Trump's Voter Fraud Claims Reveal Rift Among North Texas Republicans

There’s a season to everything, including the U.S. presidency. In case you forgot, major media outlets have reported President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

Since then, most Texas Republicans have opted to back the president, despite a lack of evidence (so far) that would prove his camp’s frequently bizarre claims of mass voter fraud. Now enter Fort Worth U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, who is among the first Republican politicians expressing worry that Trump’s campaign is attempting to invalidate the election results.

“I have great concerns about it,” she said Friday during an interview with CNN. “I think that it's time to move on.”

When asked whether Trump should concede, she gave a more nebulous answer.

“I think it's time for him to really realize and be very clear about what's going on,” Granger said.

While Granger is distancing herself from Trump, other Texas Republicans continue to support him during a time when his legal options to overturn the election results are dwindling.

Granger handily won reelection on Nov. 3 for the state’s 12th Congressional District, which covers the western half of Tarrant County, as well as part of Wise and all of Parker counties. She defeated her Democratic challenger by more than 31 percentage points, according to the political website Ballotpedia.

The Observer reached out to Granger but didn’t hear back. Still, one could speculate that with a margin that large, she isn’t too worried about upsetting the Republican base.

Rick Barnes, chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party, said that although he can’t speak for Granger, his party stands in support of Trump. The president is going to overturn “every single rock he can” to determine the legitimacy of the election results, which is something that even President-elect Joe Biden should theoretically support, Barnes said.

Likewise, the Tarrant County Republican Party wants to know that whoever won the election, it was legitimate, Barnes said.

“We … support his decisions to do what he can to review the entire election,” Barnes said of Trump. “Our position may be different than [Granger’s], but it’s not a statement against her.”

Some Trump critics have praised Granger on Twitter, but others gave a more lukewarm reply.

“That's a mild response to a coup attempt,” said a Twitter user by the handle @ImpatientCatX1.

So far, no court has found evidence of voter fraud in the more than 30 lawsuits filed by Trump and other Republicans contesting the election, according to NBC News. Most have already been withdrawn or thrown out.

That didn’t stop Dallas lawyer Sidney Powell from arguing to the contrary.

Even so, Powell was essentially fired from the Trump campaign Sunday after she suggested, without evidence, that Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state conspired to rig the election for Biden, according to CNBC. Powell had also made similar claims at Republican National Committee headquarters last week.

During an interview on the pro-Trump media outlet Newsmax, Powell was asked whether she could tell the hosts anything at all about an upcoming “explosive” lawsuit filing in Georgia.

“Well I’m, I — I can’t say that yet, but hopefully this week we will — we will get it ready to file,” she said. “And it will — it will be biblical.”

Following that interview, Trump ally and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the president's legal defense team a “national embarrassment,” according to NBC News. Trump has also reportedly worried his team consists of “fools that are making him look bad.”

While the reality star president is busy firing some Dallas elites, he’s hiring others. Friday, The Dallas Morning News reported that the president has nominated Air Force veteran and one-time state Senate hopeful Scott O’Grady for assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. O'Grady's story inspired Behind Enemy Lines.

Yet O’Grady caused controversy on Twitter after he picked a fight with a journalist who joked that he thought Trump "didn't like fliers who got shot down" — a reference to former U.S. Sen. John McCain. O’Grady also told Fred Wellman, senior adviser for veterans affairs for the anti-Trump GOP group The Lincoln Project, that he’s a “sad person” after Wellman criticized him.

“You’ve been nominated to be an Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States and you’re up at 11:30 DM’ing some guy who called you out on Twitter? No, Scott, you’re the sad one,” Wellman responded.

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