Mitch McConnell not critical of Trump's baseless election fraud claims
Morgan Watkins
Louisville Courier Journal
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell weighed in on the 2020 presidential election Friday morning but did not directly address President Donald Trump's baseless claims that it's being rigged against him — and repeatedly refused to do so when reporters pressed him on the issue.
There is no evidence of illegal votes being counted or of election fraud despite Trump's allegations Thursday night that illegal votes are being tallied in an attempt to "steal" the election from him.
McConnell posted this statement about the election Friday morning on Twitter: "Here's how this must work in our great country: Every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes. That's how Americans' votes decide the result."
He did not directly address Trump's accusations that the election is being rigged or say whether he agrees with the president's baseless claim that illegal votes are being counted.
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Later that morning, at a press conference in Frankfort, McConnell said he didn't have anything else to say about the presidential election beyond his post on Twitter.
Reporters asked him again and again about the presidential race and the baseless claims of voter fraud Trump made Thursday night, but McConnell refused to engage.
"Look, I've already covered the subject. … I sent out a tweet this morning which covers my view of where we are," he said as he fielded those questions. "I told you: I have sent out what I want to say today about this situation in the tweet that you all have. … I've said what I intend to say about it."
"It won't make any difference how many times you ask," the senator, who won his own reelection race in a landslide this week, also said. "I've already given you my answer."
Asked if he has spoken with Trump about the election over the past couple of days, McConnell said: "I generally don't report my conversations with the president, but as you know, he's on the phone a lot and we talk frequently."
Kentucky's other U.S. senator, Rand Paul, piped up on social media Friday morning, as well — with a pair of tweets suggesting voter fraud is more likely in an election like this one that has widespread mail-in voting.
However, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud — because of the absentee ballots voters mailed in around the country or for any other reason — in this election.
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Mail-in voting is a longstanding part of U.S. elections, although Kentucky and other states expanded its use because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has been linked to the deaths of over 235,000 people in America. (That death toll is higher than any other nation's and keeps rising.)
States set their own rules for how elections are run within their borders and put various requirements in place that voters must follow if they don't want their absentee ballots to be rejected.
"The history of voter fraud in absentee voting is long, but it was usually difficult to affect an election because less than 1% voted absentee. Policing postmarks, signatures and fraud is now overwhelming because half the electorate votes by mail," Paul tweeted Friday. "Elections with millions of mail ballots makes fraud more likely not less."
Paul shared a link on Twitter to the Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database — but a recent investigation by USA TODAY, Columbia Journalism Investigations and PBS' "Frontline" determined the foundation's database "presents misleading and incomplete information that overstates the number of alleged fraud instances and includes cases where no crime was committed ..."
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, criticized that investigation and said the database is "factual, backed up by proof of convictions or findings by courts or government bodies in the form of reports from reputable news sources and/or court records."
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Other Kentucky Republicans in Congress made public comments about the election Friday, too.
U.S. Rep. Andy Barr tweeted that afternoon: "The foundation of our Republic is a fair electoral process, every legal vote should count."
Barr also shared a clip of a television interview in which he said he didn't think the Trump campaign is saying the ballots should stop being counted.
"I think what they're saying is that we need to count legal ballots — all legal ballots cast — and not count illegal ballots cast. And they have every right to present evidence that some of the ballots that are being processed are illegally cast, and the evidence will have to be decided by a court."
Again, there's no evidence of illegal ballots being counted in this election.
Longtime U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers on Friday tweeted a picture of himself and Trump, saying the president's "allegations of election fraud must be investigated to ensure the election is conducted fairly for the American people."
Reach reporter Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @morganwatkins26.