Mississippi governor clings to election conspiracies — even after FBI and DOJ dispelled claims

Almost seven weeks have passed since the January 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and some Republicans are still clinging to the far-right conspiracy theory that former President Donald Trump was the victim of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. When Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves was interviewed by CNN's Jake Tapper on March 7, he echoed the Trumpian talking point that mail-in voting promotes voter fraud.

Tapper told the GOP governor, "I want to ask you a simple yes or no question because your answer a few weeks ago to a colleague kind of raised my eyebrows: Do you accept that Joe Biden is the legitimate and lawfully elected president of the United States?"

Reeves responded, "President Biden is the president of the United States." But the Mississippi governor continued to claim that mail-in voting is bad.

"Our state, we do not allow mail-in voting, and the reason we don't allow mail-in voting is…. we think it allows for lots of opportunities for fraud and other things," Reeves told Tapper. "I don't think mail-in voting should be allowed in other states around the nation. President Biden is the duly-elected president, and we will do everything we can to work with him to help the citizens of Mississippi."

Tapper pointed out that Trump won in some states that used mail-in voting extensively in 2020, including Florida, Ohio and Utah.

"Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States," Reeves told Tapper. "He was certified by all 50 states, either having won or lost. And he lost my state by 20 points. But he was certified in each of the individual states and certified by the U.S. Congress, and he is the duly-elected president. That doesn't mean we don't have bad laws in the books in other states. It's just a fact."