Former President Donald Trump is continuing to pressure officials in states he lost to President Joe Biden to overturn the results of the 2020 election — nearly a year and a half after the election took place.
In an interview with a television news station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, state Speaker of the Assembly Rep. Robin Vos (R) said that Trump has repeatedly asked him in private conversations to decertify the election, asking as recently as earlier this month.
“It’s very consistent,” Vos said.
The Republican leader has told the former president that he is unable to change the election result, even if he wanted to.
“He would like us to do something different in Wisconsin. I explained that it’s not allowed under the [state] Constitution,” Vos said. “He has a different opinion.”
In the past, Trump has repeatedly derided Vos for his refusal to take actions that he believes could lead to the presidential election in Wisconsin being decertified. Last August, the Assembly speaker relented and initiated a state audit of the election; the person that Vos hired to manage the audit made numerous missteps regarding open records laws and ultimately produced a report that is riddled with false allegations and theories that have already been debunked.
In actuality, there is no action that Vos or the Republican-controlled state legislature can take to decertify the election result. However, that didn’t stop Trump from lambasting Vos following the release of his interview on Tuesday and falsely alleging that the state Supreme Court had ruled that the election was illegitimate.
“So what’s Speaker Robin Vos doing on the Great Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling declaring hundreds of thousands of Drop Box votes to be illegal? This is not a time for him to hide, but a time to act!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
The state Supreme Court did not rule that drop box votes were illegal — instead, the conservative majority found that the voting method could not be used in future elections, citing unfounded claims that such votes could be compromised in the future. (An Associated Press investigation of drop boxes published this week found no evidence whatsoever that there were any problems with votes cast in that manner in 2020.)
The majority ruling, authored by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, improperly compared Wisconsin’s drop boxes to rigged election standards in countries like North Korea and Syria.
In her dissent to the ruling, liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley correctly predicted that Bradley’s wording would perpetuate false claims that fraud had taken place in Wisconsin’s elections two years ago.
“The majority/lead opinion’s sky-is-falling rhetoric not only defies the facts, but also is downright dangerous to our democracy,” Walsh Bradley wrote. “Absent evidence that supports its statements, the majority/lead opinion still lends its imprimatur to efforts to destabilize and delegitimize recent elections.”
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