Peter Meijer, John Gibbs at odds over Trump, baseless election fraud claims

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Two Republicans vying to represent West Michigan in Congress, U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer and challenger John Gibbs, disagreed during a roundtable discussion about the integrity of the 2020 election and President Donald Trump’s impeachment following the Jan. 6 riot.

But both candidates, competing in the Aug. 2 Republican primary for the 3rd Congressional District, agreed about the need to bolster domestic energy production and reduce government spending at a time when rising inflation is hurting residents across the state. They also spoke about the war in Ukraine — Meijer supports a recently approved $40 billion aid package for the country, while Gibbs opposes it.

The roundtable discussion was hosted by WOOD-TV and moderated by political reporter Rick Albin.

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Immediately after kicking off, the roundtable turned to Trump. The former president wants to see Meijer, first elected to Congress in 2020, booted from his seat for voting to impeach him following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has endorsed Gibbs, who served in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during his administration.

“When it comes to the former president and myself, we’ve obviously had our differences,” Meijer said. “I was there on Jan. 6. I saw police officers beaten, bruised, the vice president having to flee with his wife and daughter from a mob that was chanting hang Mike Pence.”

Meijer, who joined nine other Republicans in voting to impeach Trump, said he takes the oath he swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution “seriously,” and that he “voted accordingly.”

Gibbs, who grew up in Eaton County and now lives in Byron Center, said Trump will play a role in the primary because voters saw him as a leader who wanted to “shake-up” and “reform” the political system “back towards” what people want.

“I think that’s why so many people were hurt by Representative Meijer’s impeachment vote as well as the rest of the folks that voted for that impeachment,” said Gibbs, who served as acting assistant secretary for community planning and development at HUD. “That’s what I hear out there when I talk to the voters. It’s just a level of anger that people feel as a result of that.”

This year marks Meijer’s first reelection campaign.

The 34-year-old, who was deployed to Iraq in the Army Reserves and later served as a conflict analyst in Afghanistan, won his congressional seat in November 2020 when he defeated Democrat Hillary Scholten 53% to 47%.

But the 3rd Congressional District is now sharply different than the one Meijer won in 2020. Following the once-a-decade redistricting process, it now includes the city of Grand Rapids, a smaller portion of Kent County, as well as the city of Muskegon and northern Ottawa County. One political observer previously described the newly drawn district as a “toss-up” between Republicans and Democrats.

Under its former iteration, the district more heavily favored Republicans.

During the roundtable, the candidates were asked whether they questioned the results of the 2020 election.

Meijer said the presidential race didn’t turn out the way “many of us wanted it to,” but he did not dispute Biden’s victory.

Gibbs, on the other hand, challenged the results.

“I think when you look at the results of the 2020 election, there are anomalies in there, to put it very lightly, that are simply mathematically impossible,” said Gibbs, who moved to Byron Center in 2021.

A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee issued a report in September 2021 that found no evidence of widespread or systematic voter fraud in the 2020 general election. The Michigan Bureau of Elections conducted statewide audits and reached a similar conclusion.

Numerous state and federal judges also dismissed lawsuits from the Trump administration challenging the 2020 election results, media reports show.

Later on in the roundtable, the discussion turned toward the economy and inflation, which has reached a 40-year high and raised prices on everything from groceries to gasoline.

Meijer laid the blame for rising inflation on the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The American Rescue Plan was an economic stimulus package that included funding for a host of COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts as well as $1,400 per-person checks for most Americans.

“We’ve been working to stop Build Back Better, stop the Green New Deal, stop these policies involving massive amounts of government funds, of taxpayer dollars flowing out the door and just chasing ever fewer goods, ever fewer resources,” Meijer said.

Meijer also said the U.S. needs to boost domestic energy production, particularly natural gas.

Gibbs also spoke about the need to cut government spending.

But he took aim at Meijer for supporting a $1.5 trillion spending bill approved in March. The bipartisan bill funds the government for the rest of the year, and included $13.6 billion to support Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February.

“We’ve really got to look at spending. We’ve really got to look at how we roll back some of the unnecessary spending to get a grip on this inflation problem,” said Gibbs, who worked as a software developer in Silicon Valley and Christian missionary in Japan before he went into public service.

Meijer, in response, said the bill was approved with bipartisan support, included $10 million for Kent County, and was similar in spending “to a lot of the budgets that were passed during the Trump administration.”

Gibbs also criticized a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, which was supported by Meijer and signed into law by Biden in May.

“First of all, that’s a very large amount of money relative to a country the size of Ukraine,” he said. “Secondly, and most importantly, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world along with Russia,”

Meijer, who favors supporting the government of Ukraine but opposes sending U.S. troops into the country, clarified that the $40 billion was not provided directly to the government of Ukraine.

“Over half of that funding went to pay and to replenish United States stockpiles for the missiles and other weaponry we transferred, and also to fund our troop deployments on the periphery,” he said.

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