The Republican hopeful has called the 2020 election stolen. But she sidestepped questions during an appearance on Fox News just two days after receiving the former president’s endorsement.
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This article is part of our Midterms 2022 Daily Briefing
Tudor Dixon was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump on Friday.
Two days after receiving former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement in the Michigan governor’s race, Tudor Dixon would not say whether she still believes that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election.
Ms. Dixon, a media personality who has gained momentum in the chaotic Republican primary race, was unequivocal in her belief in Mr. Trump’s disproved claims of victory as recently as May, but sidestepped the question during an appearance on Fox News on Sunday.
She avoided saying who won the race and instead criticized Michigan’s top election official, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state, for her oversight of the election.
Ms. Dixon’s response sharply contrasted with her handling of a similar question that was posed to her during a May debate hosted by Livingston County Republican Party.
“Yes or no, do you believe Donald Trump legitimately won the 2020 election in Michigan?” one of the debate’s moderators asked Ms. Dixon. Her answer was succinct: “Yes,” she said.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
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Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out a comprehensive narrative of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far from eight public hearings:
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.
A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack.
Ms. Dixon’s opponents in the five-way Republican primary quickly accused her of flip-flopping. “That’s a land-speed record for betraying President Trump, even by establishment politician standards,” one hopeful, Kevin Rinke, wrote on Twitter.
Ms. Dixon’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday about whether she had changed her position. But James Blair, a chief strategist for her campaign, told The Detroit Free Press that the criticism of Ms. Dixon was “sour grapes.” and said it would not “change her commitment to election integrity or the support she earned from President Trump.”
Ms. Dixon has swung from full-throat claims of fraud to more subtle positions before. In a response to Mr. Trump on Twitter five days after the 2020 election, she said, according to The Free Press, “Steal an election then hide behind calls for unity and leftists lap it up.” But at other times since joining the race, she has suggested only that election procedures created the opportunity for fraud.
In her appearance, Ms. Dixon assailed Ms. Benson over her handling of mail-in voting at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and echoed a line of attack used by Republican candidates nationally, decrying the use of private donations to help conduct elections, including nearly half a billion dollars given to election offices across the nation in 2020 from the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
“We have to make sure our elections are secure and what happened in 2020 doesn’t happen again,” Ms. Dixon said on Fox News. “It was obviously a different election. We had Covid going on. There was the opportunity for changes to be made. This secretary of state made those changes, sending out absentee ballot applications to everyone in the state, bringing in Zuckerbucks, reducing the signature match.”
State officials have noted that all jurisdictions in Michigan, regardless of whether they were in Democratic or Republican-leaning areas, could have applied for the private election funds — a process that did not involve the Department of State.
Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of State, the agency headed by Ms. Benson, said that Ms. Dixon was spreading falsehoods about the election, including claims that voter identification requirements had been relaxed.
“Election deniers and conspiracy theorists have made it abundantly clear they are not interested in facts and truth, but instead continue to trot out the same debunked talking points over and over again,” Ms. Wimmer said.
She added that courts and “hundreds of bipartisan audits” had affirmed the integrity of the 2020 election.
Ms. Dixon has gained momentum with Mr. Trump’s endorsement and the backing of the powerful DeVos family, including Betsy DeVos, a former education secretary for Mr. Trump who broke with him after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Mr. Trump is scheduled to speak during a telephone town hall event for Ms. Dixon on Monday night.
Source: nytimes.com
