Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has been going off the deep end with the best of them the last several days, hyping various conspiracy theories oozing out of the public comment section of a Maricopa County meeting that took place before election officials certified the midterm results in Arizona’s most populous county this week.
He’s fixated on the same conspiracy theory that Kari Lake and Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh have been clinging to for days — that a printer issue that several polling sites in the district faced on Election Day is somehow evidence the election was rigged. As we’ve noted repeatedly, voters impacted by the glitch were told to submit their ballots to a drop box or vote at another precinct. The problem was solved within hours. Maricopa officials have already issued reports affirming that the glitch did not prevent residents from voting.
I explain all of that to say, Kirk is just doing his usual thing and Steve Bannon is giving him the airtime to do it. It’s all noise and typical tantrum throwing over the fact that their candidate lost the election. But during an interview with Bannon on his War Room podcast today, Kirk made a rather entertaining admission (I have no idea where he is getting these numbers from and cannot confirm them, so take it all with a mountain of salt):
“400,000 people that voted for Trump in 2020 did not show up or vote for the midterm election. I believe it’s because a lot of people do not trust the system,” he said. He went on to deliver another screed about Maricopa County, claiming people don’t trust the system because of something something printer issue, but the broader point rings true. Your followers may believe you when you tell them not to trust a system. And it’s a problem the Big Liars have run into before.
I noted this yesterday, but the New York Times reported Monday that both Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign agreed that it was best for Trump to stay away from the Georgia runoff election. Trump had reportedly been planning to head to the Peach State to hold a rally in support of Walker ahead of the runoff next week, but now he’s settled on doing a phone call with Walker supporters instead. The calculus in this situation was simple — Trump’s presence might energize more Democrats and even moderate Republicans to get out and vote for Sen. Ralph Warnock (D-GA). But there’s also a broader issue in Georgia. Trump is largely the person Republicans blame for the GOP losing the Senate in 2021, primarily because he spent the weeks leading up to the 2021 runoff election convincing all of his supporters that the election was rigged, especially in the state of Georgia.
Why participate in the very system your dear leader has spent weeks railing against?
Kirk and the rest of his ilk are just now being forced to face the same music as they hide behind printer issues.
The Best Of TPM Today
Here’s what you should read this evening:
Judge Finds Trump Stepped Outside Presidential Immunity With 2020 Subversion
McCarthy Offers Trump And MTG Same Blanket, Untrue Defense In Wake Of Fuentes Mar-A-Lago Dinner
Kagan Warns That States Will Have Path To Stop Federal Policy ‘In Its Tracks’ In Immigration Case
McCarthy Keeps Up Weak MAGA Staring Contest: If You ‘Play Games’ Dems Will Pick Speaker For Us
Florida Settles Another Case Wound Up In DeSantis’s Political Voter Fraud Stunt
GOP Senators Say The Real Problem With Trump Is His Bad Staff
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Georgia Voters Break Sunday Record As They Settle Last Senate Race Of The Midterms — Kate Riga
What We Are Reading
McConnell says Trump is ‘highly unlikely to ever be elected president’ amid furor over dinner with Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes — John L. Dorman
Mark Meadows ordered to testify in Trump investigation — Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein
Jacob Wohl, Jack Burkman must spend 500 hours registering voters as penance for phony robocalls targeting Black voters in Cleveland — Cory Shaffer
