Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) had a battle over election fraud with anchor George Stephanopoulos, Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Stephanopoulos said, “A threshold question for you, this election was not stolen, do you accept that fact?”
Paul said, “Well, what I would say that the debate over whether or not there was fraud should occur. We never had any presentation in court. Most of the cases were thrown out for lack of standing, a procedural way of not hearing it. A law was changed in secretary of state, not the state legislatures. There’s still a chance that those actually work their way up to the Supreme Court.”
Stephanopoulos said, “I have to stop you there. No election is perfect, but there were 86 challenges filed by President Trump and his allies in court, all were dismissed. Every state certified the results after counts and recounts. The Department of Justice, led by William Barr, said there’s no widespread of fraud. Can’t you just say the words this election was not stolen?”
Paul said, “What I would suggest is, is that if we want greater confidence in our elections and 75% of Republicans agree with me is that we do need to look at election integrity and we need to see if we can restore confidence in the election.”
Stephanopoulos said, “Seventy-five percent of Republicans agree with you because they were fed a big lie by President Trump and his supporters that the election was stolen.”
Paul said, “George, where you make a mistake is people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say everything’s a lie instead of saying there’s two sides to everything. Historically what would happen if I said In thought there were fraud, you would interview someone who said there wasn’t. Now you insert yourself in the middle and say the absolute fact is everything I’m saying is a lie.”
Stephanopoulos said, “I said what the president was lie. Hold on a second. He said the election was stolen. This election was not stolen. The results were certified in every single state.”
Paul said, “You said we’re all liars. You are simply saying we’re all liars.”
After more back and forth, Paul said, “There were lots of problems, and there were secretaries of state who illegally changed the law, and that needs to be fixed, and I’m going to work hard to fix it. I won’t be cowed by people saying, ‘oh, you are a liar.’ That is the problem with the media today. They say all Republican are liars and everything we say is lies. There are two sides to every story. Interview somebody on the other side.”
Stephanopoulos said, “Sir, there are not two sides to this story. This has been looked in every single state.”
Paul said, “Sure there are. There are two sides to every story. George, you’re forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think there’s only one side. You’re inserting yourself into the story to say I’m a liar because I want to look at secretaries of state who changed the laws. It happened. You can’t just sweep it under the rug—nothing to see here. You’re a fool to bring this up. A journalist would hear both sides. Not insert themselves in the story.”
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