Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said that the number of Republicans who believe former President Trump will be reinstated as commander in chief later this year represents a “glaring warning” on continued widespread acceptance of Trump’s unsupported claim of a stolen 2020 election.
In remarks from the Senate floor, Schumer referenced a recent Politico-Morning Consult poll that found that 29 percent of Republicans believe that Trump will be placed back in the Oval Office later this year.
The poll came after New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said last week that Trump has been pressuring conservative media to legitimize his theory of a “rigged” election and has been telling people in his inner circle that he believes he will be reinstated by August of this year.
While 61 percent of GOP survey respondents dismissed the conspiracy theory, Schumer said the nearly 3 in 10 Republicans who supported Trump’s claim “is a depressing fact of our times that there is an audience out there who will literally believe anything the former president says, no matter how unrealistic or untrue.”
“They believe him when he just abjectly lies,” Schumer said, adding, “It is a glaring warning that the big lie has created fertile ground for all sorts of insane conspiracy.”
“Of course, the idea of ‘reinstatement’ comes from disgraced former President Trump himself and is nothing more than the deluded ramblings of a defeated politician,” the Democratic leader said before noting, however, that the blame “does not rest only with the former president.”
Schumer slammed his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill, arguing “Washington Republicans and the political right” have “not done enough to stand up to the big lie.”
“After making a few brave noises in the wake of Jan. 6, Republican leadership here in Washington now seem to have traded political courage and truth for appeasement,” he said.
“The Republican Minority Leader in the House called Donald Trump ‘morally responsible’ for the attack on Jan. 6,” Schumer added, referring to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
“He empowered his deputies to take part in painstaking negotiations to establish an independent commission to study those events — and then promptly voted against it,” Schumer argued. “He convened his entire conference to deliver a pink slip to the one member of his leadership team who dared to repeat the truth that President Biden is the president.”
Schumer asserted Thursday that the “Republican Party is now wrapped around the axle of the big lie,” adding that a “big reason” for this is because “Republican leaders are unwilling to move on from Trumpism.”
“The truth is: The big lie has consequences,” the Senate leader added. “It erodes our trust in elections, faith in our democracy, and it’s gnawing away at the very right to vote in America.”
Haberman said last week that Trump has been “laser focused” on the Arizona election audit fueled by GOP claims of fraud in Maricopa County.
Election experts and Democrats, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, have called the recount a solely partisan effort based on unsupported voting fraud allegations.