Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called Donald Trump’s complaints about a rigged election the “last refuge of the sore loser” when she launched a broad attack on the Republican presidential nominee and his party Wednesday morning.
In a series of tweets, Warren told Trump to stop whining about the election.
Top congressional Democrats have urged House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to forcefully condemn Trump’s comments. Ryan addressed the issue to a certain degree over the weekend, saying in a statement that he was “fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”
Warren also went after Republicans for enabling the myth that there is widespread fraud in U.S. elections. Actual instances of voter fraud are extremely rare, Warren noted, arguing that Republicans have exaggerated the problem to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
“Republican leaders — and even Trump’s running mate — have tried to tiptoe out of the room when Trump makes ever-wilder claims of a rigged election. But as much as these Republicans would like everyone to believe that this is a Trump-only problem, it’s not,” Warren wrote Wednesday in The Washington Post.
“As much as these Republicans would like everyone to believe that this is a Trump-only problem, it’s not.”
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren
“For years, Republican leaders have pushed the lie that voter fraud is a huge issue,” Warren wrote. “In such states as Kansas and North Carolina, and across the airwaves of right-wing talk radio and Fox News, Republican voters have been fed exaggerated and imagined stories about fraud. Interestingly, all that fraud seems to plague only urban neighborhoods, minority communities, college campuses and other places where large numbers of people might vote for Democrats.”
The Massachusetts senator also linked Trump’s comments about a rigged election to GOP efforts to impose photo ID requirements at the ballot box.
“The voting-fraud lie has been used to justify the passage of dozens of voter ID laws, typically rammed through state legislatures by Republican partisans,” she said. “A study by political scientists at the University of California at San Diego recently concluded that strict photo-identification requirements disproportionately suppress turnout by Democratic voters — especially blacks and Latinos.”
Warren’s comments come a day after President Barack Obama told Trump to “stop whining” about voter fraud. Even Fox News and Trump’s own campaign manager have expressed skepticism about Trump’s claims.
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