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(CNN) – Two prominent Republican senators on Thursday criticized President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the Michigan presidential election results, calling the president’s strategy “undemocratic”.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, two of their party’s few lawmakers willing to criticize Trump, singled out the president Thursday night for his attempts to reverse his defeat in Michigan.
Romney’s statement was the most direct criticism of Trump’s chaotic post-election strategy aimed at overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over any other by a Republican lawmaker to date.
“Having failed to present a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy in any court, the president has now resorted to undue pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the elections,” Romney said in a statement. posted on Twitter. “It is hard to imagine the worst and most anti-democratic action by an American president.”
Romney is not the only one
Romney and Sasse reacted in this way to Trump’s decision to invite Republican leaders of the Michigan legislature to the White House on Friday, as their goal is to delay or block the certification of elections in the key states that have gone to Biden.
Sasse said in his statement that he is telling his constituents to look at what Trump’s legal team is discussing in court, not what they are saying in public.
In one lawsuit after another, Trump’s team either did not report election fraud or was unable to back up their claims with evidence. On Thursday, Trump and his allies lost cases in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
“From what I read in their documents, when Trump’s campaign lawyers appeared in court under oath, they repeatedly refused to report serious fraud, because there are legal consequences for lying to the judges,” Sasse said. “President Trump lost Michigan by more than 100,000 votes and the campaign and its allies lost or withdrew the five lawsuits in Michigan for failing to present any evidence.”
Republican turn?
Romney and Sasse’s remarks are unlikely to be a sign that support for Trump on Capitol Hill and his post-election campaign of lies and conspiracy theories is waning.
Romney was the only Republican senator to vote to condemn Trump during his impeachment earlier this year and was a frequent critic of the president. Sasse is an occasional critic of the president, but in recent months he has intensified his criticism.
Most Republican lawmakers encouraged the president to take his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud to court and refused to recognize Biden as president-elect. Biden will win Electoral College with a vote of 306-232 projects from CNN, the same margin Trump won in 2016. He will also get more than 5 million more votes than Trump in the popular vote.
Fraud reports
Despite Biden’s clear victory, Trump has sent lawyers across the country to lobby on allegations of voter fraud, with the aim of rejecting thousands of votes to tilt the election in his favor. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is at the forefront of the legal effort and held a circus-like press conference on Thursday where he and a number of other Trump lawyers made wild claims about fraud and changing voting machines. Trump’s votes in favor of Biden, nothing of which they had evidence or were based on facts.
Sasse pointed to that press conference as particularly dangerous.
“Wild press conferences erode public confidence,” he said. “So no, obviously Rudy and his friends shouldn’t pressure voters to ignore their legal certification obligations. We are a nation of laws, not tweets. “
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