Riggleman: It's 'stunning and abhorrent' Republicans are still chasing the Stop the Steal 'fantasy'

On MSNBC Wednesday evening, former Rep. Denver Rigglemen (R-VA), a Trump-skeptic Republican who helped assist the House Select Committee on January 6 with its investigation, opened up about his thoughts on the 2020 coup attempt ahead of what is likely the committee's final public hearing.

The whole process has been painful, said Riggleman, in part because it revealed to him exactly how far people he knew and once considered political allies were willing to go to subvert democracy.

"Knowing Ginni Thomas, who still told the committee she believes the election was stolen, that Roger Stone, who's worked to elect Republicans all up and down that ballot, senators, congresspeople, he's been involved in politics since the Nixon era — that people who are well-known to you, I'm sure, and to people who you worked with when you were a congressman, all either conspired or were willing to allow people to die. Allow members to die," said anchor Joy Reid. "For what? Because they lost an election. I wonder how you react, just as a human being."

"It's tough, because you know I know a lot of those individuals," said Riggleman. "When I saw the [Mark] Meadows text messages, you had dozens of current and former members that were pushing this nonsense. You had cabinet officials. You had Republican officials from multiple states. You had people like Ginni Thomas. You had activists. Even individuals that were conducting those bizarre cyber-investigations, right, and doing the briefings about interference of the election, all going to the text messages and still you had 139 of those in the House of Representatives vote to object to the electors."

Ultimately, said Riggleman, it is "stunning and abhorrent" that Republicans are "still going down the Stop the Steal rabbit hole."

"It's getting worse," he added. "It's in the data. This is now what's believed. This is a fantasy. I said before a lot of these individuals thought Lord of the Rings was a documentary. That's a real issue. If you have those people actually in the House or in the Senate or in the executive making policy — we don't want the lunatics running the asylum. That's the shocking thing. Not just the criminal stuff. You really want that kind of crazy permeating every level of the GOP. I think that's why it's so important to have these hearings."

Watch below or at this link.

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