Trump took to Twitter on Monday to lash out at close ally US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) after the lawmaker revealed over the weekend that he would not be joining efforts by dozens of Republican officials to contest Biden’s win.
The commander-in-chief warned Cotton in a heated Twitter post that while there are many “pluses & minuses” to the party, Republican voters would “never forget” party officials who decided to not support the movement to challenge the Electoral College certification.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2021
Trump followed up his remarks by quoting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-MN), who have both supported efforts to challenge the election outcome, and then moved on to bash fellow Republicans who refused to join the opposition.
“The ‘Surrender Caucus’ within the Republican Party will go down in infamy as weak and ineffective ‘guardians’ of our nation, who were willing to accept the certification of fraudulent presidential numbers!” Trump added.
Cotton announced in a statement late on Sunday that he had parted from anti-certification efforts put forth by his conservative colleagues, explaining that congressional action would “establish unwise precedents.”
“The Founders entrusted our elections chiefly to the states - not Congress. They entrusted the election of our president to the people, acting through the Electoral College - not Congress. And they entrusted the adjudication of election disputes to the courts - not Congress,” reads the release.
“Objecting to certified electoral votes won’t give [Trump] a second term - it will only embolden those Democrats who want to erode further our system of constitutional government.”
The US Congress on Wednesday is due to recount the Electoral College ballots, a procedure which formally certifies a winner in a US presidential election.
Trump’s latest antics come amid leaked audio of a call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which Trump urges the official to “find” enough votes to earn the president an electoral victory in the state.
