The Department of Homeland Security is so concerned that Jan. 6, 2025 could resemble Jan. 6, 2021 that officials have designated the day as a National Special Security Event, treating Congress’ certification of the Electoral College with the same level of alarm as inauguration.
But if you ask Republicans in the House and Senate whether they’re concerned at all that Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to once again claim mass voter fraud, many will hardly entertain the idea.
Instead, they argue Democrats have incited violence against Trump himself — the former president has survived two assassination attempts since July — by saying he espouses authoritarian views and poses a threat to democracy.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump said of Democratic leaders, a day after a man was arrested for an apparent assassination attempt against him on Sunday. In the next breath, Trump said Democrats “are the ones that are destroying the country.”
“It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat,” Trump said of Democrats.
If that sounds like more overblown rhetoric that’s raising the temperature in politics, it’s probably because it is. And the former president’s constant statements about election fraud have been a major contributor to the heat.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the upcoming election, claiming Democrats will try to steal it. But for Rep. Brian Mast, any unease about how he might react if he loses is inconceivable — Trump won’t have to complain about the election results for a simple reason: “He’s going to win.”
“I feel confident he’ll win,” he told NOTUS.
Mast said he “wasn’t traumatized in the slightest” by his experience in the Capitol on Jan. 6. Sure, he said, he stayed in his office until law enforcement cleared the rioters, but that was just because he was following instructions from police.
Roughly 140 police officers were injured that day. An officer who was attacked by the mob suffered two strokes the day after Jan. 6 and died. Four officers who responded to the violence died by suicide in the days and weeks after. Several of Trump’s own supporters died of medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds during the chaos, and one woman who supported him was shot and killed by law enforcement as she climbed through a window into a hallway connected to the House chamber.
But if you ask Mast if Trump should have done anything differently, his answer is immediate: “No.”
Democrats, Mast said, launched “a purposeful effort to do whatever could be done to make sure to win that election, whether it was honest or not.”
At this point, most GOP lawmakers are likewise more than comfortable siding with Trump and downplaying the violence of Jan. 6. And if you ask congressional Republicans about Trump’s ongoing allegations of election fraud — or if they’ll vote to certify this year’s results — you’ll get a lot of lukewarm shrugs and noncommittal word salad.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of the more moderate Republicans in the House, raised historical instances of lawmakers challenging electoral results, comparing those legislative efforts to Jan. 6, even though none of those objections featured a sitting president summoning a mob in an effort to cling to power and overturn the election.
Diaz-Balart noted that the late Rep. John Lewis thought George W. Bush’s election was illegitimate.
“How dangerous was that?” he asked.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who objected to state results after the 2020 election and famously fist-pumped in solidarity with the crowd that had encircled the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he stands by his actions. He also isn’t concerned about Trump’s ongoing claims that the election was stolen.
“His views on this are well known and have been for years,” Hawley told NOTUS.
Rep. Kevin Hern, meanwhile, wouldn’t answer whether he has faith in the election system, and Sen. Markwayne Mullin told CNN this week that “it’s hard to say” if he will support certifying the results.
Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, has been even clearer in his disregard for the electoral process: If he had been vice president in January 2021, he said recently, he would have asked states to ignore the real results and send him different slates of electors backing Trump instead.
And if you press Republicans about Trump already casting doubt on this upcoming election, they’ll use all sorts of methods of deflection.
When NOTUS asked Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee about it, he bragged about his own state’s election procedures. “In Tennessee, we run the cleanest elections in the country,” Burchett said. “In other states, there’s a lot of irregularities.”
For Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Trump’s questions about election integrity are well-founded.
“I mean, we do have fraud in every election,” Loudermilk said. “I know the big concern right now are the number of illegals that are in the country and have even registered to vote, so I think there’s some validity there.”
House Republicans are currently trying to attach a bill requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote to a bill to keep the government funded, feeding into Trump’s newest iteration of election fraud claims. Trump keeps alleging that noncitizens, who aren’t allowed to vote in federal elections, will vote in the presidential race anyway. But there’s no evidence that noncitizens are voting in any sort of meaningful numbers, nor is there evidence for a related broader conspiracy against Republicans as Trump has repeatedly claimed.
And yet, Trump and many Republicans are near-perfectly aligned on the issue.
“The question is whether or not the American people are going to have faith in the election result,” Texas Rep. Chip Roy told reporters Tuesday morning. “When we know we have noncitizens voting.”
Roy was one of the few House Republicans to oppose the GOP effort to reject 2020 election results on Jan. 6, saying Congress didn’t have the power to do so. Still, he sounded undisturbed by Trump’s promise this month to jail his political enemies — “at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our country” — for imaginary future election fraud crimes, based on lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
“I’m focused right now on the weaponization of government right now, against the American people,” Roy told NOTUS. “Not about what someone is saying they may or may not do.”
The minority faction of Republicans who are committed to the peaceful transfer of power hope things will be different this time around.
“It’s plausible if Trump loses there will be attempts to challenge,” former Rep. Peter Meijer, one of just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6, texted NOTUS. But, he said, he doesn’t think House GOP leadership would go along with it, nor would a majority of members.
Meijer believes his former colleagues have seen the real-life ramifications of their rhetoric. The misinformation and conspiracy theories seemed costless — until they weren’t. But his view is an optimistic one, considering the same rhetoric doubting election integrity is still ubiquitous among congressional Republicans.
Rep. Dan Newhouse, another one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, said members have “learned from our past experience.” And Sen. Susan Collins of Maine noted that a law she helped pass after the riot would make it harder for lawmakers to lodge objections to state results.
But she wouldn’t say if she’s confident Trump won’t incite his supporters to try to overturn a loss.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen,” Collins said.
Security officials, at least, have learned from Jan. 6. They plan to drastically increase protective measures for the day Congress certifies the 2024 election results.
“We will be prepared, because we’ve seen this before,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, told NOTUS.
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.