Leaked Texts Show Mike Lee FUMED When Trump Attacked Him at Rally After He Spent ’14 Hours a Day’ Trying to ‘Unravel’ 2020
Newly leaked texts reveal Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) fumed after former President Donald Trump publicly insulted him just as the senator and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) were offering support to Trump’s claims of election fraud and both begging for talking points on the matter.
The texts, published on Friday by CNN, are between Lee, Roy, and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The exchanges cover between November of 2020 and January of 2021, which would mark Trump’s final month in the White House.
“Please tell me what I should be saying,” Lee texted Meadows on November 20, a request he repeats as he asks for talking points and proof of certain election fraud claims from Trump in the various messages. Most of Meadows’ communications are short and concise, though he does appear to need to circle the wagons after Lee fumes over Trump taking a public shot at him.
“I’ve been spending 14 hours a day for the last week trying to unravel this for him. To have him take a shot at me like that in such a public setting without even asking me about it is pretty discouraging,” Lee wrote. Meadows tries calming the senator down by assuring him what was said was not in the “prepared remarks” and that the Utah senator will be getting a call from the Republican leader.
The back and forth appears to reference a speech Trump gave where he said he was a “little angry” at Lee. Meadows claims Trump was “angry” because he received “bad intel” about Lee standing against his “electoral objections.”
Lee does offer support through and suggests at one point that the president surround himself with a better legal team.
“You have in us a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him, but I fear this could prove short-lived unless you hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately,” Lee tells Meadows. He also expresses concern about the infamous press conference in November 2020 on the election involving Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Lee, a lawyer, predicts the “potential defamation liability” for the president is “significant” after the event.
Roy’s exchanges with Meadows were similar in that the Texas congressman essentially begs for talking points to get the messaging right on election fraud accusations. Roy also warns Meadows at one point about Trump’s increasingly harsh rhetoric.
“We must urge the President to tone down the rhetoric, and approach the legal challenge firmly, intelligently and effectively without resorting to throwing wild desperate haymakers, or whipping his base into a conspiracy frenzy,” he wrote.
At another point, Roy discourages Trump from continuing down the same path.
“The President should call everyone off. It’s the only path. If we substitute the will of states through electors with a vote by Congress every 4 years… we have destroyed the electoral college… Respectfully,” he wrote to Meadows in December of 2020.
In the final texts between the two published, Roy reaches out to Meadows on January 6, the day rioters entered the Capitol following a speech by Trump referencing election fraud. Roy calls the whole thing a “shitshow” and tells Meadows to “fix this now.”
Meadows simply replied, “we are.”
Watch above, via CNN.
