As Donald Trump’s Nevada campaign chair, corrupt and failed politician Adam Laxalt led the charge in promoting Trump’s Big Lie about voter fraud in 2020. A new column in the Nevada Independent highlights how Laxalt’s attacks on our election system “laid the foundation of the Jan. 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol.”
Just over a year after the January 6 insurrection, Laxalt has still refused to condemn the violence he helped fuel, instead referring to it as “that fateful day in January when they pulled [Trump] off social media.”
Read more below.
Nevada Indy: Big Lie politics: NPR interview a reminder of what’s at stake in the coming months
John L. Smith // January 16th, 2022
Listeners who tuned in to NPR’s Morning Edition Wednesday were possibly entertained, and as likely appalled, by former President Donald Trump’s interview with co-host Steve Inskeep. The interview had been planned for 15 minutes, but Trump hung up after spending nine minutes mostly promoting his false claims about the 2020 presidential race with Inskeep parrying each attempted deception.
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Why should Nevadans care about Trump’s Big lie blather via public radio? Because our state GOP continues to espouse the Big Lie and remains mesmerized by the twice-impeached ex-president who lost here to Joe Biden by more than 33,000 votes. A lot of people still deny the undeniable.
Nevada’s election system, which has stood many tests and close races over the years, was repeatedly degraded and graffitied by Trump’s acolytes with baseless lawsuits and “Stop the Steal” protests that sowed distrust in the institution and division on the street.
It was shameful, but it was part of a strategy that helped craft the narrative which laid the foundation of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and the peaceful transition of power. The Big Lie grew louder with every specious lawsuit and conspiracy theory.
As usual, Nevada was front and center in the snipe hunt with Republican State Party Chairman Michael McDonald leading the parade of prevarication.
Former state Attorney General and current U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt was there, too, promoting one of many fact-free lawsuits alleging widespread voter fraud. Watching litigation get laughed out of court did nothing to dampen his ardor for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” deception.
As a candidate out to unseat incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Laxalt in August – more than 14 months before the 2022 election – hinted at the possibility of filing pre-emptive voter fraud lawsuits. As David Siders and Zach Montellaro observed in Politico, “Trump may have started the election-truther movement. But what was once the province of an aggrieved former president has spread far beyond him, infecting elections at every level with vague, unspecified claims that future races are already rigged.”
More recently, the most audacious Big Lie rhetoric has morphed into talk of “ballot security” and “election integrity,” but Laxalt and his fellow Republicans are still using the sleight-of-hand to fire up the base and fundraise.
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