Oct 11, 2021 - Politics

Trump pushes Texas speaker to act on 2020 election audit bill

Michael Mooney

Photo: Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Former President Trump threatened Republican Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan with political consequences if a bill allowing for more audits of the 2020 election doesn’t come up for a vote soon.

Trump said Phelan "is not fighting for the people of Texas" and called him "another Mitch McConnell" in one of four statements published to his website on Saturday.

Why it matters: Although Trump won Texas by six points in 2020, election audits have become a Republican purity test.

When the election audit bill passed in the Senate last week, one Republican, Amarillo Sen. Kel Seliger, voted against it. Trump subsequently endorsed one of Seliger’s primary challengers.
Trump said that if the bill doesn’t pass soon, he would "look forward to seeing [Phelan] in the Texas primary."

The intrigue: Trump probably doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the nuances of Texas legislation — so who’s feeding him this?

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Trump pushes Texas speaker to act on 2020 election audit bill

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