Karl Rove reminded viewers on Fox News Channel during an appearance on Wednesday that if it were not for the help he received from an election denier, Joe Biden wouldn’t be president today. Just hours before Biden’s spur-of-the-moment address to the nation about the threat to democracy that voting for Republicans will cause, Rove brought up a little nugget from the past about Rep. James Clyburn. Clyburn was an election denier before election deniers were cool.

Rove said that in 2005, Clyburn promoted a conspiracy theory that voting machines were switching votes for Democrat John Kerry to Republican incumbent President George W. Bush. I had forgotten that, but he’s right. I remembered the Democrats in the House debating whether or not to certify Ohio’s Republican electors. As it turned out, 31 members voted against doing so. Bush won Ohio by 118,601 votes. By flipping Ohio, John Kerry would have been elected president by a 271-266 Electoral College vote. Many Democrats still serving in the House joined Clyburn in his crazy claims.

On the House floor in 2005, the ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat, Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.), presented the case for awarding Ohio to the Democrats, claiming “electronic machines transferred” votes from Mr. Kerry to Mr. Bush, creating situations with “significantly more votes than voters in some precincts, significantly less ballots than voters in other precincts, and voters casting more than one ballot.” He even asserted that a voting-machine company “reprogrammed the computer by remote dial-up” in a way that altered the outcome. Sound familiar?

Mr. Clyburn, now House majority whip, wasn’t the only significant Democrat pushing these wacky theories. Consider other 2005 Democratic election deniers who today hold top congressional posts. These include then-Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), now a senator; Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D., Ariz.), Natural Resources Committee chairman; Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), Energy and Commerce Committee chairman; Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), Financial Services Committee chairman; Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), chairman of both the Homeland Security and Jan. 6 committees; Rep. Danny K. Davis (D., Ill.), chairman of a Ways and Means subcommittee; Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas), a senior member of the Judiciary, Homeland Security and Budget committees; and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.), senior chief deputy whip. Even the now-deceased civil-rights icon, Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), was an election denier, voting not to accept Ohio’s certification for Mr. Bush.

Even better is the fact that, at the time, Nancy Pelosi, then the Minority Leader, didn’t join with Clyburn’s group of election deniers but did defend the loony leftists. She said the “debate is fundamental to our democracy” and warned Republicans not to “talk about this as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ ” arguing instead “it is about the Constitution.” Hmm. where have I heard all this before?

You see, it’s only wacky conspiracy theory rhetoric if a Republican is saying it. Pelosi was happy to describe debate as fundamental to democracy (and it absolutely is) and the objections were all about the Constitution, yet by the time 2020 rolled around, everything had changed. Granted, it is impossible to defend the riot on Capitol Hill and it should not be defended. It may have begun as a protest but it quickly turned violent and that made it a riot, not a protest. Riots are not ok, ever.

Clyburn was instrumental in the election of Joe Biden as president in 2020. Biden was losing early primaries, unable to gain traction as a presidential candidate, and it was Clyburn who saved his bacon in South Carolina. Clyburn endorsed Biden and worked to get voters to support him. Biden won South Carolina’s primary, an important early primary win, and the rest is history.

There are plenty of Democrats who surround Biden that have denied election results, including his vice-president, who called Trump an “illegitimate” president and the White House press secretary.

Stolen emails, stolen drone, stolen election …..welcome to the world of #unpresidented Trump https://t.co/NI7vqPV6cu

— Karine Jean-Pierre (@K_JeanPierre) December 18, 2016

Joe Biden denied the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency, too.

When a woman claimed President Trump was an illegitimate president and the crowd cheered, Joe Biden did not correct them.

Biden didn't tell Democrats to accept the election. He didn't tell them to "heal."

Instead, Biden said, "I absolutely agree!"

Biden is a total hypocrite. pic.twitter.com/6DKdwsASOq

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 11, 2020

You get the point. The hypocrisy is incredible.

So, in one last desperate attempt to motivate voters to get out and vote for Democrats, Joe Biden addressed the nation on Wednesday evening to talk about democracy. The event was arranged by the DNC and was never meant to be a normal presidential address. It was a campaign speech. He didn’t talk about anything that voters truly want to hear about – everyday issues like inflation, the high cost of living, energy costs, national security and the porous southern border, the fentanyl crisis brought about by the Biden border crisis, and the baby formula crisis. Biden was there to get out the vote for Democrats.

I didn’t watch the speech because I knew what was coming. It was the red speech, part two. Instead, I fixed dinner for my husband and myself and got ready to watch my Houston Astros make World Series history. The Astros won 5-0 against the Phillies with only the second no-hitter in World Series history. It was awesome. Jill Biden was there so that made the win even sweeter for me. Yes, I’m petty like that. No apologies.

Did Sleepy Joe change any minds with his hyper-partisan campaign speech last night? Probably not. Cable news networks carried it but not the legacy networks. That means people inclined to be engaged in politics were watching, not casual voters who might be persuadable. That speech was carried at 6:00 p.m. Central, my time zone. That’s dinner time and time when homes are busy with getting homework done and all the evening tasks finished. Most Americans weren’t interested in sitting through a stump speech in their living rooms.

Biden’s advisors once again failed him. I truly believe that Biden is no longer able to determine what is in his best interests and he surrounds himself with people he trusts. They have their own ambitions and certainly don’t want to lose power. When the Republicans take back the House and the Senate, which they will, it makes Biden the lamest of lame ducks. His staff is busy updating their resumes.

Joe Biden did not set out to unite America for good. He intended to deepen the divide already in place. It was his deplorables moment. He embraced it.