In impeachment trial, Rep. Joaquin Castro details Trump’s baseless election fraud claims
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro on Wednesday laid out to the U.S. Senate how former President Donald Trump spent months selling his supporters on the lie that the election would be stolen from him, priming them to act to stop it from happening.
It was a key part of the House impeachment manager’s effort to demonstrate that Trump incited the insurrection at the Capitol — not just by telling his supporters to “fight like hell” during a rally on Jan. 6, but by working to undermine their faith in the outcome throughout the 2020 campaign.
“President Trump told his supporters over and over again, nearly every day, in dozens of tweets, speeches and rallies, that their most precious right in our democracy — their voice, their vote — was being stripped away and they had to fight to stop that,” Castro said. “And they believed him. So they fought.”
Castro showed many of those tweets and clips of Trump’s statements throughout 2020, in which he asserted repeatedly that the only way he could lose the election was through massive fraud. The San Antonio Democrat showed Trump’s repeated calls to stop counting votes after election day and rolled footage of Trump’s speech from the White House that evening in which he declared victory.
“This attack did not come from one speech and it didn’t happen by accident,” Castro said. “The evidence shows clearly that this mob was provoked over many months by Donald J. Trump. And if you look at the evidence — his purposeful conduct — you’ll see that the attack was foreseeable and preventable.”
In a brief moment of levity in the Senate trial, which featured hours of weighty arguments about American democracy at risk, Castro joked that he understands it’s “no fun to lose.”
“I’m a Texas Democrat. We’ve lost a few elections over the years,” said Castro, who has not lost an election himself. “But can you imagine telling your supporters that the only way you can possibly lose is if an American election was rigged and stolen from you?”
Castro began his roughly 18-minutes presentation with clips of interviews from the summer in which Trump, behind in the polls, was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
“I have to see,” Trump said in a Fox News interview in July. “I’m not going to just say yes.”
“There won’t be a transfer, frankly, there will be a continuation,” Trump said in September.
Castro showed a May 24 tweet in which Trump railed against mail-in ballots and predicted “It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history.”
In another tweet Castro showed, from June 22, Trump wrote, “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION … IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”
On July 30, Trump tweeted: “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Castro followed those with clips of interviews with Trump’s supporters telling reporters they would not believe the election results if Joe Biden won.
“There’s no way in heck our president’s going to lose,” one supporter said. “Yes, it would be a rigged election that some type of cheating went on — what have you. I firmly believe that.”
“He truly made his base believe that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged,” Castro said. “And senators, all of us know, and all of us understand how dangerous that is for our country. Because the most combustible thing you can do in a democracy is convince people an election doesn’t count, that their voice and their vote don’t count, and that it’s all been stolen — especially if what you’re saying are lies.”
Castro then walked through Trump’s repeated claims on and after election day that the fraud he spent months warning his supporters about was happening.
“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” Trump tweeted on midnight on Nov. 4. “We will never let them do it.”
Castro an showed examples, including 100 Trump supporters who showed up to an election center in Phoenix with rifles.
“Senators, this is dangerous,” Castro said. “This is not the president saying to his supporters someone stole your cup of coffee. This is the Commander-in-Chief telling his supporters your election is being stolen and you must stop the counting of American votes.
“And it worked,” Castro said. “His words became their actions. His commands led to their actions.”
ben.wermund@chron.com
