Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On MAGA Republicans Again Doubling Down On The Big Lie

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on MAGA Republicans undermining American democracy by doubling down on election denialism. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

One of the biggest lessons of last November was that for all the attempts by MAGA Republicans to undermine our elections, the roots of our democracy remain strong and run deep.

For two years, we heard the same thing over and over again from the MAGA brigade: that the 2020 elections were stolen, that President Biden was illegitimate, that we couldn’t trust that our votes were properly counted.

Well, Americans simply didn’t buy it. They saw that the elections were fair. Some have said these are the fairest elections we’ve ever had.

Yet, and in virtually every major race last fall, MAGA candidates who campaigned explicitly on denying the results of the 2020 election and overturning it were rejected by the voters. It was a good result for the country, for our democracy, and frankly it was a necessary wake up call for the GOP, telling them to get rid of the Big Lie once and for all. The American people aren’t buying it. Maybe a small band of extreme right-wingers are—MAGA people—but not everybody else.

So it was so disturbing to read in the Washington Post that the RNC is not so much abandoning the conspiracy of the Big Lie so much as doubling down. According to reports, they are working on creating a “permanent infrastructure in every state to ramp up ‘election integrity’ activities” as a way to cater to that portion of their base that still believes in wacky election fraud conspiracies.

As a sign of how unserious this report is, the RNC also makes unfounded claims of a “continuing onslaught of Democrat election manipulation.” I would call it ridiculous—it is ridiculous—but it’s a troubling attempt to undermine our democracy. When people don’t believe the elections are on the level, that’s the beginning of the end of this grand experiment in democracy that has lasted for centuries. Fortunately, the American people are rejecting it, but the MAGA wing is keeping at it.

I’ll make this easy for the folks over at the RNC: undermining our elections is a losing strategy. It’s a loser politically. It didn’t work last year, it’s not going to work next year, and for the sake of our country and the sake of the GOP the RNC and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party needs to break the election fraud echo chamber that has paralyzed their party and frankly caused them to lose election after election.

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