In a “Meet the Press” segment on Sunday, NBC’s Chuck Todd accused U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin of fueling baseless conspiracy theories about the presidential election.
“You’ve started this fire, and now you’re saying ‘whoa, look at this, oh my God, all these people believe what we told them,’ because you didn’t have the guts to tell them the truth that this election was fair,” Todd said.
Johnson admitted that Democrat Joe Biden won in Wisconsin by 20,000 votes. But he also said there were “issues in Wisconsin.”
The Wisconsin Republican took no responsibility for sowing distrust in the electoral process, and pointed a finger elsewhere.
“This was started when the mainstream media dropped any pretense of being unbiased,” he told Todd.
Johnson, who plans to join other Republican Senators in objecting to certification of Electoral Votes on Wednesday, also questioned the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department. He wants hearings into the election outcome.
Johnson is being criticized by Wisconsin politicians of both parties.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, though not mentioning Johnson by name, called objecting to certifying Electoral College results “anti-democratic and anti-conservative.” Republican congressman Mike Gallagher of Green Bay joined six other House Republicans who, despite concerns about fraud, object to the attempt to challenge the final results certifying Joe Biden as the winner.
Democrats were more critical. Senator Tammy called allegations about results in Wisconsin “false and dishonest. Governor Tony Evers in a weekend tweet said “this is disgraceful behavior by Senator Johnson.”