One could make a full-time occupation out of responding to things Jonathan Chait writes about me and about other National Review writers. Chait’s latest column runs off the rails three times. First, we get this potshot at Kevin Williamson:
The main organizing idea of Democratic politics from 2016 to 2020,” Williamson continued, “was that the 2016 election was somehow stolen from Hillary Rodham Clinton, who insisted that Donald Trump was an ‘illegitimate’ president.” Williamson again offered zero examples to support this claim, and ignored the enormous evidence to the contrary — from Clinton conceding the morning after the election to Barack Obama meeting with Trump and assisting in the transition. The lack of evidence reveals more than the extraordinary claim itself. For the National Review audience, these untruths are self-evident.
Actually, Kevin did not need to present the evidence because it has been laid out exhaustively here so many times. I detailed it at tremendous length in November 2020. Just a sampling:
John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman regarded as the moral leader and conscience of the Democratic Party, told Meet the Press in January 2017, “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president. . . . I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.” Lewis led 62 congressional Democrats in boycotting Trump’s inauguration. They said why they were doing this. Don Beyer: “I will not be part of normalizing or legitimizing a man whose election may well have depended on the malicious foreign interference of Russia’s leaders.” Jamie Raskin: “The moral and political legitimacy of this presidency are in the gravest doubt.” Jerrold Nadler said that “the Russian weighing in the election, the Russian attempt to hack the election — and frankly, the FBI’s weighing in on the election — I think makes his election illegitimate. It puts an asterisk next to his name.”
The inauguration was — unlike the typical American handover of power — marred by violent protests that led to over 200 arrests. . . . Jimmy Carter, June 2019: “If fully investigated, it would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election and he was put in office because the Russians interfered . . . on his behalf.” When asked if that meant Trump “is an illegitimate president,” Carter agreed: “Based on what I just said, which I can’t retract, I would say yes.” House speaker Nancy Pelosi, January 2020: “American elections should be decided by the American people, not by the Russian Government. Retweet if you agree!” Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in a June 2020 book, claimed outright that “I think one reason the elections weren’t what they should have been was because the Russians manipulated the votes. It’s that simple. . . . It doesn’t take a math expert to understand that by changing a few votes, the outcome will be different. So, I have no doubt.”
Chait, who notoriously promoted the idea for years on end that Donald Trump had been a Kremlin asset since 1987 — a claim he was still pushing as recently as February 2021 — is the last person who ought to be feigning ignorance on this sustained campaign.
Second, in one of the most overheated analogies in a news cycle full of them, Chait argues that the January 6 committee was right to refuse seats to some prominent Republican members of the House, a step that led to most Republicans withdrawing from the committee. In Chait’s view, it was appropriate not to include House Republicans who objected to Biden’s election (the grounds for their exclusion) because “the 9/11 hearings did not include any representatives of Al Qaeda.” Leave aside the moral atrocity of comparing members of Congress to the 9/11 terrorists: If Chait thinks that House members who voted against Biden’s 2020 electors in January 2021 should be excluded from the committee, why does he have no similar objection to the committee including House members who voted against George W. Bush’s entirely legitimate 2004 electors in January 2005? The list of objectors in 2005 includes the chairman of the committee, Bennie Thompson. Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee, tried to object to Trump’s electors in 2017.
Third, Chait grasps at straws to go after me. He says that I and others who share my views present ourselves “as the sensible middle ground between the equivalent extremes of promoting Trump and holding him accountable. They might like Trump to go away, but any accountability mechanism is going to shatter his coalition.” Chait knows, or ought to know, that this is a false account of my position. Because I respect the rule of law, I have argued against criminally prosecuting Trump on legally flimsy grounds or mutilating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to get at him, but I have also made the case repeatedly and at great length at the time that he should have been convicted by the Senate in the second impeachment and permanently barred from political office. I have argued more times than I can count for why Trump’s political career should be over, why Republicans should not run him in 2024, should starve him of attention as much as possible, and should grasp that he can be beaten in a primary. While I have argued that the January 6 committee was poorly devised and handled and would cover a lot of redundant ground, I also argued that it was entirely proper to convene a committee — indeed, that an impeachment inquiry should have been convened — on Trump’s lassitude in enforcing the law against the rioters that day.
Chait also complains that “McLaughlin’s personal choice to inherit leadership of this coalition, Ron DeSantis, . . . still has refused to say whether Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.” Of course, DeSantis steering clear of the issue still makes him obviously preferable by any standard to Trump’s obsessively wallowing in 2020. But I find it curious that Chait is demanding that Republicans such as DeSantis have an affirmative duty to declare the legitimacy of Biden. Chait has never made demands of the many Democrats who have attacked the legitimacy of the elections of recent Republican presidents or governors. More to the point, Chait himself has argued for many years and as recently as September 2021 that the 2000 election was stolen: “There remains one important post-9/11 belief that has yet to undergo significant revision: the comforting fallacy that George W. Bush won the 2000 election more or less fairly. . . . The truth we’ve suppressed is that Bush not only misused his office, but never should have held it in the first place.” As Chait headlined a column back in 2012: “Yes, Bush v. Gore Did Steal the Election.” If he won’t let go of his own stolen-election theories and won’t say boo against his party’s, maybe he should get out of the business of lecturing others on this point.