Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley demanded Friday that President-elect Joe Biden retract comments comparing his and Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s questioning of the 2020 presidential election results to lies spread by a Nazi propagandist.
Biden criticized Hawley and Cruz, stopping short of calling for their resignations but saying instead that he wanted to see them defeated in their next elections. Arguing that they had fed false information about the 2020 presidential election to the American people, he compared their efforts to those of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. (RELATED: Rep. Cori Bush Is Trying To Oust Republicans Who Objected To Electoral College Certification)
WATCH:
Biden tells @NikolenDC that GOP senators who supported election falsehoods, like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, are “part of the big lie,” and references Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels https://t.co/ho31YYlJfR pic.twitter.com/ukQMDFebHq
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 8, 2021
“They’re part of the big lie, the big lie,” Biden said. “I was being reminded by a friend of mine, and maybe you were with me, I can’t recall, when we told that, you know, Goebbels and the great lie, you keep repeating the law, repeating the lie. Well, there was a print that when Dresden was bombed, firebombed, there were 250 people that were killed — was it 2,500 people that were killed? And Goebbels said no, 25,000 — or 250,000 were killed. And our papers printed that. Our papers printed it. It’s the big lie.” (RELATED: Biden Calls Capitol Riots ‘Domestic Terrorism,’ Urged To Create White House Post Targeting Extremists)
“President-elect Biden has just compared me and another Republican Senator to Nazis. You read that correctly. Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in,” Hawley issued a statement calling for Biden to retract the comments immediately, adding that he was being called a Nazi for raising questions about the electoral process.
Federal election officials have continued to deny allegations of widespread voter fraud raised by President Donald Trump’s campaign after issuing a Nov. 12 statement that called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.”
“This is undignified, immature, and intemperate behavior from the President-elect. It is utterly shameful,” Hawley continued. “He should act like a dignified adult and retract these sick comments. And every Democrat member of congress should be asked to disavow these disgusting comments.”