Donald Trump keeps repeating lies about election fraud, and on Tuesday morning, CNN’s Kasie Hunt confronted his daughter-in-law about it.
Hunt brought up a post by Donald Trump on Truth Social on Sunday in which he claimed that 20 percent of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania were fraudulent, that Democrats were cheating and called for an investigation. The CNN host asked Lara Trump, a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, why the former president said that if he wanted more votes.
“He’s specifically referring to information from the 2020 election,” she replied, although that’s not really clear in the Truth Social Post. “What we’re talking about right now is making sure every vote counts and every vote counts.”
Hunt followed up and demanded evidence of fraudulent mail-in ballots in the 2020 Pennsylvania election.
“I haven’t seen the report, so I’d have to go back and look at it,” Trump replied. “I can’t comment directly on that.”
KASIE HUNT: Why does Trump claim 20% of mail-in ballots are fraudulent?
LARA TRUMP: He is referring to information from the 2020 election
HUNT: What evidence is there?
LARA TRUMP: I haven’t seen that report, so I have to go back and look at it pic.twitter.com/6qfipQ0djs
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) 10 September 2024
Trump attempted to twist her father-in-law’s words during the interview by claiming that he wants every voter in the U.S. to vote in the way that is most convenient for them, whether by mail or in person. But that contradicts much of what the Republican presidential candidate has said and continues to say about the electoral process.
The former president’s conspiracy theories about voter fraud recently convinced Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin to insist on paper ballots in his state and spurred his supporters in Georgia to change the state’s election laws to help him. At the same time, he is pressuring Republicans in the House to include his anti-voter “fraud” measures in a major appropriations bill — thereby changing election laws just weeks before the election.
Trump has a long history of sowing doubt about the electoral process, from his repeated claims of a rigged election, to his refusal to acknowledge the 2020 results and subsequent attempt to overturn them, to his preemptive efforts to discredit November’s results if they go against him. On Tuesday, Hunt revealed how Trump’s closest advisers are enabling this behavior, even if they themselves cannot explain it.
