As election officials face harassment, Trump sycophants say Steve Bannon's show is driving the narrative

Election officials in some states are facing death threats because of the election-fraud narrative propelled by Trump supporters

Written by Madeline Peltz

Published

On June 14, washed-up former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn appeared on the show of insurrectionist-in-chief Steve Bannon and bragged that the sham Arizona “audit” of the 2020 elections and the calls for other states to audit their results are being driven by the support of the “MAGA brain trust, the MAGA patriots, which is the viewership and audience of this very show.” Bannon agreed, saying, “This audience, it’s all about you, you’ve had it on your shoulders from the beginning.”

From the June 14, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

BORIS EPSHTEYN: We the MAGA patriots, we demand a subpoena in Pennsylvania, for a full forensic audit in Pennsylvania, an Arizona-level audit in Pennsylvania. We think it’s coming in Georgia. It’s got to be coming in Pennsylvania. 

The freight train of audits has to keep rolling throughout Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and then Michigan, Wisconsin. This is an across-the-country effort to get to the bottom of November 3, and it’s an effort, it’s the freight train that’s driven by the MAGA brain trust, the MAGA patriots, which is the viewership and audience of this very show. The MAGA posse has stood for months and said we are not going to take it, we are going to fight back, and the result are these audits.

STEVE BANNON (HOST): OK. By the way, this audience, it’s all about you, you’ve had it on your shoulders from the beginning. You’re heroes out in Arizona, you’re heroes in Georgia, and soon-to-be heroes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and God bless you, and keep fighting because we’re getting there.
 

Election officials -- especially those in the closely contested states of Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona -- are suffering as a result of this election-fraud narrative led by Trump supporters and their media allies. As a recent report in Reuters details, “Election officials and their families are living with threats of hanging, firing squads, torture and bomb blasts,” and the impetus of these threats has been “Trump’s voter-fraud falsehoods.”

These threats and intimidation, which started before the election and ramped up immediately after, have not abated. Reuters details that Tricia Raffensperger, the wife of Georgia’s top election official and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, received a death threat against her family as recently as April 24. And a recent report by The Associated Press documents how “after facing threats and intimidation during the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath, and now the potential of new punishments in certain states, county officials who run elections are quitting or retiring early.”

Later in the day, after Epshteyn and Bannon’s gloating, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson appeared on MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes to speak about her experience dealing with threats against her leveraged by Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen. She described the threats as “ongoing, … in part because there’s not yet been any real accountability for the political leaders who have been lying to folks” about “what is the truth about the election.”

From the June 14, 2021, edition of MSNBC's All in with Chris Hayes

CHRIS HAYES (HOST): First, I just want to start on the after effects of the threats which is what that AP story sort of put in my mind, which I don’t think I’d quite considered, right? I mean, this is not normal. It’s not what election officials usually face. This was totally anomalous -- what happened -- to people like yourself and the people far belong you in the org chart of running, say, the state of Michigan’s elections.

JOCELYN BENSON (MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE): And it’s ongoing, as you mentioned, in part because there’s not yet been any real accountability for the political leaders who have been lying to folks and selling, you know, a false bag of goods of what is the truth about the election.

…

HAYES: Reading that AP piece, you begin to worry that this assault that was launched, the sort of vitriol and the harassment and these random workers who get caught on some viral video that blows up on a QAnon forum, that has real tangible effects on our ability, actually, to administer free and fair elections.

Just a few days prior to Benson’s appearance on MSNBC, Bannon threatened Attorney General Merrick Garland with prison for promising to protect the integrity of the 2020 election. Election falsehoods and conspiracy theories remain a central focus on War Room: Pandemic, and our democracy is suffering as a result.