The GOP nominee for Minnesota secretary of state said changing voting rules after the “big rig” that was the 2020 presidential election was “our 9/11,” likening the election to the 2001 terrorist attacks when discussing proposed reforms to election laws.
Kim Crockett, who recently won the GOP nomination in the race to be the state’s top elections official, has boosted Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud. Crockett previously characterized the 2020 election as “lawless” and “rigged.”
CNN reported on audio of Crockett’s previously unreported appearance on a local Christian talk radio program in Sept. 2021, in which she decried Trump’s 2020 loss as “our 9/11.”
“We realize people are discouraged and this is still an exceptional nation,” Crockett said. “We are still the American people and I’m betting on us. This is a challenge. Maybe we needed a wake-up call. This is our 9/11.”
In the interview, Crockett reportedly took aim at voting reform legislation. She characterized the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which ultimately did not come to fruition, as a “massive threat” to Republicans.
Crockett cast the unsuccessful voting reform bill, which would restore the federal government’s authority to oversee state voting laws to prevent discrimination against minority voters, as a measure that would “resurrect a really vicious, powerful architecture in Washington, DC, to take over our election laws.”
“And that’s the avenue to their permanent power, because they really don’t think we’re capable of governing ourselves at the local level … state level and they wanna be in charge,” Crockett said. “And they wanna be in charge permanently.”
Crockett used her appearance on the radio program to promote an upcoming event at the time that she said would focus on “the big rig” 2020 election.
“I’ve been doing it now for about 18 months, exclusively in the election space,” Crockett said earlier in the radio appearance. “Because if we lose our right to free and fair elections – and I don’t just need the right to vote, I need to know that it’s being counted fairly and that someone’s not cheating and canceling me out.”
CNN noted that the event Crockett referred to in her radio appearance involved her urging conservative activists to sign up to become election judges and poll watchers. She pushed the idea of their participation as a fulfillment of their “biblical citizenship,” a concept growing in popularity in Christian nationalist circles.
In a statement to CNN, Crockett’s campaign chair Shannon Bruce said the GOP nominee stands by her bogus claims of a rigged election. She also attacked the media.
“There are so many important policy issues we should be discussing right now so that Minnesotans can make an informed choice when they vote,” Crockett said in the statement, according to CNN. “Instead, most of the media is intent on character assassination.”
Although Crockett has repeatedly sowed doubt about the 2020 election, she has not been endorsed by Trump unlike other GOP nominees running for secretary of state.
CNN also found that Crockett has pushed baseless claims about mail-in voting being insecure.
