Republican defends Trump's talk of a military coup: 'It was a conversation -- not a revolution'

President Donald Trump's consideration of deploying the military to overturn the results of the presidential election was downplayed on CNN on Saturday by a Republican congressman arguing it wasn't a problem because it hasn't happened yet.

The idea of deploying "military capabilities" to force do-over elections was raised by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

"During an appearance on the conservative Newsmax channel this week, Mr. Flynn pushed for Mr. Trump to impose martial law and deploy the military to 'rerun' the election. At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea," The New York Times reported Saturday. "The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly and aggressively pushed back on the ideas being proposed, which went beyond the special counsel idea, those briefed on the meeting said. Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump there was no constitutional authority for what was being discussed, one of the people briefed on the meeting said."

On Saturday, CNN's Bianna Golodryga asked Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) about the situation.

"Well, let me just tell you, I've been in Congress for three years and for three years I keep hearing all these worst-case scenarios," Curtis said. "We have to remember, it was a conversation -- not a revolution. There are far more important things in front of us and I think we need to move on and tackle them."

"But that's all you have to say to that?" Golodryga pressed. "We can't just grow numb to incidents that would happen in a third world country and we would have a State Department that would be alarmed about hearing these kinds of reports."

"Listen, you're talking about a conversation that reportedly took place. We don't know anything about the details and you just can't get me all riled-up about that."