Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t think former President Donald Trump truly believed his bogus election fraud claims ― and that he would accept his defeat to President Joe Biden in due time, The New York Times reported Sunday.
An inside look at the weeks preceding the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, fueled by Trump’s baseless assertions, showed that McConnell was “under a false impression that the president was only blustering,” the newspaper wrote, citing unnamed officials.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior adviser Jared Kushner had reassured McConnell that Trump “would eventually bow to reality and accept defeat,” the paper added.
But Trump ignored the advice of election lawyers and succumbed to the evidence-free blathering of personal attorney Rudy Giuliani that Dominion voting machines were rigged in Georgia, according to the Times.
Trump and his allies would lose dozens of court cases disputing the vote count ― some overseen by Trump judges. Republican election officials in some battleground states denied irregularities, and top officials in the Department of Homeland Security called the election the “most secure in American history.”
But Trump persisted in his campaign to overturn the legitimate results, culminating in the Capitol insurrection in which five people, including a police officer, died. Trump is now awaiting his second impeachment trial for allegedly inciting the violence.
H/T The Daily Beast