Monday’s “Morning Joe” broke down President Trump and his team’s continued efforts to overturn the election results even after the electoral college cast their votes for Joe Biden, leading co-host Mika Brzezinski to exasperatedly declare, “These people!”
Both NBC News and the New York Times reported that Trump considered appointing his lawyer Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate what claims of potential voter fraud. There has been no conclusive proof any major voter fraud took place in the 2020 election.
Those reports came on the heels of an interview by former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn — recently pardoned by Trump during the lame-duck period — who alarmingly suggested on far-right network Newsmax that martial law should be instituted to “rerun an election” in swing states.
Co-host Joe Scarborough sighed, “It is so confusing.” The Powell news is just the latest turn in the ongoing story around Trump’s refusal to accept the election results (Powell has publicly supported unfounded voter conspiracy theories). Since the election in early November, dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump’s legal team baselessly alleging widespread voter fraud have been smacked down in federal and state courts. Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court even opted to not hear the state of Texas’s attempt to overturn Biden’s victories in key swing states, effectively shutting the door on Trump’s efforts to upend the vote before the Electoral College met to finalize the election last week.
Scarborough went on, musing that if anyone had told elected Republicans six months ago that the president would attempt to overturn the election — with allies even suggesting the use of martial law in the process — they would have accused that person of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Now, as the show hosts pointed out, Trump is denying on Twitter that his team ever called for martial law, even privately, and the Army has released a statement saying there “is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”
Watch the “Morning Joe” discussion above, via MSNBC.