Leigh Vogel/Pool via AP
- GOP Sen. Roger Marshall said that he wanted to “move on” from discussing his challenge of the election results.
- “I made a decision based upon the facts that I knew at that point in time,” he said.
- Former President Trump and his campaign spent months trying to overturn President Biden’s victory.
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GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas on Saturday said that he was “ready to move on” when asked about his support of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
During an interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, Marshall was questioned about whether his actions played a role in continued Republican distrust of the 2020 election.
Brown referred to a recent CNN poll conducted in late April which showed that 70 percent of Republicans believe that President Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win last year’s presidential race. The same poll revealed that only 23 percent of Republicans think Biden won the election fairly.
“Republicans continue to believe in the lie that this election, the last election was stolen,” Brown said. “You voted to toss out millions of votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania. You also joined the Texas lawsuit attempting to throw out votes cast in four states.”
She added: “I’m curious. Looking back, do you have any regrets about your actions and any concern that they contributed to misinformation about the election?”
“We’re just so ready to move on,” Marshall replied. “I made a decision based upon the facts that I knew at that point in time. I was concerned then, and I still am today that six states broke their own laws or their own constitution. But it’s time to move on. It’s time for this country to heal. It’s time for a spirit of forgiveness to be happening.”
-Acyn (@Acyn) May 1, 2021
Days before the January 6 certification of Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory, Marshall joined a group of GOP senators led by Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas who sought to challenge the results.
“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” Hawley said at the time.
The repeated maligning of the vote count by Trump and his campaign fueled the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, which disrupted lawmakers as they sought to certify the results.
Later in the interview, Brown continued to press Marshall about how his challenge of the election results adhered to his ideological support of states’ rights.
“We want voting to easier, cheating to be harder,” he said. “By us standing up to our concerns about those elections, about the election integrity … it has forced those states with their problems to come to back to the table and have those legislatures work together to make sure we have safer elections with higher integrity.”
He added: “In my heart, I did what I thought was the right thing. I think the country is moving in a better direction.”
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