GOP congressman flails as CNN host corners him for objecting to the election results

On CNN Thursday, anchor Poppy Harlow tried to nail down Rep. Carlos Giminez (R-FL) for his attempt to overturn the election results — even as he denied that was what he intended to do.

"You objected to Pennsylvania and Arizona, two states where the states' supreme courts said the processes in which the election had changed, right, because of COVID, were legitimate," said Harlow. "And they are the deciding bodies and all 50 states had certified the election results again, so I'm wondering why you did it. Did it not just help promote the big lie that Biden didn't legitimately win?"

"No," said Giminez. "We're trying to make sure that individual people and not the state legislatures, all right, the state legislatures are the only one that could set the rules and methods by which the electors are selected. Individual people changed the rules just before or during the election, that needs—"

"And the Supreme Court said it was legitimate to do so," said Harlow. "I'm trying to get at what you were trying to achieve because the vote, and what did you after the Capitol was attacked and five people died, matters a lot in the message you're sending to the American people."

"Absolutely," said Giminez. "And the message I'm sending to the American people is that individual people shouldn't be changing the rules. Courts are not going to overrule an election. They are hesitant to do that. We need to make sure the rules are established by, as the Constitution said, by the state legislatures, not individual people. Because if we continue to change the rules, and either just before or during elections, you're going to have people with questions about those elections, we need to stop that."

"I get that you don't like the way it happened in those states, but it is how it happened and the supreme courts [of] states rule, and you said back in November on NPR, if they think there is irregularity, they should pursue it not courts, and you had trust in the courts then," said Harlow.

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