How Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell plotted to undermine Trump's stolen election claims

Trump responded swiftly, vowing on Twitter to back any South Dakota Republican who challenges Thune in 2022. With momentum building, Cotton reevaluated. He hopped on the phone with McConnell, and the two mulled strategic options for undercutting what they feared would be a “bandwagon effect” in favor of objecting. After some discussion, McConnell urged Cotton to speed up his timeline for announcing his opposition. The majority leader had been aggressively whipping the issue. But he believed that Cotton, with his conservative bona fides and reputation as a Trump loyalist, might be more effective at talking teetering Senate Republicans off the ledge by providing cover to those who privately wanted to stand behind the certification of Biden’s victory but feared the consequences back home.

Cotton agreed. On Sunday, January 3, two days before the Georgia runoffs and three days before the certification vote, the senator dropped his bombshell statement. It read in part: “I share the concerns of many Arkansans about irregularities in the presidential election, especially in states that rushed through election-law changes to relax standards for voting-by-mail. I also share their disappointment with the election results…Nevertheless, the Founders entrusted our elections chiefly to the states—not Congress. They entrusted the election of our president to the people, acting through the Electoral College—not Congress…I’m grateful for what the president accomplished over the past four years, which is why I campaigned vigorously for his reelection. But objecting to certified electoral votes won’t give him a second term.”…

Two senior members of McConnell’s leadership team, Thune and Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, emphasized that the whole thing would have gotten completely out of hand if not for the stand taken by Cotton. “Tom played a very important role, especially as people were starting to waver,” Thune told me on January 8, with the shock of what amounted to an attempted coup, albeit an amateur one, still fresh in the air. “He took a risk coming out Sunday rather than waiting quietly until Wednesday; he knew it wouldn’t be popular with the base.”