Meijer: ‘Democrats’ fingerprints will be on the weapon’ for supporting election-denying opponent

Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) on Monday took a swipe at Democrats for supporting his election-denying primary opponent, asserting that their “fingerprints will be on the weapon” if his Republican challenger ultimately wins the race.

“If successful, Republican voters will be blamed if any of these candidates are ultimately elected, but there is no doubt Democrats’ fingerprints will be on the weapon,” Meijer wrote in a lengthy essay posted online. “We should never forget it.”

Meijer’s comments come after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) took out an ad in Michigan supporting Republican John Gibbs, the Trump-endorsed candidate who is facing off against Meijer in a primary on Tuesday.

Meijer is one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The ad backing Gibbs is part of a new strategy embraced by the DCCC, in which the group props up election-denying candidates in primary races with hopes that the far-right candidates will be easier to beat in general elections.

The DCCC brought a $425,000 ad campaign for Gibbs, which paints the candidate as “too conservative” and too close to Trump — labels that supporters of the former president favor.

On the eve of his primary race, Meijer is speaking out against the strategy across the aisle.

“You would think that the Democrats would look at John Gibbs and see the embodiment of what they say they most fear. That as patriots they would use every tool at their disposal to defeat him and similar candidates that they’ve said are an existential threat,” Meijer wrote. “Instead they are funding Gibbs.”

The first-term Republican accused Democrats of losing sight of where the moral line is in politics.

“The Democrats are justifying this political jiu-jitsu by making the argument that politics is a tough business. I don’t disagree. But that toughness is bound by certain moral limits: Those who participated in the attack on the Capitol, for example, clearly fall outside those limits,” Meijer wrote.

“But over the course of the midterms, Democrats seem to have forgotten just where those limits lie,” he added.

The congressman called out three of his Democratic colleagues — Reps. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Elaine Luria (Va.) — for making statements tolerant of the DCCC’s strategy, which has extended to GOP primaries in other states, warning that the candidates being propped up by Democrats could still win, despite being less electable.

“Conventional wisdom dictates that these extreme candidates are less electable than the normal Republicans Democrats targeted to defeat. But with a historically unpopular president in Joe Biden and inflation at 40-year highs, less-electable doesn’t mean un-electable,” Meijer wrote.

“As the January 6 Select Committee continues to warn about the ongoing threat to democracy, their own party dues are paying to help elect the same villains they rail against,” he added.

Updated 5:38 p.m.