Trump Continues To Push Election Falsehoods. Here's Why That Matters
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Donald Trump, the former president defeated in the 2020 election, lost his access to social media after he used it to encourage an attack on democracy. But it's a free country. He can still talk, and he has exercised his freedom of speech by issuing statements which matter because an NPR analysis shows a direct line from Trump's comments to the words and actions of the Republican Party. NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro is here. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What are these statements that you analyzed?
MONTANARO: Well, he's been sending statements to anyone on his email list and now putting them up on this blog-like feature of his post-presidency website. And what we found is that he's focused on relitigating his election loss and efforts to review it. I mean, just yesterday, he was grousing about that loss, about - and browbeating Republican leaders for not doing more about it. He also got defensive yesterday about the number of visitors to his site and reiterated that he plans to launch a separate social media platform, something we've reported on in the past and just how daunting a task that is, especially since he's lost such a big - such big platforms with Twitter and Facebook.
The posts he's put up has, in the past couple of weeks, spiked. In total, since late March, there have been about 90 posts to the site. More than a third of them mention the 2020 elections or reviews of it. Eighteen include endorsements or are about endorsements. Eleven are about Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was ousted from Republican leadership in the House after her repeated criticisms of Trump's role in the January 6 insurrection, and that's something Trump has been beating the drum about. And just 10, by the way, have included policy criticisms of President Biden, so you see what this is all about. He's never been able to find an off-ramp for his election loss. He wants to keep his ability to run in 2024 alive. And it's clear ahead of next year's midterms, he wants to be a kingmaker in the party.
INSKEEP: If there aren't that many people who find his website directly, why do these statements matter?
MONTANARO: Well, the former president's considered, you know, the front-runner to be the GOP presidential nominee again in 2024, and he remains the most popular person within the Republican Party. And that has meant that Republican elected officials are listening. You know, if he dropped his continued lies about the election, it's pretty likely the Republican Party would move on. But since he keeps stressing it, unsurprisingly, so are they. So he's been a real weather vane for the rest of the party. So it's easy to think, just because Trump isn't on Twitter, that he's out of sight, out of mind. But he's not for half of the policymakers in Washington.
INSKEEP: And of course, those messages can get picked up by conservative media or out-of-reality media - OAN-type folks - and also just read directly by political leaders, even if not that many voters read them directly.
MONTANARO: For sure.
INSKEEP: So how is that influence playing out in the party?
MONTANARO: Yeah, it's been pretty evident the last few weeks. Republican leaders oppose a bipartisan commission to examine what happened on January 6. So does Trump, who blasted the 35 House Republicans who voted for it. And even though House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier had criticized Trump for his role in the violence that day, they're now singing from the same tune as Trump, and it's all written on the same page of paper or on the same portion of the internet that you can see on his blog-like portion of his site.
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks very much.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
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