It was a good week for election deniers
Left, Right & Center
KCRW
3.9 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It was a good week for election deniers. Several Trump-backed candidates sealed primary wins in Arizona, Michigan and Missouri. This includes businessman Blake Masters, who’s vying for a Senate seat in Arizona and identifies as part of the “New Right.” Plus, Eric Schmitt won the GOP primary for Senate in Missouri. Both Masters and Schmitt have falsely denied the 2020 election results.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are hoping that a far-right candidate will be easier to beat in the November midterms. They supported some far-right candidates, including John Gibbs. Gibbs beat the more moderate incumbent, Representative Peter Meijer, who was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
What do those candidates’ wins say about the evolving Republican Party? Is this a wise plan for Democrats? And how does this affect voters’ faith in election integrity or democracy itself?
Plus, red-leaning Kansas overwhelmingly rejected a Constitutional amendment that would allow lawmakers to ban or restrict abortions. Will the messaging used by abortion rights groups in Kansas resonate with voters across the country in the midterms? Can Democrats capitalize on this momentum?
And was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial trip to Taiwan bold or catastrophic?
Host David Greene discusses with Mo Elleithee, executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, on the left; Tara Setmayer, senior advisor at the Lincoln Project, on the right; and special guest, Shankar Vedantam, creator and host of the Hidden Brain podcast and author of “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is David Green. I'm the co-founder of Fearless Media and I am your host here on Left |
| 0:05.4 | Right in Center. This is the show where we take on all the issues, even the tough divisive |
| 0:10.4 | ones that you're afraid to talk about with your own family. |
| 0:13.7 | How's it August already? Is anyone else shocked by that? Well, one thing it means in the |
| 0:17.7 | political world is we're getting closer to those all-important midterm elections. Several |
| 0:23.1 | states actually held their primary races this week and it turned out to be a pretty good |
| 0:27.8 | week for election deniers. Trump backed candidates who've been falsely denying the 2020 election |
| 0:33.6 | results on the campaign trail one in Arizona in Missouri in Michigan. One of the most watched |
| 0:39.0 | races was for the Senate seat in Arizona. That's where businessmen Blake Masters won the GOP |
| 0:44.0 | primary with help from PayPal's founder Peter Teal. Masters is part of the quote, new |
| 0:50.2 | right. This is a group that's pushing for conservative family values and economic populism. |
| 0:55.5 | They're positioning themselves against what they like to refer to as the woke left. There |
| 1:00.0 | was also Eric Schmidt, Missouri's attorney general and a big Trump ally who won his GOP |
| 1:05.0 | Senate primary race. Now on the other side of the aisle, Democrats, they're using a pretty |
| 1:09.3 | risky strategy. They have been backing some far right candidates, hoping, hoping that |
| 1:15.1 | they will be easier to beat come November. This paid off, maybe, in Michigan. That's |
| 1:20.5 | where congressional candidate John Gibbs beat out a more moderate candidate who had voted |
| 1:24.7 | to impeach former president Trump. But is this a wise plan by Democrats? And what kind |
| 1:30.1 | of message does it send to the party's own voters? Well, let's bring in our crew. I am |
| 1:35.6 | hosting from the center on the right. We have Tara Setmeyer. She's a senior advisor at |
| 1:39.5 | the Lincoln Project, former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill and a resident scholar |
| 1:44.2 | at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. On the left, we have Moelay Thee. He's |
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