On the most recent episode of his “Hold These Truths” podcast, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said that many of his colleagues who publicly profess to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump say behind closed doors that they don’t actually believe it.
“It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up,” Crenshaw said. Clearly it worked, because they tried to overthrow the government and all.
Via Huffington Post:
“I’ve talked about this ad nauseum, it really made me angry,” the former Navy SEAL told election reform advocate Nick Troiano. “Because I’m like, the promises you’re making that you’re gonna challenge the Electoral College and overturn the election, there’s not even a process for you to do that. It doesn’t even exist.”
“So I was like, ‘What the hell are we doing?’ And I would tell that to people kinda behind closed doors too. Especially a lot of the rabble-rousers, like the political personalities, not even the politicians,” he said.
Crenshaw went on to say that, basically, they’re doing it because their constituents are giant babies who “just need their last hurrah.”
But even just the others, they’re like, ‘Yeah, we know that, but we just, you know, people just need their last hurrah. Like, they just need to feel like we fought one last time. Trust me, it’ll be fine.’ And I was like, ‘No, it won’t. That’s not what people believe and that’s not what you’re telling them. And maybe you’re smart enough to know that but like …’
So we have a lot of people in the political world that are just willing to say things they know aren’t true, they know aren’t true. It’s a huge manipulation.
It sure is. It’s also pretty freaking scary, given that they are making so many of their decisions and votes based on things even they may not be buying.
One of the great mysteries of the modern age, surely, is the question of what the percentage of Republicans who actually believe their own weirdo conspiracy theories is, versus the number who know they’re bullshit.
It’s not just the election, either. It’s the litterboxes and the “abortion up until the moment of birth” and all of the other exhaustingly untrue things they believe or purport to believe.
RELATED TOO: But How Is The Left To Blame For Paul Pelosi’s Hammer Attack?
It was legitimately incredible this weekend, watching it play out in real time, watching the Paul Pelosi story go through this whole process. It started small, with various people across the Right coming up with various outlandish hypotheticals for what could have happened until it gelled into a collaborative work of fiction, which they then presented as “the real story.” They lashed out at the media for not covering the story they had made up as if it were the actual narrative.
It’s hard to tell who believes what and who doesn’t. It seems like there is a group of creators and true believers who come up with the narratives and really, really believe they are true, a group that kind of goes along with whatever those people say, a group that doesn’t totally believe it but kind of pretends to for the purpose of owning the libs, and certain politicians and pundits who disingenuously go along with them because it’s good for their careers — but it’s not always easy to tell which is which.
While it is lovely that Dan Crenshaw is on the side of sanity in this particular instance, what would really be nice would be if he would make like his big hero Ronald Reagan and start naming names.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us!
This content was originally published here.
