I would like to offer some comments regarding Rae Piepho’s recent letter to the editor. She began with trying to justify Pete Stauber and 105 other U.S. Republican House members signing on to a Texas lawsuit. That Texas lawsuit did not affect the voters of Texas as she stated, but actually sought to invalidate millions of legally cast ballots of voters in other states. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the Texas lawsuit, as it is unconstitutional for one state to interfere with another state’s election process. Apparently she chose to ignore that fact. Trump’s large lead on the night of November 3 was due to ballots cast that day being counted before those of absentee and mail-in ballots cast prior to Election Day. The very large numbers of ballots cast earlier were overwhelmingly cast by Democrats and therefore were responsible for Trump’s loss of the election.
Repeating the lies and conspiracy theories spread by Donald Trump, his radical followers and the majority of the Republican Party does not make them fact. The 2020 election has been repeatedly evaluated by officials who found no significant voter fraud. All of the dozens of Trump’s lawsuits regarding the election have been thrown out of court (including some by Trump appointed judges), rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court or were withdrawn by Trump’s lawyers who realized the lawsuits were totally baseless and they did not want their reputations damaged for being involved in them. Judges pointed out that lawsuits require evidence, not just mere unfounded allegations. Trump’s lawyers had no evidence to present. It was a free and fair election, Trump lost, time to get over it.
Now on the events of January 6, 2021. The Trump inspired violent insurrection and failed attempted coup by armed insurgents resulted in the brutal murder of a police officer, injuries to many more officers, threats against the lives of our elected lawmakers (they had a noose and were threatening to hang Mike Pence for not over-throwing the electoral college vote count and hand the election over to Trump), considerable vandalism and damage to the U.S. Capitol building including the smearing of human feces on the walls of the Capitol building, etc. There were many other things, which could be stated, but I feel this is sufficient. Anyone who watched the action should be sickened by those events. Did you watch this, Rae Piepho? Do you approve of it?
Numerous arrests have been made since then. Many more will be coming. No one there should feel that they will escape detection. Many of them were found because they had posted their activities (including photographs of themselves) on social media. Others were identified via camera footage from the news media and surveillance cameras. Every person involved (including several Republican elected officials who were part of the mob) must be held accountable. I am sure appropriate penalties will be given based on the severity of the crimes in each case; some may be quite severe.
Now on to the Republican Party itself. It has been in lock step with Donald Trump the entire four years. They have enabled, encouraged and approved of every despicable action and statement he has made up until it became obvious to some of them that Trump had lost the election and their political futures could be in jeopardy if they continued to support him. The January 6 events finally caused more to break with Trump, but many Republican lawmakers are continuing to repeat his lies. When it came time to continue counting the Electoral College votes, a number of Republicans made very nice speeches about Trump’s involvement and the violence of that day being unacceptable. The disapproval did not last long for some of them. Several have already gone back to their previous support of Trump and downplaying the severity of the insurrection.
Bill Peterson, Grand Marais
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