Attorney General Todd Blanche lost his cool on CNN Sunday morning when he was asked whether President Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to contest the midterm elections.
On “State of the Union,” host Dana Bash pressed Blanche on whether Trump is sowing seeds of doubt about the upcoming elections in a way that could lead to something like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The question came after DOJ sued Alaska over a second Dan Sullivan appearing on the state’s Senate ballot.
“Oh stop it! You’ve gotta stop it with that!” Blanche said, in a clip shared by journalist Scott MacFarlane.
According to a transcription posted by conservative commentator Eric Daugherty, Blanche went on: “You are not being a real person! That is crazy. Stop, stop, stop.”
Blanche argued that Bash had “set me up” by linking DOJ’s concerns about the Alaska race to Trump doing “something crazy.”
“We’re not laying any groundwork for POTUS to do that, so your premise, your question is not true,” Blanche said, according to Daugherty. He said the department’s “groundwork” in Alaska was meant to determine “if it becomes an issue after the election… whether there was confusion that violates the law in determining who the senator should be.”
Daugherty, the assistant news director at the conservative outlet Florida’s Voice, cheered Blanche’s response. He said the attorney general “just ERUPTED” and added, “I swear, they go to JANUARY 6TH every time.”
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance saw it very differently.
“It’s only the most serious question our democracy faces, so of course the Attorney General of the United States just blows it off,” wrote Vance, a University of Alabama law professor and MS NOW legal analyst who served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under President Barack Obama. “Why bother to go on TV at all this weekend?”
Writer and teacher Andrew Hazlett said, “Blanche is becoming as twitchy and hysteric as Rudy Giuliani.”
Blanche has spent the weekend defending DOJ’s Alaska lawsuit. Critics, including former prosecutors and conservative legal commentators, say the suit’s own filing seeks to block certification of the results, despite Blanche’s insistence that it doesn’t. President Donald Trump has said he ordered the suit filed.