Liberals are still engaged in rife with the Senate confirmation trials. And while the Trump nominees remain unharmed by the “gotcha” doubting, one needs to firmly, greatly — and in a sound-bite — response their comment about whether Donald Trump “lost” the 2020 election.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, sidled near the lovely area when Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked her if she was “prepared to declare now under oath without appointment that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020”.
” Ranking Member Durbin, President Biden is the president of the United States. The candidate for attorney general responded,” He was properly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States.”
Durbin persisted, nevertheless, asking whether she had “any concerns that Joe Biden had the majority of seats, electoral votes needed to be elected leader in 2020”.
Bondi once more said that she “accepts ] Joe Biden as president of the United States. What I can tell you is what I personally witnessed when I traveled to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the campaign. I backed the campaign, and I saw a lot while on the ground in Pennsylvania. Do I recognize the outcomes? I do, of training. Do I agree with what happened, and I saw so many. No one on either side of the aisle does want there to be problems with our nation’s electoral dignity, you know. We all should expect the following: the rules and laws must be followed, and our votes must remain free and fair.
The length of your response indicates that you weren’t prepared to say yes, Durbin said, and” I think that topic deserved a yes or not.”
Sen. Dick Blumenthal, D-Conn., may eventually examine the 2020 vote, intoning that he was “really troubled” and “deeply disturbed” by Bondi’s response to Durbin:” You have to be able to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. You evaded that question when Senator Durbin immediately posed it to you.
Bondi strongly condemned the president’s remarks:” You said’ I have to stay up here and say these things.’ No, I don’t. I sit down and tell the facts. I won’t sit around and make any statements that need to be made in order for this system to confirm anything. I don’t have to say something. I’ll respond to the questions truthfully and to the best of my ability.
While Bondi’s opposition was beautiful to observe, it’s past time for Democrats to provide a terse response to store the Democrat’s false question.
As I explained next year when the legacy media hounded then-Sen. J. D. Vance to declare Donald Trump lost the 2020 vote, there is a fundamental weakness in the query:” The query includes an unknown term —’ lost’ — which holds a different meaning to Trump supporters and to the anti-Trump inquisitors”.
” If’ lost’ simply meant Biden is the president of the United States, therefore that’s an simple answer: Well, of course, Trump lost, as Biden was inaugurated”, and he is already nearing the end of his four fatal years in the Oval Office. But that’s not what those demanding an acknowledgement that Trump lost mean by “lost”, and yesterday’s hearings confirmed that reality, for Bondi repeatedly and expressly attested that, yes, Joe Biden is the president of the United States.
What Durbin, Blumenthal, and pretty much everyone else demanding a “yes” or “no” answer to whether Trump lost the 2020 election seek is a concession that Trump’s election challenges were frivolous, unfounded, or wrong. Democrats make these concessions in their definition of “lost.”
That’s why Bondi answered Durbin’s question as she did, by stating both that she accepted that Biden is president of the United States and that she saw firsthand issues in Pennsylvania’s election.
In other words, it depends on what you mean by “lost”.
Republicans should make this point more explicit in order to put an end to the absurd game of “gotcha,” and in order to remind Americans of what Democrats and the media did to “win” in 2020. Here, the other meanings of “lost” come into play.
” If asked whether Trump’ lost’ the 2020 election, meaning that if all legal votes were counted and all illegal counts discarded — and the counting was done legally pursuant to controlling election law—” the answer should be a resounding,” I don’t know” . ,
As I wrote last year:” No one can possibly know the answer to that question because in 2020 there were too many election laws violated or ignored, and too many illegal votes , counted. However, once the votes were verified, the lawsuits that challenged the election results were declared inadmissible. As a result, there was never a determination regarding the accuracy of the results.
Because of this, election integrity is important because no serious nation should let its citizens complain about the vote count’s accuracy.
However, the word “lost” also has a third connotation, which raises the question of whether or not Joe Biden was a winner. And with the meaning that the word “lost” is given, I’d venture to say that the vast majority of Americans thought the 2020 election was rigged against Trump rather than “free and fair.”
Republicans need to make that point, and the confirmation hearings provide a perfect opportunity. So, here’s a simple, soundbite for the next Trump nominee cornered with the query,” Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election”?
” It depends on what you mean by ‘ lose.’ The United States ‘ president is Joe Biden. However, Biden did not win a free and fair election, and the country has endured the humiliating effects of the Biden presidency for the past four years.
And the 2020 election was not free and fair: Not when the FBI pre-bunked the Hunter Biden laptop story, causing social media companies to censor the evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s pay-to-play scandal, not when the Biden campaign’s senior advisor, Antony Blinken,” set in motion” the release of a public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed Hunter’s laptop as Russian disinformation, not when there were” systemic violations of election law” which “disparately favor]ed ] one candidate”, and “allow]ed ] for tens of thousands of illegal votes to be counted”, and not when illegal drop box were placed in Democrat-heavy precincts and Zuckbucks were used to get out the Democrat vote.
Of course, the Democrat inquisitors will likely try to reframe the nominee’s response by putting forth claims of widespread fraud, which the J6 Committee did in its show trial, but they will also ignore the substantial evidence of systemic election law violations. However,” the fact that there wasn’t widespread fraud in November 2020 doesn’t mean that the election wasn’t rigged to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.”
With the legacy media’s stranglehold on the news broken, Americans now know many of these facts. Republicans shouldn’t be afraid to forcefully and clearly refute the 2020 election, as the rest of the country has done for a long time.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge. Former full-time university professor, Cleveland teaches adjunct occasionally. Cleveland serves as a lawyer for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. You can follow Cleveland on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland to learn more about her most cherished accomplishments, including her husband and son. Cleveland’s views are those expressed here in her personal capacity.