[Dion]

GOP Congressman Dan Crenshaw says election deniers know they’re lying

The representative from Houston said fellow Republicans admitted behind closed doors that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, and he warned that such messaging could dangerously mislead voters.

Speaking with former congressional candidate and election reform advocate Nick Troiano on his podcast, “Hold These Truths,” the Texas Republican said fellow members of his party were merely trying to signal their disapproval of former President Donald Trump’s loss but knew there was no real mechanism to overturn it. Still, he warned that messaging could dangerously lead to voters losing faith in the electoral process.

“It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up,” Crenshaw said, deriding some of his peers as “political personalities” rather than “politicians.” He did not name the members he was referring to.

“People just need their last hurrah. They just need to feel like they fought one last time,” he added. Other members told him, “‘Trust me, it’ll be fine.’ And I was like, ‘No, it won’t! That’s not what people believe and that’s not what you’re telling them.’”

Crenshaw has spoken frequently against members of his party who he said focus primarily on projecting conservative soundbites over serious legislating, calling them the “woke right.” That arm of the party, he said, will likely only keep growing with more hardline Republicans in toe with Trump running in favorable districts this year. Republicans are widely expected to win control of the U.S. House in the next Congress.

“This extreme willingness to say the most extreme things just to grab people’s attention and then the people’s willingness to believe some of it,” Crenshaw said on the podcast. “There just doesn’t seem to be a limit to how far some people are willing to go.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11...ction-deniers/