Rep. Matt Rosendale is off to a bad start. On his third day in office as Montana’s lone representative in Congress, Rosendale ignored the domestic terrorism and the smeared blood and feces, and the desecration of the nation’s capitol and decided it was a good and proper idea to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Incredibly, Rosendale objected to the electoral votes of two states he does not represent – Arizona and Pennsylvania. This, from a member of a party that says it extols states’ rights – unless, apparently, those states’ electors vote for a candidate this three-day representative doesn’t like.
Rosendale doesn’t owe anything to Montana Democrats who didn’t vote for him; they had a good idea of who he was. But he owes something huge to Montana Republicans: he owes the truth. He needs to strongly disavow the great lie that led directly to the domestic terrorist attack on Jan. 6 when Trump released the flying monkeys.
Rosendale must tell his constituents the truth: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the presidential election fair and square on Nov, 4, 2020 by an electoral vote of 306 to Trump’s 232, and by a popular vote of 81.2 million to Trump’s 74.2 million. Trump filed 63 lawsuits challenging these results and lost 62, including two before the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump’s own appointed chief of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Christopher Krebs, called it the most secure election in U.S. history. Trump swiftly fired him for speaking the truth.
And the truth is that there was no election fraud. The voting machines were not rigged by Venezuela or anyone else. There were no “illegal votes” cast, unless you count the guy in Pennsylvania who registered his dead mother and voted her ballot – for Trump. There is no such thing as a post-election “audit.” The votes were counted fair and square – three times fair and square in the case of Georgia. There is no evidence of fraud. There never was.
These are the truths that Rosendale must tell his constituents. And he should say it out loud and very soon, before the nation suffers another bloody Attack of the Village People.
Here’s another truth: Rosendale made a cynical political calculation that by siding with a pro-Trump riotous and murderous mob, he’ll have that mob on his side when he runs for reelection in two years. But pro-Trump Republicans from Vice-President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William Barr to recently-arrested Jan. 6 rioters are disavowing Trump. The Republican Party nationally is wrestling with its own dark soul and is rethinking the deal it made with the devil in 2016. By 2022, that deal could turn very sour, and Rosendale could well find himself on the wrong side of history, wondering if he should have told the truth to his constituents when he had the chance.
Carlotta Grandstaff
Hamilton