Almost a year after President Joe Biden's decisive victory over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, Trump continues to make the false and debunked claim that the election was stolen from him because of widespread voter fraud. Most Republicans are afraid to publicly disagree with Trump's bogus claim, and some are outright promoting it. But one right-wing conservative Republican who believes that Trump's claims could hurt the GOP in the 2022 midterms is Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
Trump, in an official statement, recently said, "If we don't solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in '22 or '24." And Hutchinson believes that such talk could prove to be a "disaster" for his party in next year's midterms.
During a Sunday, October 17 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," the 70-year-old Hutchinson told host Chuck Todd, "Relitigating 2020 is a recipe for disaster in 2022. Let's talk about the future. The election is past. It's been certified. The states made decisions on the integrity of each of their elections and made improvements where need be. It's about the future. It's not about the last election. And those kind of comments are not constructive."
Hutchinson continued, "We could win in 2022, and we're going to. But let's focus on the important issues of our supply chain, of getting over this pandemic, about freedom and not the last election."
Hutchinson, who serves as chairman of the National Governors Association — a position previously held by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat — was first elected governor of Arkansas in 2014 and reelected in 2018. Because Arkansas has gubernatorial term limits, Hutchinson cannot seek a third term next year. And the frontrunner in the GOP's 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial primary is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Trump's second of former White House press secretaries.