Donald Trump (left), Stephen Richer.Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty; Richer for Recorder
The Republican head of a county elections office in Arizona — a state currently in the midst of a partisan recount of the 2020 presidential election — called former PresidentDonald Trump"unhinged" over the weekend over his repeated false claims about the vote.
In response to Trump’s incorrect assertion that the entire voter database of Maricopa County had been “deleted” in the midst of the recount, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer responded on his personalTwitteraccount Saturday.
“Wow. This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now,” Richer wrote. “We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5. If we don’t call this out…”
The audit underway in Maricopa County came in the wake ofTrump’s surprising losstoJoe Bidenin both the county and in Arizona overall.
The state has undergone two previous audits of its 2020 election results, neither of which found any issues of concern. Both audits confirmed that Biden had won.
Richer isn’t the only Arizona Republican to speak out against the state’s recount.
On Thursday, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors issued a statement in which heblasted the private contractorhired to reexamine the election results, saying they “are in way over their heads.”
“I know you have all grown weary of the lies and half-truths six months after the 2020 General Election,” Sellers added.
Speaking to theNew York Timeslast week, Arizona state Sen. Paul Boyer — who initially voted in favor of the audit — now calls it “ridiculous.”
“It makes us look like idiots,” Boyer told theTimes. “Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”
Despite Trump’s electoral college and popular vote losses, his incitement of an attempted coup on the U.S. Capitol right before leaving office, and the fact that none of his lies about the electionhave held up in court, Republican party leadership has largely refrained from going against the former president.
Instead, the party has worked to remove those who have spoken out against Trump, such as Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who last Wednesday wasvoted out of her positionin Republican leadership following her vote to impeach Trump after the riots.
Speaking with reporters immediately after her ouster as the House of Representatives' No. 3 Republican, Cheney told reporters her party “must go forward based on truth, we cannot both embrace the ‘big lie’ [about the election] and embrace the Constitution … The nation needs a strong Republican Party, the nation needs a party that is based upon fundamental principles of conservatism. And I am committed and dedicated to ensuring that that’s how this party goes forward and I plan to lead the fight to do that.”
source: people.com
