Presidential historian Jon Meacham said Wednesday on MSNBC that Attorney General Bill Barr saying there was no evidence of fraud on a scale large enough to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election “denied a great deal of oxygen to the conspiracy theories” of President Trump.
Anchor Craig Melvin said, “Jon, meanwhile you’ve got the Trump team still fighting the election results, or so it would seem, giving the impression that they’re fighting at least. But you got the Attorney General now, Bill Barr. He weighed in telling the ‘Associated Press’ the Department of Justice has not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected the outcome of the election. How significant was that admission to you from Bill Barr?”
Meacham said, “It felt to me as though, what you were saying, kind of anti-Democratic paint ball game that Rudy Giuliani has been playing around the country, is just that. If, in fact, the attorney general had given credence, some kind of sanction to these conspiracy theories I think we would be in a different place. I think the attorney general’s decision not to do that and to recognize reality is— it’s amazing we have to say —to commend someone for doing something as clear as following the law and recognizing facts are facts. I think it denied a great deal of oxygen to the conspiracy theories that President Trump and Mayor Giuliani have been trying to set around the country.”
Meacham has been a staunch critic of Trump during his presidency. However, it was recently revealed that Meacham had been doing work for Joe Biden, Trump’s general election opponent, without any disclosure.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN