Trump slams ‘weak’ Republicans who don’t want to talk about Arizona audit

Former President Trump on Thursday slammed “weak” Republicans who don’t want to talk about the audit of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Ariz.

During a sit-down interview with One America News Network (OANN), Trump reiterated his unsupported claims of election fraud. The former president told OANN reporter Chanel Rion that Republican voters want to know “what’s going on in Arizona.” 

“That’s all people ask me. They say ‘what’s going on in Arizona?’ They want to talk about the election fraud. The weak Republicans don’t want to talk about it,” Trump said. “The weak or stupid or RINOs [Republican in name only], call them whatever you want, and yet the Republican voter that’s what they want to hear.”

“The Republican voter wants the story. The weak Republican politician doesn’t want to talk about this story,” Trump said. 

The remarks from the former president come after Trump loyalists in the state Senate pushed forward with an audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, the largest county in the state. 

However, the firm conducting the audit said Tuesday that no election data had been destroyed, contradicting Republicans’ claims that officials had deleted data in the county. 

President Biden in 2020 became the first Democrat in more than 20 years to win Arizona in a presidential election. 

Several Republican lawmakers have spoken out against Trump’s claims of election fraud including Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) who was removed from her House GOP leadership position this month due to her sharp rebukes of the former president. 

During his interview with Rion, Trump also took aim at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), lambasting the senator as “weak,” and intimating that he did not fight for “election integrity.”

McConnell has remained relatively quiet about the former president as of late. However, following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the minority leader said that Trump was “practically and morally” responsible for the attacks. 

Trump has swung at McConnell in previous statements, calling him a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack.”