Senator Chris Murphy Completely Dismantles Senator Josh Hawley’s Sowing Election Distrust in 67 Seconds Flat

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) ridiculed Republican claims of voter distrust—in a remarkably pithy manner—during a Wednesday night appearance on AC360, and completely dismantled claims made by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) about his constituents’ distrust in the 2020 election.

The Democratic senator from Connecticut was interviewed by Anderson Cooper just after the CNN anchor criticized the Republican circular logic of investigating voter fraud because of the very distrust they are alleged to be sowing. This followed a contentious Senate Hearing on alleged voter fraud led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that occurred earlier in the day.

During the hearing, Hawley joined Johnson in defending the investigation into voter fraud, because his constituents—which he pointedly described as “not crazy people” — felt “they had been disenfranchised, that their votes did not matter, that the election had been rigged.” He further described the 30 people from his home state of Missouri he recently met with as having “seen it all,” and “these are normal folks living normal lives firmly believe that they have been disenfranchised.” You can see the moment referenced below.

A portion of this clip had been played earlier in the segment which Cooper described “in technical parlance, a self-licking ice cream cone,” explaining “an old federal government term to describe a self-perpetuating system that exists only to perpetuate itself.”

Senator Murphy opened by admitting that Josh Hawley is right. “There are regular patriotic Americans out there who don’t believe Joe Biden is president,” he explained. “You know why? As patriotic Americans, they have been told to listen to the president of the United States. To listen to U.S. Senators, and so when the president and U.S. Senators tell them over and over again that the election was rigged, they believe it. They have faith in positions of power.”

He then explained how Republicans insist that Congress investigates allegations. “Well, we got to talk about this because everyone thinks the election was rigged,” Murphy said, parroting his GOP colleagues, before adding, “By the way, the election was rigged.” In other words, this is nothing but a circular logic of investigating the very election distrust that many have been sowing.

“There is no way out of that black hole spiral if Republicans are willing to stir up conspiracy theories,” Murphy added. “This also kind of serves other Republican ends. Republicans want to undermine government in general. They really don’t believe that government can solve any problem, and so by undermining elections, and making people believe that everybody that gets elected is illegitimate, it makes it really hard for the government to do any good for people.”

Despite a total lack of evidence of voter fraud, “the president and his enablers are pushing the voter fraud myth, relentlessly, then citing the fact that people are talking about it as justification for pushing it,” is how Cooper explained it. “And so goes around and around until angry mobs filled the streets protest a stolen election that was not stolen.”

Or, as Jonah Goldberg notably said in a Fox News hit last month, President Trump is trying to steal an election by claiming the election was stolen.

Watch above via CNN.