On Tuesday, former Trump official Peter Navarro spoke candidly about the former president’s plot to overturn the 2020 election results so that he could remain in office for at least another four years.
In an interview with host Ari Melber on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Navarro elaborated on the plan, which he described as a “Green Bay sweep” — a reference to a football play by the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s that was incredibly difficult for defenses to break up.
“We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep,” Navarro said in the interview. “The sweep was simply that: we were going to challenge the results of the election in six battleground states — they were Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada — and basically these were the places that, we believed, if the votes were sent back to those battleground states and looked at again, that there would be enough concern among the legislatures that most or all of those states would decertify the election.”
“That would throw the election to the House of Representatives,” Navarro went on, adding that “all of this, again, was in the lanes, legally, prescribed by the Constitution.”
The plan was disrupted, he said, by the mob of Trump loyalists who attacked the Capitol on January 6.
“All this required was peace and calm on Capitol Hill,” Navarro said.
The Constitution does lay out a way for the House of Representatives to resolve instances where a candidate doesn’t receive a majority vote of the Electoral College, with each state receiving one vote for its delegation to decide upon. But as Melber pointed out, Navarro’s plan relied on states disregarding legitimate results that favored President Joe Biden’s election.
“You just described this plan as a way to take an election where the outcome was established by independent secretaries of state, by the voters of those states, and legal remedies had been exhausted with the Supreme Court never even taking, let alone siding with, any of the claims that you just referred to,” Melber said. “Do you realize you are describing a coup?”
Navarro rejected Melber’s “premises,” and went on to parrot a number of discredited claims about election fraud — all of which have been rejected by independent, Democratic and Republican-aligned state elections officials. These claims have also been repudiated by dozens of judges, including ones that were appointed by Trump.
Critics lambasted Navarro for claiming that his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election was any different than the attempt by the mob of Trump loyalists during the Capitol attack.
“It’s obviously understandable why Navarro would like the world to believe that his plan was 1) legal and 2) not only peaceful but damaged by the violence that unfolded,” Washington Post columnist Philip Bump wrote. “But his plan 1) was rooted in obvious falsehoods, 2) provided foundational support to the violence that actually occurred, 3) depended on an interpretation of legality that most observers consider dubious at best and, most importantly, 4) led to the same outcome: a rejection of the will of the electorate to retain power.”
Others noted that Navarro’s defense of his actions was not rooted in any sense of reality.
“I don’t know if I should rewind @TheBeatWithAri’s interview with Peter Navarro to try to understand better what he was saying, or if I should immediately drink enough tequila that I can’t remember my entire evening,” said Elie Mystal, Justice Correspondent for The Nation.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy