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Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado has been critical of Rep. Jim Jordan, and was one of 20 Republicans not to vote for Jordan to be speaker during Tuesday’s vote. On Wednesday, Buck was interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper, who pointed out that Buck has said he wants the next speaker to be someone who does not deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
Buck agreed with Tapper’s description, then took aim at Jordan. “I also want to make sure that we don’t have somebody who was involved in the activities surrounding Jan. 6,” he said. Buck, already off of MAGA’s Christmas card list, went on to attack the source:
I think that if we have a presidential candidate who right now is leading, who denies that he lost the election and was obviously behind what happened on Jan. 6. And we have a speaker in a similar situation …
We have 20 Republicans sitting in Joe Biden districts right now—districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. And those 20 Republicans are going to be at risk. There’s no way we win the majority if the message we send to the American people is that we believe that the election was stolen and we believe that Jan. 6 was okay, it was a tour of the Capitol.
RELATED STORY: Right-wing Rep. Ken Buck serves up new spin on the Big Lie, claims Google stole the election
Buck is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative with his own history of dubious election-meddling. Buck was on board to try and help Trump overturn the election, signing on to Texas’ attempt to invalidate millions of votes (an attempt that was thrown out by the Supreme Court), though he eventually voted to certify the results of the election. And as recently as the summer of 2021, Buck privately promoted lies about the election when he thought it was politically advantageous. Since penning an op-ed in 2017 arguing that the “Republican Party is dead,” Buck’s brand hasn’t seemed to include changing the business-as-usual approach of his party.
Still, Buck’s criticism shows how poor of a speaker candidate Jordan is. The only thing he has going for him is that he’s Donald Trump’s pick. The things against him include questions of his complicity in the molestation of young men under his charge when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. And there is ample evidence that Jordan was an active participant in the events of Jan. 6.
Among Republicans, there is more and more talk of the hope to use Rep. Patrick McHenry as a stopgap speaker while they try to pretend to govern. McHenry would be better than Jordan, but so would a sack of old potatoes.
RELATED STORIES:
New York Times whitewashes Jim Jordan’s part in wrestling scandal
Liz Cheney goes at Jim Jordan for his role in Jan. 6 insurrection
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