By and large, Republicans are ignoring Donald Trump's claims that there is election fraud in Pennsylvania that is preventing Dr. Mehmet Oz from claiming victory over David McCormick and Politico's David Siders is reporting that GOP lawmakers are increasingly moving on from echoing Trump's belief that every election that doesn't go their way is tainted.
As it stands now, Pennsylvania Republicans are furious with Trump after he criticized the fact that the GOP Senate primary has no clear winner yet by proclaiming on Truth Social, "The Pennsylvania Oz race is ridiculous. How long does it take to count votes. France, same day all paper, had VERIFIED numbers in evening. U.S. is a laughingstock on Elections. Stop FINDING VOTES in PENNSYLVANIA! RIGGED?”
As Siders notes, Trump's raving is a voice in the wilderness as lawmakers are not taking up his latest conspiracy theory and are finding his complaints about election tampering are growing old and stale.
"Donald Trump has been lying about voter fraud for so long that his impugning of yet another election seemed almost inevitable. What was more revealing was that, for the first time, Republicans appeared not to be listening," Siders wrote before adding, "Trump’s earliest effort to graft his 2020 complaints onto ballot counting in a midterm primary is falling flat. MAGA hard-liners who’ve lost primaries in other states in recent weeks have not contested the results. And when the primary calendar turns to Georgia on Tuesday, Trump’s election conspiracy crusade is likely to take another hit."
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According to Christopher Nicholas, a Pennsylvania campaign consultant, "No one’s paying any attention to it.”
Jason Shepherd, the ex-chair of the Republican Party in Georgia’s Cobb County, added that Trump's appeal is also waning, telling Politico, "I think the shine has gone off a bit,” and that an endorsement from Trump "is not going to be the end-all and be-all.”
According to one former Trump adviser, candidates like Oz and McCormick are smart to not echo Trump's latest conspiracy theory.
"Nobody wants to be viewed as a sore loser and make allegations they can’t sustain," they suggested. "They’re both intelligent guys. They’re both sane guys, and neither of them wants to embarrass himself.”
Siders' report continued, "But for Republican candidates this cycle, the difference between 2022 and 2020, said John Thomas, a Republican strategist working on House campaigns across the country, is that 'we’re just not seeing it where people hang on his every word.' He advises his candidates to watch Tucker Carlson every night to 'be in tune' with the electorate, not Trump on Truth Social, the platform on which Trump suggested the Pennsylvania election might be 'rigged.'"
You can read more here.
