Byron York: Faithless Electors Won’t Find ‘Some Magical Solution’

The chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Byron York, mocked the futile efforts of Never-Trumpers and rogue electors to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidential victory and sway the Electoral College’s vote in favor of selecting a different candidate. He made his comments during an interview Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

York noted electors across the country from the states Trump won on Election Day have been “harassed” by countless phone calls and messages from activists seeking to sway their votes in another direction. Saying there seem to be no laws protecting electors from such harassment, York dismissed the activists’ futile attempts to change the outcome of a legitimate election.

“This movement predated the Russian hacking allegations. They latched onto that a week ago when they said, ‘Oh, we have to have a briefing before the Electoral College can meet.'”

“The way you have to look at this is at various times in Trump’s run — from the people who said he would never run, to the people who said he would never stay in the race if he lost the primary, to the people who came up with some ideas in which there would be a delegate revolt at the Republican National Convention, to the people who even in the general election were hoping he would just drop out somehow — they’ve kind of hoped for some magical solution to what they see as the problem of Donald Trump becoming president,” York told LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham. “This is maybe the last one they’ve got.”

The activists point to the allegations that the Russians carried out the Democratic National Committee hack and the hack of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman’s email as the impetus for their outrage — but York said their behavior is nothing new.

“This movement predated the Russian hacking allegations. They latched onto that a week ago when they came out and said, ‘Oh, we have to have a briefing before the Electoral College can meet.’ But they were working on this before that,” York said. “And they had this plan whereby 37 Trump electors would defect. But they wouldn’t vote for Hillary. They’d vote for somebody like [Ohio Gov.] John Kasich.”

York noted, “And then some Hillary electors — they’d vote for John Kasich too, and the bottom line would be nobody would have 270. And this is where the magic would really begin. The election would go to the House of Representatives, which is run by Republicans who are from states that Donald Trump won, and then instead of voting for the guy who got 306 electoral votes on Election Day, they would all decide to vote for John Kasich. And he would somehow become the president.”

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Despite their best efforts, however, only one “faithless elector” has said he will defect. Chris Surprun of Texas said he will vote for Kasich on Monday.

Nevertheless, Trump is poised to officially be elected the 45th president of the United States of America when the states’ electoral votes conclude Monday evening. And in the aftermath of its huge losses across the country, the Democratic Party must begin to look forward and productively address what went wrong.

“There’s a parallel track that involves the failure to take responsibility for loss,” Ingraham said. “You see that failure manifest in the Donna Brazile, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton comments about [how] they lost because of Putin or because of the Electoral College, or they lost because they didn’t get enough resources from the DNC. And then you have the Never-Trumpers, who also refuse to admit responsibility for the failures of the Bush era that drove people much closer to a more populist version of conservatives — perhaps less ideological in some ways. But they just won’t admit what went wrong.”

Added Ingraham, “Neither side sees why the people left them.”