GOP Rep Squirms Over Brutal Jan. 6 Grilling From Chuck Todd: Trump Is ‘Calling the 2020 Election a Crime!’

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd put Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) to the grindstone for his continuous attempts to deflect questions about former President Donald Trump, the 2020 election, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Todd interviewed Reed Thursday on Meet The Press, and he opened by saying none of the 60 other Republican lawmakers he contacted responded to his interview requests. The conversation got underway when Todd rolled footage of Reed saying a year ago that the Capitol rioters were Trump supporters that Republicans need to “isolate and purge” from the GOP.

From there, Todd referred to Trump’s angry reactions to Joe Biden’s commemorative speech where the president slammed his predecessor for inciting the people who rampaged through Congress.

To watch Biden speaking is very hurtful to many people. They’re the ones who tried to stop the peaceful transfer with a rigged election…America is a laughingstock of the world, and it’s all because of the real insurrection, which took place on November 3rd, but this is an election year and MAGA Republicans should get elected and work with me to fix this horror that Joe Biden and the Democrats have brought us. Never forget the crime of the 2020 Presidential Election. Never give up!

Asked how the national climate came to this, Reed spoke of how “it’s going to take leadership on both sides of the aisle” to tamp down on political extremism. This was met with Todd’s observation that “There’s one party that seems to take what happened on January 6 seriously, and there’s one party that does not seem to.”

As Todd and Reed continued to discuss the build-up to January 6th, Todd eventually asked the question “Would you trust [Trump] again with the keys to this democracy?”

“I leave that to the American people,” Reed answered, but Todd called him out for not answering the question.

“You have a vote in that,” Todd said before asking again, “Are you willing to hand the keys to the democracy to this man again?”

Reed answered that he would support Trump if he is nominated to lead the Republican Party again. This prompted Todd to remind him that Trump just put out a statement claiming (against all evidence) that the 2020 election was “rigged” and an “insurrection” against himself.

“He’s calling the 2020 election a crime!” Todd said. “Do you believe it was a crime?”

“And that will be part of the process,” Reed said, once again not answering the question. The conversation went on with Todd calling out the GOP’s “conspiratorial nonsense” and their reluctance to tell their constituents that Trump is lying to them about the election he lost.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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