Posting on his bespoke “free speech” platform Truth Social, former president Donald Trump has praised the Texas Republican Party for passing an extreme platform this past weekend that included a resolution that the 2020 election was stolen.
The wording adopted as one of the platform’s two resolutions read: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.
“We strongly urge all Republicans to work to ensure election integrity and to show up to vote in November of 2022, bring your friends and family, volunteer for your local Republicans, and overwhelm any possible fraud.”
A clearly heartened Mr Trump wrote: “Wow! Look at the Great State of Texas and their powerful Republican Party Platform on the 2020 Presidential Election Fraud. After much research and study, they disavow the national result for President. Such courage, but that’s why Texas is Texas!!! They know that a Country cannot survive without Free and Fair Elections (and STRONG BORDERS!).”
Mr Trump’s message comes as he faces the devastating evidence complied by the 6 January committee, whose hearings this summer are detailing the concoction and unsuccessful execution of Mr Trump’s plan to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Last week’s hearing saw several witnesses make clear that, contrary to his public claims, Mr Trump was made aware by many advisers that his claims the election was stolen were false. As things stand, polling indicates that more than half of Americans think he should face criminal charges over his efforts to obstruct the installation of Mr Biden according to the will of the electorate.
The Texas platform included a litany of other positions and proposals, some of which were strikingly extreme even by the standards of what has historically been one of the GOP’s more hardline state parties.
Among other things, it calls for a referendum to shore up Texas’s supposed right to secede from the union, describes homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle”, and calls for the criminalization of all school education about sex and gender.
