Look! Ted Budd wants the ‘full truth about what went wrong last year.’ Oh, wait.
Ted Budd has never really seemed to take the Jan. 6 insurrection seriously.
He clings to Donald Trump like a barnacle, still struggles to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory and once said the attack at the U.S. Capitol was “just patriots standing up.”
While the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings have elucidated an ongoing threat to our democracy, the Republican U.S. Senate hopeful has avoided the subject entirely. Instead, he speaks almost exclusively about the failures of Democrats (and his opponent, Cheri Beasley), including inflation, gas prices and the dreaded “Biden/Beasley agenda.”
So it was a surprise when he shared a tweet Wednesday that said Americans “deserve the full truth about what went wrong last year.”
Could it be that Budd finally has come around to seeing the threat Trump’s almost-a-coup was — and is — to our country?
Well, no.
The tweet linked to a Fox News article highlighting Budd’s search for answers about the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Budd recently sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Defense demanding the public release of any “after-action reports” that could shed light on the administration’s handling of the chaotic withdrawal.
“Now is the time for transparency and accountability, not bureaucratic politics,” Budd wrote in his tweet.
If Budd is so interested in transparency and accountability, perhaps he would be interested in holding the former administration to the same standard.
Of course, that seems unlikely, given he’s a staunch Trump acolyte whose Senate campaign greatly benefited from Trump’s surprise endorsement. Nor does Budd seem willing to take accountability for his own actions — which include echoing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and being one of 147 Republicans who voted against certifying the election results.
As the case against Trump builds, his allies seem increasingly desperate to come up with deflections and distractions. This feels like just another example — and it landed flat.
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This story was originally published July 27, 2022 at 3:41 PM.