Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona hasn’t exactly been shy about his beliefs in election conspiracy theories. After all, when a congressman describes President Joe Biden as a “fraudulent usurper,” there are no real ambiguities to his perspective.
That does not mean, however, that the GOP lawmaker is incapable of surprises. For example, it was just a couple of weeks ago when Gosar made strange public comments in which he claimed that a secret source from the “CIA fraud department” told him about hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes.
Among the problems: There doesn’t appear to be any such department at the CIA.
But even more interesting to me was the Republican’s reaction to the debacle surrounding Arizona’s sham “audit,” which backfired spectacularly on conspiracy theorists. Newsweek noted Gosar’s curious reaction to the news:
“It was a good start because we now know that fraud was there. Yeah, they made their case very well. The thing about it is that they weren’t given the tools to make a full disclosure,” Arizona GOP Representative Paul Gosar, a close ally of Trump, told reporters from the Undercurrent in Phoenix Friday afternoon, shortly after the audit was released to the Arizona Senate. “My suggestion is that we actually have some hearings and look over this batch and set a new election for Biden and Trump before the end of the year,” he added.
To be sure, there’s been plenty of discussion about another possible 2024 presidential election pitting Biden against Donald Trump. But Gosar apparently wants Congress to somehow “set” a rematch in 2021.
Putting aside the fact that there’s obviously no reason to do such a thing — Gosar’s made-up CIA sources notwithstanding — Congress doesn’t have the authority to simply call a new presidential election on a whim. What amazes about the Arizonan is his apparent indifference to how he’s perceived. As we discussed a few months ago, when Gosar described Jan. 6 rioters as “peaceful patriots,” he was widely derided, but he didn’t care. The Republican has been condemned for his associations with white nationalists, but he doesn’t seem to care about that, either. The congressman even sent out a fundraising appeal earlier this summer that said, among other things, that “the FBI might have had a hand in planning and carrying out” the Jan. 6 attack and that Ashli Babbitt “was executed in cold blood by an unidentified killer.” Evidently, Gosar is eager to add to his greatest-hits package.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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