It’s been two years since Donald Trump claimed he lost the US presidential election due to widespread fraud and the Capitol was stormed by angry Trump supporters trying to stop Joe Biden from winning the post. Despite the fact that no evidence ever emerged that the election was anything but accurate, the claim that it was “stolen” has gained traction in recent years among voters and Republican candidates alike.
The New York Times reports that 370 of 550 midterm Republicans have questioned the 2020 election results, and according to statistics site FiveThirtyEight, 60 percent of voters will have a candidate they don’t believe in on their ballots.
“The country had a chance to move on”
But there are also current and former Republicans who have openly distanced themselves from Trump and the Big Lie, as the election fraud allegations are called.
Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and a leading figure among the neoconservatives in the Republican Party, is one of them. He has mixed feelings about a possible Republican victory in Tuesday’s election.
– Almost two years after the storming of the Capitol, they still have not distanced themselves from Trump. The way I see it, it’s not good news even if candidates I prefer win. The country had a chance to move on from Trump, the Republican Party had a chance to move on but has now chosen not to.
A former Republican who now votes for the Democrats
Bill Kristol once worked as chief of staff for George Bush the Elder’s vice president, but now he calls himself a former Republican and says he voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and for Democrats in local elections. He says Trump’s hold on the party will be strengthened if the candidates with ties to him do well now.
– If they win in certain key races, they can gain power over the next presidential election. Then we will have real problems in 2024 with very important officials open to, let’s put it this way, not following the wishes of the voters and to invalidating the actual election results.
Click on the clip to hear Bill Kristol on the US midterm elections and the fraud allegations and see more in Foreign Office: The big lie in SVT2 at 10 pm and in SVT Play from 8 pm.