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Rep. Adam Schiff gently hit back at Rep. Katie Porter for calling their bruising California Senate race rigged in the wake of her defeat.
Porter (D-Calif.) fumed at her loss and argued she faced “an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election,” triggering backlash from many Democrats.
“I have nothing but respect for my colleagues. That term rigged though, is a very loaded term in the era of Trump. It connotes fraud or ballot stuffing — false claims like those [from] Donald Trump,” Schiff (D-Calif.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“What’s remarkable is Democrats very quickly rallied to say, ‘no, we don’t use that language, the election was legitimate,’” Schiff, 63, added, pointing to the backlash Porter weathered.
Schiff juxtaposed the Democratic rebuke of Porter’s use of the term “rig” with how Republicans have handled former President Donald Trump’s similar claims.
Porter, 50, previously defended herself, arguing that she wasn’t claiming the election was stolen, but rather nefariously influenced by outside forces.
“‘Rigged’ means manipulated by dishonest means. A few billionaires spent $10 million+ on attack ads against me, including an ad rated ‘false’ by an independent fact checker,” she later groused.
“That is [a] dishonest means to manipulate an outcome. I said ‘rigged by billionaires’ and our politics are—in fact— manipulated by big dark money. Defending democracy means calling that out.”
Schiff trounced his Democratic competition with 32.51% support followed by Republican Steve Garvey at 32.05%, then Porter at 14.83%, and Rep. Barbara Lee at 8.59%, according to the latest tally, giving him a roughly 960,000 vote lead over Porter.
Despite her public complaining, Porter rang Schiff after her loss and was very “gracious,” the congressman recounted.
“She congratulated me which I certainly viewed as a concession and she was very gracious in her message to me,” he recalled. We’re in a tough business, but her call could not have been more gracious.”
California’s primary election took place on Super Tuesday last week to fill the seat vacated by late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who died last September.
The election entailed a “jungle” primary system in which Republicans and Democrats compete in the same primary, with the two top vote-getters advancing to the general.
Schiff and Garvey, the Republican former baseball great, both won. Some backers of Porter accused Schiff of elevating Garvey by attacking him in various TV ads.
“The challenge I think my Democratic colleagues had was less Garvey consolidating Republicans and more their inability to gain Democratic support,” Schiff said Sunday.
He stressed that “not having one Democrat spend millions to bash another Democrat is probably helpful in those down-ballot races because a lot of more of those resources will now go to winning over Democratic seats.”
California’s grueling Senate primary battle was one of the most expensive of the 2024 cycle thus far.
Given that the Golden State is a Democratic stronghold, Schiff is the frontrunner heading into the general election.
Democrats find themselves with a brutal map in their quest to hold the upper chamber in 2024, having to defend 23 seats to Republicans’ 11.
At one point in the interview, Schiff who served as an impeachment manager during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, suggested that the intelligence community should “dumb down” his briefings when he secures the GOP nod.
Typically the Republican and Democratic nominees for president gain access to intelligence briefings.
“That is the practice but we’ve never had a situation where one of the candidates for president has been so criminally negligent…when it comes to handling classified information,” he said.
Trump is charged with 40 counts for allegedly hoarding classified material but has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
Schiff suggested that the intelligence community “give him no more information than absolutely necessary,” arguing that “we can’t trust him” with sensitive material.
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