Mike Lee's Pocket Constitution Doesn't Explain Why He Begged the Trump White House for Election Denial Lines

It's a red flag when someone carries around a pocket Constitution. Is it supposed to be proof they know what's in it? If you know all about it, why do you need to carry it around? One guy who loves to brandish the mini-text is Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, whose text messages you may have seen earlier this year. In those texts, the good senator implored then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to get election fantasist Sydney Powell some face-time with then-President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election that he lost. Why?

These are not the words of someone who has solid evidence of voter fraud that swung the outcome of a specific state. This is the desperate plea of someone trying to overturn the election—that is, overthrow the duly elected government of this country—no matter what. Because Mr. Constitution wasn't done there. He followed up on November 20:

And two days later:

Sounds like a United States senator who loves the Constitution and appreciates his role as a member of a separate and co-equal branch of government! While looking for ways to throw out election results you don't like isn't traditionally constitutional, at least he maintained his dignity while taking a chainsaw to the American Idea.

Anyway, Mr. Constitution had a debate Monday night as he seeks to fend off a challenge from independent candidate Evan McMullin, who drew some blood while pointing out that Mr. Constitution is an authoritarian apparatchik who betrayed his country. First, McMullin tagged him for waving around his pocket Constitution around like a stage prop and suggested Lee only voted to certify the election results after the Trumpian scheme fell apart. Lee has repeatedly claimed he was just researching alternate elector plays, which doesn't quite explain why he was begging Trump's chief of staff for bullshit lines to spew in public.

McMullin then broached the fake electors scam, an effort to install Trump in the presidency after Americans voted to remove him:

Maybe, somehow, none of this is going to matter. The polls suggest Lee and McMullin are running very close in the Utah Senate race, but Republicans are now up in the generic ballot. You'd expect this in a midterm election for the party that's out of power, but most midterm elections do not take place less than two years after the leader of the party out of power attempted an autogolpe to stay in power even though the American public told him to leave. You would think that might factor into people's calculus, but there's growing evidence that the only thing that matters is...gas prices. They're important—they impact most Americans' daily lives in every respect—but what if I told you that, if things go the wrong way in the next couple of years, you will no longer have recourse to punish politicians for high gas prices?

Maybe that's alarmist. Maybe Donald Trump, had he successfully seized power in contravention of the will of the American people, would have calmly vacated the White House after serving another term. Does that seem likely when even milquetoast losers like Mike Lee, a self-styled "libertarian," were so actively aiding the effort? (The Salt Lake Tribune also published an op-ed calling Lee a "principled conservative," though it was authored by Lee's campaign.) Only a handful of Republicans put up any sort of resistance at all. Just seven Republican senators voted to impeach after the guy tried to do a coup. One of them was Mitt Romney, who, to his credit, has refused to endorse Lee in this race. Maybe he just hasn't seen Mr. Constitution's Pocket Constitution.

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