Senator Mike Lee: “We Have To Kill The Narrative That My Words And Actions To Keep Trump In Power Meant Something Other Than What They Obviously Mean”*

Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash

(If it is not obvious, the quote in the title attributed to Lee is parody.)

The Jan. 6 Select Committee’s first public hearing places in higher-definition Utah Senator Mike Lee’s secretive efforts to overturn the election and keep Trump in power. The Select Committee’s presentation this week outlined in stark terms that even halfwits in the administration knew evidence of voter or election fraud that could change the outcome of the election was nonexistent and Trump had lost fair and square. This was the most secure election in United States history. Failed lawsuit after failed lawsuit — 65 in all — confirmed, as Mark Meadows acknowledged, that “there was no there there.” Yet, Meadows persisted in working with others to keep Trump in power.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah was one of those others. We were reminded this week of Mark Meadows’ central role in shaping false narratives for Trump, the Big Lie sitting atop Trump’s mountain of lies. You may recall that Meadows was the administration conduit through whom Utah Senator Lee worked. It was Senator Lee, who “repeatedly suggested [to Meadows] that then-President Trump meet with attorney Sidney Powell, whom Lee found to be a ‘straight shooter.’ When Powell proved too nuts even for Lee, he suggested the White House turn instead to John Eastman, who, Lee assured the White House, ‘has some really interesting research.’” See Interesting Research.

Despite the absence of credible evidence to support the Big Lie, which Trump had been scheming for months leading up to the election, Utah Senator Mike Lee worked 14-hour days to keep Trump in power. Did Senator Lee buy into the Big Lie because he was incapable of recognizing or understanding what even halfwits in the White House clearly understood? Or was his tireless work to overturn the election willful calculation based on what we already know about Senator Lee, that for him “democracy isn’t the objective”? The fact that the Utah senator was even involved in this illegal effort, unprecedented in the country’s history, should shock everyone’s conscience and disqualify him from serving in what was once considered the world’s “greatest…