Editor's Note: Steve Schmidt is one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project. He is a communications and public affairs strategist who has worked on several Republican campaigns, including John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House, and he is now a regular political contributor to MSNBC. On Friday afternoon, Schmidt responded to this week's attempt by 18 Republican attorneys general and 126 House Republicans to overturn the presidential election. MaxNewsToday has assembled his Twitter thread and reprinted it as one easy-to-read op-ed for our ongoing segment, Schmidt Storm. It has been edited for grammar and clarity. Signing onto this Amicus brief is not a legal act. It is a political act.
Think about it as essentially repudiating and unsigning the Declaration of Independence. They want a ruler, not a president. It is a declaration of repudiation and hostility towards the American Republic. They want their leader Trump, who lost the election, to remain in power. They are lying about an election Joe Biden won. They are poisoning faith and belief in democracy by explicitly repudiating it. The actions of the 18 GOP state attorneys general and 126 GOP House Members is an almost inconceivable act of betrayal. They have broken faith with America and desecrated the blood sacrifices of patriots from Lexington to Gettysburg, from Normandy to the Edmund Pettus bridge. Trump has birthed an autocratic movement. It has made its first move. If we lose this country, there is no place else for us to go. We are free because we are sovereign. We are a government of the people, for the people by the people. Politicians work for us, and we can fire them. We choose. We are in a dangerous hour. It will be a long fight.