Election workers are giving up across the country and dropping out of public service in the face of unprecedented threats from Donald Trump supporters and others who believe conspiracy theories.
MSNBC's Michael Steele blames the former president and his allies for injecting that "vile poison" into U.S. politics in their effort to overturn the 2020 election results, and which Republican acolytes such as Kari Lake have tried to replicate in their own losses -- and those lies have pitted neighbor against neighbor in local elections.
"We're talking about citizens, as you just talked about, who are just everyday people," Steele said. "These people coming and testifying and, you know, invoking the lord's name in a voting process. They know these individuals, they knew them before any of this crazy started to happen. They know in most instances, these are, you know, reputable members of the community. They have been volunteering and working at election centers for decades, in many cases, longtime activists in the space, nonpartisan election officials, and yet, our system has now become so infected with this vile poison, perpetrated by Republicans, especially -- I take that back, not Republicans per se, but these MAGA folks, right?"
"The strain of this Republicanism that now these folks live in fear, and you have the kind of, you know, hearings that you open the segment with where those very average citizens coming out with pitchforks ready to skewer someone because of a lie, and here's the rub," he continued. "At the end of the day, they know it's a lie. You can't refute the fact that there's no evidence because if there were credible evidence, it would have been presented by these very same election officials, and that's the rub."
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"They know that these individuals who have been in these jobs, who know how the system works, who know where the problems lie, they would be the first ones to call out the problem and say, wait a minute, this election isn't right," Steele added. "But they didn't do that. They came back and said something else. They're mad at them for that, because when you get sucked into the rabbit hole, and you realize you're the only fool inside the hole because unlike the others, you went headlong, you want to save yourself a little bit of embarrassment, so you go and invoke the lord's name at an election hearing."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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