Tongue-tied North Carolina Republican leader fails to explain away electoral theft in Congressional race

The executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party repeatedly became tongue-tied during an interview on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes."

"In the wake of Democrats' historic wins in this year's midterm elections, we are witnessing tonight a full on assault of democracy by defeated Republicans across the country," Hayes reported. "There's an old joke about the definition of 'chutzpah' being a man who kills his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he's an orphan.' Something similar is going on."

"The whole thing is a shameless spectacle of bad faith, an assault by Republicans from the president on down on some of the most basic tenets of democracy," he added.

Dallas Woodhouse, the executive direct of the North Carolina GOP, joined the segment to discuss.

Hayes said, "I do want to cite something you said in the days after the election where you said in a phone call, 'we are trying to keep Democrats from stealing the congressional race from Mark Harris.' That's obviously an incredibly loaded charge that you made. do you want to apologize for that or take that back?"

"Well -- no," he replied. "Because I made that call to donors of the North Carolina Republican Party which you're not one of, I feel sure."

"But you were wrong," Hayes noted. "Your position was this is a sort of made up scandal and the Democrats are out to try to steal this out from under our noses. 'We won 905 votes, they're refusing to concede.' That proved to be wrong'

"You got out over your skis -- there was actual, apparent criminal activity," Hayes reminded.

"Okay. Yes," Woodhouse admitted. "What I would say is, is there are a lot of different things that are going on here, the ground is shifting under our feet."

Hayes then cornered Woodhouse about his personal role in the scandal.

"Let me give you some more context, as we look at this it seems like there were some real red flags and it seems to me like the North Carolina Republican Party failed its own Republican candidate, Robert Pittinger (R-NC), the incumbent congressional Republican," Hayes noted.

"Those numbers make no sense and there's reporting today that Robert Pittinger's people talked to you personally and with people from the NRCC complaining about shenanigans and nothing was done," he explained. "Is that true? "

Woodhouse loudly inhaled, then let out his breath.

"I'm trying -- I've been trying to recall that. It might have been," he admitted.

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