'You’re not going to try to overturn the election — are you?': CNN host confronts WI GOP chair
CNN’s Jim Acosta on Friday bluntly asked the chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party if he plans to accept the outcome of the 2024 election after the party head was named in a Fulton County, GA indictment regarding Donald Trump's “fake elector” scheme to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
Brian Schimming joined Acosta a few days before the Republican National Convention is set to convene in Milwaukee, WI next week. As CNN reports, “seven battleground states, including Wisconsin, are sending fake electors to the convention next week.”
“Do you endorse that?” Acosta asked.
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“These are folks who are good Republicans and they have been for years,” the GOP chair replied. “And so we don't see a situation where there's a conflict with that. And I know there are a couple [fake electors] there. I’m not aware of how many are in other states but these are folks who've been Republicans for years, are local activists or volunteers. So they'll be part of the delegation.”
Acosta noted Schimming was “mentioned in Trump's election interference indictment down in Georgia for meeting with Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro to allegedly discuss selecting alternate electors in Wisconsin."
"You don't deny that, correct?" Acosta asked. "And let me ask you, Mr. Chairman, do you commit to upholding the will of Wisconsin voters in November?”
Schimming replied he “won't get into the electors issue.”
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“But I will say thanks to the election integrity efforts that we have going on at the Republican Party of Wisconsin, we’re confident that we'll be able to trust the results on Election Day regardless of who the winner is," he said.
“You're not going to try to overturn the election results, then, if you come up short — or are you?” Acosta pressed.
Schimming replied that he has “no anticipation” of overturning the election results.
Acosta then asked if Schimming “regrets being involved” in the fake elector process in Georgia.
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The GOP chair replied “that the folks that were involved believed they were completely in a good legal place to do that.”
“I don't think there's a regret about doing that in terms of anybody feeling as though they broke the law,” he said.
Watch the video below, via CNN, or at this link.
