GOP Sen. Ron Johnson Concedes Trump Lost His State: ‘51,000 Republican Voters Didn’t Vote For Him’
Topline
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump who supports an audit into Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential results, acknowledged President Joe Biden’s victory in the key swing state and said Trump underperformed other Republicans in a video released Tuesday.
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 04: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) (L), joined by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), speaks on … [+]
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Key Facts
Johnson was seen rebutting suggestions by Democratic activist Lauren Windsor, who was posting as a Trump supporter, that the election was stolen in a video Windsor posted of a GOP event just outside Milwaukee on Sunday.
Johnson noted Trump underperformed other Republican candidates further down the ballot, arguing Trump “lost Wisconsin” because “51,000 Republicans didn’t vote for him” and that there’s “nothing obviously skewed about the results.”
A GOP-led committee in the Wisconsin legislature on Monday voted to approve as much as $680,000 in taxpayer funds for an audit into the state’s 2020 election results, part of a series of bizarre, Trump-backed election audits in several swing states.
Johnson also revealed he’s spoken to Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who was sanctioned by a federal judge in Michigan last week for bringing a lawsuit baselessly alleging widespread election fraud and faces potential sanctions in other states.
Key Background
Johnson has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s election fraud claims at times, even holding a hearing on election fraud in December as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Johnson concurrently told a local paper he views Biden’s election as legitimate, then signed on with a group of Senators planning to object to Biden’s election victories in several key states, which he reversed after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Crucial Quote
“It was not rigged. It was not stolen. Donald Trump lost the election. Joe Biden won the election. It’s really clear,” former House Speaker Paul Ryan told Wisconsin ABC affiliate WISN12 in an interview on Monday, adding that there were isolated cases of fraud but it wasn’t “organized.”
Big Number
66%. That’s the share of Republicans in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll of 1,552 U.S. adults released earlier this month who said they believed the election was “rigged and stolen from Trump,” despite considerable evidence to the contrary.
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