PA R' Leader Afraid of Trump
ELECTION 2020|Dec 9, 2020,12:13pm EST|83,473 views
Penn. GOP Leader Says Her House Would Be ‘Bombed’ If She Defied Trump’s Fraud Claims
Andrew Solender
The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania State Senate offered a grim prediction of what would result from her refusing to publicly back Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, underscoring the pressure Republican officials across the country are under from a president with a rabidly supportive base.
Kim Ward said she had not seen a letter signed by 64 lawmakers in Pennsylvania’s lower chamber urging the state’s Congressional delegation to block certification of the state’s electors for President-elect Joe Biden, but said she would have faced repercussions from refusing to sign.
“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight,” she told the Times after her counterpart in the lower chamber flipped from resisting Trump’s demands to publicly embracing them after denunciations from the president.
Trump called Pennsylvania’s Republican House Speaker Bryan Cutler twice to ask him to help overturn Pennsylvania’s election, only to be told the legislature lacked the power to do so, according to the Times and the Washington Post - but Cutler nonetheless signed the letter.
Earlier this month, top Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani alleged the Pennsylvania legislature “let down America” by not intervening in the election, while his colleague Jenna Ellis retweeted a tweet calling the state’s GOP leaders “liars” and “cowards” and “traitors.”
Trump has tried to get officials in three states, including Pennsylvania, to intervene in the election: he called county officials in Detroit and met with Michigan GOP lawmakers at the White House and he called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to urge him to help overturn his state’s election.
“He is. Are you?” tweeted the Arizona GOP in response to a post by a “Stop the Steal” rally organizer stating: “I am willing to give my life for this fight.” The state party followed up by tweeting, “This is what we do, who we are: Live for nothing, or die for something.”
Lawmakers and election officials across the country have said they’ve faced threats for defying the president. A black lawmaker in Michigan said Sunday she received phone calls threatening to dox and lynch her after she condemned her Republican colleagues for accommodating Giuliani at a voter fraud hearing. Georgia voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling alleged earlier this month that a 20-year-old contractor for Dominion Voting Systems - a heavy target of Trump’s conspiracy theories - has faced death threats and calls for him to be “hung for treason.”
Top Trump allies have occasionally issued threats. Trump attorney Joe DiGenova faced significant heat for stating Chris Krebs, the ousted chief of the federal government’s election security agency, should be “taken out at dawn and shot” for contradicting Trump’s voter fraud claims.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and frequent target of Trump, said Trump hasn’t done enough to “quell the violent rhetoric being born out of his continued claims of winning the states where he obviously lost.” The FBI last month began investigating threats against Raffensperger, Sterling and other officials.
Penn. GOP Leader Says Her House Would Be ‘Bombed’ If She Defied Trump’s Fraud Claims
Andrew Solender
The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania State Senate offered a grim prediction of what would result from her refusing to publicly back Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, underscoring the pressure Republican officials across the country are under from a president with a rabidly supportive base.
Kim Ward said she had not seen a letter signed by 64 lawmakers in Pennsylvania’s lower chamber urging the state’s Congressional delegation to block certification of the state’s electors for President-elect Joe Biden, but said she would have faced repercussions from refusing to sign.
“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight,” she told the Times after her counterpart in the lower chamber flipped from resisting Trump’s demands to publicly embracing them after denunciations from the president.
Trump called Pennsylvania’s Republican House Speaker Bryan Cutler twice to ask him to help overturn Pennsylvania’s election, only to be told the legislature lacked the power to do so, according to the Times and the Washington Post - but Cutler nonetheless signed the letter.
Earlier this month, top Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani alleged the Pennsylvania legislature “let down America” by not intervening in the election, while his colleague Jenna Ellis retweeted a tweet calling the state’s GOP leaders “liars” and “cowards” and “traitors.”
Trump has tried to get officials in three states, including Pennsylvania, to intervene in the election: he called county officials in Detroit and met with Michigan GOP lawmakers at the White House and he called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to urge him to help overturn his state’s election.
“He is. Are you?” tweeted the Arizona GOP in response to a post by a “Stop the Steal” rally organizer stating: “I am willing to give my life for this fight.” The state party followed up by tweeting, “This is what we do, who we are: Live for nothing, or die for something.”
Lawmakers and election officials across the country have said they’ve faced threats for defying the president. A black lawmaker in Michigan said Sunday she received phone calls threatening to dox and lynch her after she condemned her Republican colleagues for accommodating Giuliani at a voter fraud hearing. Georgia voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling alleged earlier this month that a 20-year-old contractor for Dominion Voting Systems - a heavy target of Trump’s conspiracy theories - has faced death threats and calls for him to be “hung for treason.”
Top Trump allies have occasionally issued threats. Trump attorney Joe DiGenova faced significant heat for stating Chris Krebs, the ousted chief of the federal government’s election security agency, should be “taken out at dawn and shot” for contradicting Trump’s voter fraud claims.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and frequent target of Trump, said Trump hasn’t done enough to “quell the violent rhetoric being born out of his continued claims of winning the states where he obviously lost.” The FBI last month began investigating threats against Raffensperger, Sterling and other officials.