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Salon
Salon
Politics
David Edwards

Raskin blames Trump for election deniers

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) listens during a hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a House Jan. 6 Committee member, said that "political contamination" by former President Donald Trump will result in at least 155 deniers of the 2020 election results serving in Congress next year.

CBS host Margaret Brennan reported on Sunday that her network had tallied election deniers who will serve in the new Congress. According to the tally, deniers of the election won 155 House seats and nine Senate seats in the U.S. Congress. That was in addition to 18 wins at the state level.

"That's a statement about the political contamination of the GOP by Donald Trump," Raskin told Brennan. "Kevin McCarthy and other leaders in the Republican Party are now required to make a decision about whether they're going to try rid themselves of Donald Trump and his toxic influence on the party."

Raskin called it a "real problem" for McCarthy.

"There are certain pro-Trumpists within his House caucus who refuse to accept that he's really with Trump," the Democratic lawmaker said. "And they want to get rid of McCarthy."

The congressman predicted that some of his Republican colleagues "might just vote for Trump" to become Speaker of the House.

"The Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House," he explained. "They talk about it repeatedly and if Trump decided he wanted to do it, it would propose a profound problem for their party because they refuse to do the right thing early on."

Watch the video below from CBS:

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