers probably fear being mean-tweeted by Trump, as McConnell was early Wednesday morning.



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