"That's like leaning on Minnesota and these other states, asking them for their voter rolls and their voter data," said Sanders. "That's like putting election deniers in new roles in the Department of Homeland Security over election integrity, which is what this administration has done. That's literally raiding the Fulton County elections commission and snatching up the tabulations from the ballots. That's calling up Texas [and asking] them to find five more seats, because the president seems to be concerned about what the map looks like. As is, we're not making it up. They are trying to affect this election."
Matthews agreed with Sanders' concerns and noted a troubling contradiction among Republican leaders.
"Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And a lot of Republicans talked about the importance of election integrity in the aftermath of 2020, and yet they're not speaking out about Trump wanting to nationalize our elections. They're not speaking out about this Fulton County raid, where the FBI took the original copies of these voter rolls. They took 700 boxes worth of evidence, and they were permitted to take copies of the original documents, but they took the original documents."
Beyond the procedural violations, Matthews emphasized the deeper implications of these moves.
"You know how terrifying that is?" she continued. "I sound like I have a tinfoil hat on, but they could alter with that evidence. They could destroy evidence because they didn't follow the proper protocol. And so now you're getting into actual threatening of election integrity, in my opinion. But also, let's just set the scene that it is insane. We are sitting here at this table today, six years later, after the 2020 election, still talking about this election, because Donald Trump can't accept the fact that he lost fair and square to Joe Biden, someone he perceived as weak. And so he's still embarrassed and living in this fantasy land."
Adding to this, Matthews underscored the cost of Trump's refusal to move on.
"And now we're spending millions of taxpayer dollars all to appease him," said Matthews. "But guess what? He took his lawsuits to court more than 60 times, and they all failed. Why? Because there's zero evidence of voter fraud. No meaningful voter fraud was present. He could not overturn the results of the election, and he incited an insurrection as a result. And I will point out, too, there's going to be those people who will be online saying, oh, but Sarah, they were Democrat judges who turned down those lawsuits. No, they were Trump-appointed judges in there as well. And all those lawsuits failed for a reason."
Matthews concluded by highlighting the disconnect between Trump's priorities and those of voters.
"But now we're sitting here wasting our time talking about this issue instead of the actual things that voters care about, who put him back in office for a reason. They don't want to live in the past and talk about the 2020 election. But that's all Trump wants to do. And Trump 2.0, he's living in the past, and he's seeking retribution on his perceived enemies."
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