Last updated on March 1st, 2021 at 04:42 am
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) had a meltdown at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando on Saturday, claiming that former President Barack Obama helped steal the presidential election for Joe Biden.
Nunes essentially said that Obama and the Democrats were the masterminds of a conspiracy that started in the spring of 2020 to steal the election via absentee ballots.
“One of the first people to come out and say we’re going to have to do absentee voting was Obama,” the GOP lawmaker said. “They went to all their friendly places they could get this done and they essentially started the first step of saying that everybody has to absentee vote.”
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Nunes made no mention of the fact that voting by mail was expanded because a deadly pandemic was ravaging the country.
Video:
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) floats a conspiracy theory about the 2020 election involving former President Barack Obama. pic.twitter.com/nrjr2zRUNq
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) February 27, 2021
Nunes said:
Right when this pandemic hit, one of the first people to come out and say we’re going to have to do absentee voting was Obama. And they said that back in May. I think it was April or May is when he first said that. This was the first time that I had seen that, and I was thinking, ‘What?’ And then, of course, they went to all their friendly places they could get this done and they essentially started the first step of saying that everybody has to absentee vote and, we know what happened.
Republicans are hurting themselves and the country by refusing to accept reality
Following Donald Trump’s election loss, Republicans had a chance to chart a new course for their party.
They could have accepted the loss and used it as a wake-up call to change direction. While Trump fired up a portion of the electorate, it wasn’t and isn’t enough to win a national election.
Instead of acknowledging that, Republicans are keeping their heads buried in the sand. They refuse to accept reality.
Pushing these lies and conspiracy theories, as Devin Nunes did on Saturday, is what led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It’s why D.C. continues to look like a war zone.
It might make Republicans feel good to create an alternate timeline in which they won the 2020 presidential election. But these lies will hurt them politically and weaken democracy in the long term.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.