Rand Paul: From the Very Beginning Hillary & Dems Tried to ‘De-Legitimize’ Trump

Paul: “You know, when we talk about elections and whether or not they’re rigged or not, I don’t think one party or another is particularly immune to this. There’s still people who believe that the daily machine and the mafia conspired in Cook County in 1960. There’s some evidence of it. You know, it’s a long-time American tradition, you know, for both parties to question the other party in elections. I will say that in 2016, when Donald Trump won the first time, you know, Hillary Clinton to this day says that he was an illegitimate president. Jimmy Carter said he was illegitimate. From the very beginning, they tried to delegitimize Trump. So, I would say it’s no different. And, in fact, if we’re going to criticize Donald Trump for questioning the 2020 election, we should be equally critical of Hillary Clinton for questioning the 2016 election. The quotes are legion. I mean, dozens and dozens of quotes, dozens and dozens of interviews. Hillary Clinton to this day is unrepentant in this. But it’s worse than that. That’s just sort of an opinion. What they ended up doing is using the apparatus of government to try to delegitimize Trump. They used the apparatus of government to spread something that was a falsehood, that the Russians got the election for Donald Trump. He wasn’t deserving. The people didn’t vote for him. The Russians did this. But it turns out that all of the intelligence reports saying the Russians, of course, they try to meddle, they meddle every time in all of our elections, but it was judged to be insignificant and not consequential. Until it wasn’t. Until, all of a sudden, someone at the top of the the intelligence community decided, ‘Oh, well, yeah, we think Donald Trump’s illegitimate. We’re going to spread this throughout government.’ And there basically was a conspiracy using government and using the power of the intel agencies. So for people who complain, Donald Trump complained about the 2020 election, my goodness, the Obama Administration planted misinformation throughout government purposely. They planted it in lots of different places. At one point, John Brennan is asked the question by the analyst that he has selected, ‘This information, sir, this dossier, this Steele Dossier, is opposition research and it is unchecked. It is unverified.’ And Brennan’s flippant response was, ‘Yeah, it sure sounds like it could be true, sure rings true.’ This is the head of the CIA saying this. They got together and really cooked up something to delegitimize. So I really am not that interested in hearing, ‘Oh, Donald Trump says it. Will you admit the election wasn’t rigged?’ There’s a great book on this. It’s called ‘Rigged’ by Mollie Hemingway. And in it, she goes through in great detail the Democrats’ disregard. You know, does anybody remember the Democrats voted against seating electors? You know, the whole January 6th stuff, they say, ‘Oh, this is unprecedented. Republicans aren’t seating the electors.’ Now, look, I voted to seat the electors. I thought the argument wasn’t a valid argument. But the thing is, Democrats, including one of the ones who worked — Raskin to impeach the president, he voted not to seat the electors in 2016 because he thought the election was rigged. So for goodness’ sakes, let’s put this to rest. Both parties have accused each other of malfeasance. Both parties have accused the elections of being rigged. And let’s just try to move forward.”