Author and speaker Tom Del Beccaro and former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Newsmax on Thursday that with the United States' long history of politicians arguing over election results, it's "outrageous" that former President Donald Trump was indicted over challenging the 2020 presidential election results.
"It's outrageous," said Del Beccaro while he and Nunes appeared on "American Agenda." "Think of 1824 and Andrew Jackson, and the corrupt bargain where John Quincy Adams sells the secretary of state's office to Henry Clay for his support. Jackson spent the next four years excoriating the validity of government before becoming one of the most consequential presidents in our history.
"This idea that [special counsel] Jack Smith is stretching the law to apply it to this circumstance, like he did with [former Virginia GOP Gov.] Bob McDonnell, isn't about necessarily winning in the long run on appeal. It's about determining the 2024 election."
Nunes, who is now CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group, said Del Beccaro is "exactly right" in his assessment of Smith and the upcoming presidential election. He also thinks that Trump "makes his mood" regarding the situation "very apparent on Truth Social."
"The thing that I look at is the resiliency of the man himself," he said of Trump. "I think it would be very difficult for most people in this country to endure the level of scrutiny. ... Take the Russia hoax and the Ukraine impeachment hoax. There, they targeted people around Trump. Here, they went directly at Trump — not once, not twice, now three times. And it looks like there's probably going to be a fourth [indictment] in Georgia."
Nunes also agreed with Del Beccaro that there are a lot of "very relevant" similarities between Trump and Andrew Jackson. "This history of having elections that are challenged is the norm, and it's how a democratic republic should operate where you're trying to come to solve all the problems, to give people confidence in the system."
California, according to the former congressman, "used to have one of the best systems of government. ... Very reliable, very transparent. And in just a matter of a decade, we have turned California into total chaos.
"Part of what Donald Trump has said is that the California chaos — by using COVID, several of the states that were up for grabs took the California chaos and put it into other states, and there was habit. And yet ballots running around everywhere — nobody knows who's actually picking up the ballots; nobody knows how the ballots got to places; some ballots came in the middle of the night.
"I think what we have to get back to is elections that are decided like it used to be in California," Nunes said. "When the polls closed at 8 [p.m.], you pretty much knew who won by about 8:05 [p.m.]. And you know there might be a few ballots that would trickle in late for the next few hours, but it was done within just a couple of hours."
Del Beccaro thinks the process around Trump's indictment this week "should harken back to Gov. [Rick] Perry of Texas in 2015. [Perry] announced he was running for president, and a Democratic prosecutor indicted him and that waylaid his fortunes. What did the Democrats learn from that? Eventually, they lost the case, but the timing of it worked for them and it hurt Gov. Perry. So they've learned that there's no circumstance [or] consequence of them doing this kind of conduct. There's no consequence in the DOJ's [Department of Justice's] conduct, the FBI's conduct.
"America has to decide in this next election, it isn't just going to be about the economy," he continued. "Do you want to live in a country where the DOJ and FBI mess with your elections and determine the presidency, or are you going to save the republic from that? And that's not a stretch. When the FBI's deciding candidacies, we have gone far below the ideals of our Constitution and our Founders."
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