When MAGA Republicans are asked if Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election, many of them give evasive responses — saying that there were “questions” about election security without outright saying that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump. But according to journalist Brian Beutler, such evasiveness isn’t serving them well. And in some cases, Beutler stresses, Republicans have “quietly admitted that Joe Biden won.”
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Beutler, in a Wednesday, August 19 post on X and an article for Off Message, notes that CNN contacted five Republican gubernatorial nominees to ask who won in 2020: Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania’s Stacy Garrity, Wisconsin’s Tom Tiffany, Michigan’s John James and Georgia’s Rick Jackson.
According to Beutler, “All five of them have lengthy track records of lying about the election, or, in some cases, even trying to overturn the election. But now that they have general elections to win, Tiffany, Garrity and Jackson have reversed themselves without explanation. Tiffany says, ‘Biden won.’ A Jackson spokesperson says Jackson acknowledges ‘Biden’s win.’ Closer to the borderline, Garrity says ‘Biden was elected.’ But none hide behind the standard MAGA weasel words — that Biden ‘was certified’ the winner.”
Beutler, in his tweet, writes, “Serious question: is Trump aware that these election denying GOP gubernatorial nominees have now quietly admitted that Joe Biden won? Not ‘was certified,’ but won.”
This development, according to Beutler, underscores the desperation Republicans are feeling as the November 3 midterms draw closer — desperation that Off Message describes as a “downward spiral.”
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Beutler explains, “Consider the following three still-unfolding developments: Republican voters are ignoring Trump’s endorsements in high profile GOP primaries. Trump-backed nominees are ‘tacking to the center’ by abandoning years of election denialism and admitting that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. MAGA operatives find themselves unable to achieve narrative dominance, in large part because they’ve shredded their own credibility.”
The journalist argues that “illusions of mastery and forward motion are essential to the Trump project” — and those illusions are falling apart.
If the movement weakens, and begins to flag, its internal contradictions become much easier to detect, and everyone who’s signed up to operate its machinery is exposed. They weren’t swept along by some irresistible juggernaut; they were fully in control of their own faculties. They knew the difference between right and wrong, and chose wrong…. It’s hard to say when the artifice began to crumble. But the failed censorship of Jimmy Kimmel and the success, in defiance of right-wing histrionics, of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show were two key tells: Fascists do not, in fact, dominate American culture.”
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