“We will see if this is a legal and valid election,” Stefanik, a member of House GOP leadership and a Donald Trump ally, said in an interview with “Meet the Press.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Sunday wouldn’t commit to certifying the 2024 election results during an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
While interviewing Stefanik, who serves in House Republican leadership, host Kristen Welker asked, “Would you vote to certify, and will you vote to certify, the results of the 2024 election no matter what they show?”
Stefanik, who has boosted former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, said that she did not vote to certify the 2020 results in the state of Pennsylvania and several other states because there were “unconstitutional acts circumventing the state legislature and unilaterally changing election law.”
ship of theseus arguments are their stock in trade. You start with a statement no one could disagree with, like “I will vote to certify the election if it seems like a free and fair election. If it seems otherwise, I will lead an investigation that will root out fraud and ensure the people’s voices are heard.” Then you start doing string substitutions:
“it seems like a free and fair election” gets subbed for “Trump wins”
“it seems otherwise” == “Trump loses”
“lead an investigation that will root out fraud” == “obstruct the proceedings”
“the people’s voices are heard” == “Trump is installed as dictator for life”
Then you pretend you never made those substitutions, and you get to rhetorically hammer your opponents for being against free and fair elections and in favor of fraud. After all, everyone else heard the very reasonable “I will vote to certify the election if it seems like a free and fair election. If it seems otherwise, I will lead an investigation that will root out fraud and ensure the people’s voices are heard.” But the party faithful clearly heard: “I will vote to certify the election if Trump wins. If Trump loses, I will obstruct the proceedings and ensure Trump is installed as dictator for life.”
Innuendo Studios has a great video about how the Christian Nationalist terrorists use their media pipelines to establish public vs private definitions of phrases, and then use those equivocated phrases to say one thing to the general public and another thing to their base.
Yes, if they couldn’t ship unpopular politics misleadingly as uncontroversial feel-good slam-dunks, they’d never get any support in politics. It’s a pity that sort of rhetoric works as well as it does
Also Innuendo’s work is fantastic