Virginia governor race: What Glenn Youngkin says about Trump's power
Glenn Youngkin's flirtation with The Big Lie provides a scary glimpse into the new meaning of "moderate."
By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
The Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, knows that he has to try to run in a moderate lane if he wants a real shot at winning in his increasingly blue Southern state in November. But his insistence on raising doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election signals that even Republican candidates who want distance from former President Donald Trump feel obligated to peddle some version of the “big lie.”
That disconcerting reality came into focus in an Axios report published Sunday, which reported that Youngkin took a rather odd position on 2020:
Youngkin believes Biden beat Trump in the 2020 election legitimately. But while speaking with Axios, he wouldn’t say whether he would have voted to certify the election on Jan. 6 if he were a member of Congress. He did say there’s “no room for violence in America.”
Youngkin was trying in this interview to send different signals to different camps — condemning the Jan. 6 violence and accepting Joe Biden’s victory, but at the same time implying that there are open questions in some states about whether the election results were reliable. The worrying subtext was that even being a more “moderate” Republican still entails casting doubt on the election process and deferring to Trump’s election disinformation.
Youngkin’s Axios interview caused a stir and got pushback from some of the very Never Trump-style Republicans he’s concerned with winning over, particularly in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. His office released a statement the next day saying he would have, in fact, certified the election had he been in Congress — and acted like it was obvious the entire time.
“Glenn Youngkin has repeatedly said that Joe Biden was legitimately elected and that there was no significant fraud in Virginia’s 2020 election, leading to the only logical conclusion that he would have certified the election,” the statement said.
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Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Thursday, September 30th 2021 at 6:09PM
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