If you go to venture capitalist Blake Masters’s Twitter feed, you can still see the ad he posted in November 2021 as he first began his campaign for the Republican nomination for Senate in Arizona. It begins unequivocally, with Masters speaking to the camera: “I think Trump won in 2020.”
His flat assertion almost certainly contributed to Donald Trump’s eventual endorsement of Masters, which probably contributed to his primary win. But the sentiment, that Trump won, carries a different tone in the general election — and it came up in the first general election debate including Masters and incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D).
This pivot — from “was his election legitimate” to “is he president” — is a hoary one and one that didn’t fool Simons. But it was appropriate as an introduction to the subject as Masters then proceeded to try to simultaneously suggest that elections were imperiled by fraud, deny that 2020 was derailed by fraud and elevate a dishonest alternate theory for how the election was stolen from Trump.
It was, in short, a useful encapsulation of how Republicans want to keep telling their base that the election was suspect even as they try to pretend that they’re simply defending elections.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” Masters said, which is true since he was trying to trick viewers. “He’s duly sworn and certified. He’s the legitimate president, he’s in the White House — unfortunately for all of us, right?”
This admission that he was “legitimate” — qualified as it...
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