Never Trumpers: Trump, Giuliani and Texas AG ‘Electoral Terrorists’

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks during a
AP Photo/John Minchillo
Joshua Klein

Renowned anti-Trump activists, including members of the Lincoln Project, which led a campaign intimidating lawyers representing the Trump campaign, are celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss a legal challenge to the 2020 election results filed by the State of Texas as they rip into supportive Republicans across the board.

“Don’t ever forget Republicans TRIED to overthrow this election,” wrote former Republican Illinois congressman Joe Walsh. “They TRIED to kill our democracy.”

“I’m embarrassed to say I served in Congress with you,” Walsh wrote in a message to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). “You are [an] enemy of democracy.”

Walsh also referred to his former Republican Congressional colleagues as “enemies of democracy.”

“You beclowned yourselves for nothing,” wrote Lincoln Project adviser Fred Wellman, as he thanked Republican Congress members “for providing @ProjectLincoln a convenient and well organized list for the mid-term races.”  

“You undermined our democracy out of cowardice,” he added.

“Think about it as essentially repudiating and unsigning the Declaration of Independence,” wrote Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt, as he described the case as “an almost inconceivable act of betrayal.”  

“They have broken faith with America and desecrated the blood sacrifices of Patriots from Lexington to Gettysburg from Normandy to the Edmund Pettus bridge,” he added. “It will be a long fight.”

“They have betrayed our country and their oaths with their seditious actions,” Schmidt wrote in yet another tweet.

“These anti-American Republicans aren’t finished,” wrote Lincoln project adviser, Republican political consultant and Trump critic Stuart Stevens as he speculated that Vice President Mike Pence would yet pull “some stunt on certification.”

Stevens, who served as the top strategist for Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, also claimed he would donate to Democrats because, he wrote, they “remember they are Americans.”

“I’ve never done this before but I’m donating to a Democratic House member,” Stevens tweeted. “Hope you’ll join me. Let’s support those who remember they are Americans.”

Stevens then called to strip pensions from Republicans who supported challenging the election results, deeming them “traitors.”

“Democratic House Members should vote to strip pensions from every @GOP House radical who is attempting to overthrow democracy,” he wrote. “Americans shouldn’t be forced to support traitors in their retirement.”

“Let’s be clear, that’s exactly what people like Trump, Giuliani and the Texas attorney general are: electoral terrorists,” wrote Never Trump political analyst Bill Kristol.

“No decent person should have anything to do with them.”

“Most disgraceful document signed by so many members of Congress since the Southern Manifesto in 1956?” he added, referring to the document written in opposition to racial integration of public places.

“This is what happens when a political party transforms itself into a cult of personality — it becomes willing to jettison almost everything, including the constitution, democracy, and the country,” wrote anti-Trump radio host Charlie Sykes, as he called for the President’s “enablers” to “pay a price.”

“You wanted a list of Republicans who are turning their backs on democracy?” Skyes asked in another tweet. “Well, they compiled it themselves.”

“This is crazy,” wrote failed Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), as he called for Republicans to simply “let it go.” 

“The attempt alone is a historic attack on democracy,” wrote Rob Sheridan.

Despite the hysterical attacks, many defended the right to legally challenge election results.

“Seeking judicial review is not subversion of the Constitution or a call to rebellion,” wrote legal analyst Jonathan Turley. “It is using the constitutional process. If going to the courts is ‘seditious,’ going to church must be atheism.”

“The media has largely misrepresented the House GOP Amicus Brief in the Texas SCOTUS case,” wrote congressman Greg Murphy, as he provided a detailed explanation written by Rep. Mike Johnson.

“The request here is simple: allow this case to be elevated to the Supreme Court, and let the Supreme Court make a determination,” wrote congressman Dan Crenshaw (R). “All cases should be heard, all investigations should be thorough. It is that simple.”

Explaining the legitimate basis for the case, Crenshaw hoped that such challenges would force states to “clean up their act.” 

“And what is the basis of this case?” he asked. “This: Authorities other than state legislatures unilaterally made sweeping changes to election law and therefore diminished integrity and faith in the system.”

Columnist Scott Morefield described Never Trump conservatives as “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” pointing to a piece by Kristol “rooting for a GOP loss in Georgia & a Democratic-controlled Senate.”

The Never Trump activists joined many on the left who referred to the Republicans who sought to challenge election results as traitors guilty of betrayal, sedition or fascism as well as enemies of democracy, including Sen. Chris Murphy, President Trump’s niece Mary Trump, Mother Jones writer David Corn, former Obama operative Scott Dworkin, columnist Michael Gerson, political analyst and former Clinton White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, journalist Kurt Eichenwald, and author Don Winslow.

“[T]he people who signed their names to this seditious lawsuit need to do hard time in prison for it,” wrote political journalist Bill Palmer.

Some went so far as to make Nazi references. 

“[T]rying to find some unity with these 106 Nazi scumbags” is not the way to start solving the country’s devastating problems, wrote writer Bill Corbett.

“In the last 100 years, only the Nazi Party has been a graver threat to American democracy than the GOP right now,” wrote journalist Michael Salfino.

President Trump has been outspoken in challenging the election results.  

Republicans have also cast doubt on the election process, with 77 percent stating their belief that there was widespread voter fraud, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a case directly to the Supreme Court on Monday, challenging the election results from Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Seventeen states joined the lawsuit as well as over 120 House Republicans.

The suit argued that the four states illegally made changes to the voting rules through the courts instead of through state legislatures, violating the Electors Clause. It also argues the differences in voting rules in different counties violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and cites claims of voting irregularities in the states

The Supreme Court dismissed the legal challenge on Friday, claiming, “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

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