Tenn. Republicans failed to confront election lies that fostered attack on Congress, Senate minority leader says

Deadly, pro-Trump mob ‘emboldened’ by Tennessee Republicans who refused to acknowledge election results

NASHVILLE — Senate minority leader Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) believes there must be a change of behavior from local Republican politicians who refused to publicly accept the outcome of the presidential election and sometimes repeated lies and misinformation offered by President Donald Trump.

“Tennessee’s GOP elected leaders nearly uniform refusal to acknowledge Biden’s election was leadership of a type. It was leadership that fostered misinformation, delusion, and anger — leadership that emboldened the President to invite and incite a mob that assaulted democracy,” Sen. Yarbro said.

The country and our democracy will remain in danger, Sen. Yarbro says, if Republicans only condemn the attack on the nation’s capitol building but stop short of changing their current behavior.

“We need to come together as a nation, heal and move forward. But you don’t do that by sweeping this under the rug. I’m not saying any one of them caused yesterday or could’ve stopped it. I am saying that none provided leadership pushing the other way. And we needed leaders,” Sen. Yarbro said. “It’s time for genuine leaders to stop looking the other way or hoping someone else will do the responsible thing. If nothing else, yesterday shows that we desperately need leaders with courage.”

The people who attacked the U.S. capitol building trusted the people in power telling lies or ignoring them. Sen. Yarbro says Republicans who hold office must be an ally in dispelling misinformation and confronting anti-democratic rhetoric.

“If you were fine with all of the misinformation, anti-democratic, and offensive racism from yesterday (just not the fact that it went too far when the Capitol was breached), that’s not ok,” Sen. Yarbro said. “If today you’re fostering the misinformation that this was Antifa, that’s not ok either.”