Frank LaRose is Pretending Not to Know Better
July 5, 2022

For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Columbus, OH — In a wild interview with Taylor Popielarz of Spectrum News, Frank LaRose continued his never-ending balancing act, embracing obvious election lies as a way to wink and nod to MAGA Republicans while he pretends not to know better – all so he can lose a Senate race in two years. LaRose earlier in the interview called himself a ‘referee’ when it comes to elections in Ohio and then turned around and embraced radical conspiracy theories even though he knows these lies are untrue.
In the interview, LaRose says “I’m not an expert on this” when asked his opinion about the former president asking secretaries of state to find votes and said “there were things that went wrong” & “it’s an unknowable thing” when asked about claims the 2020 election was stolen. And when asked about J.D. Vance’s embrace of the dangerous Great Replacement Theory said: “I don’t know exactly what J.D. meant by that.”
“Frank LaRose knows the election wasn’t stolen and what MAGA Republicans did to overturn the election was wrong, but he’s so focused on running for U.S. Senate in two years, he’s pretending not to know better. Frank LaRose’s political phoniness reaches new heights by the day, and he can no longer pretend to play ‘referee.’ He’s clearly chosen his team and is pulling for them any way he can,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.
You can see the full interview here as well as key remarks below:
Claims of Elections Tampering:
- Taylor Popielarz: What do you make of the former president asking election officials to find votes to be, you know, propose fake sets of electors?
- LaRose: Yeah, I’m not an expert on this. The things that I’ve heard, sound, in some ways unclear to me. What was being asked for, right?
On the 2020 Election Being Stolen:
- Taylor: When you and I last sat here last September, I had asked you point-blank if you thought the 2020 election was stolen, and you said, “I won’t say stolen but I will say this, there were some states that didn’t do the right thing.” And then I asked you a little bit after that if there was any scenario that you saw, looking back at it, where Trump could have won the Electoral College, and you said quote, “probably not.” Do you still stand by both of those statements?
- LaRose: I think it’s unlikely that there would have been anything that would have put one candidate over 270 electoral votes versus another, but there were things that went wrong…So the question comes up, would that have- if any of those things had been done differently, would that have changed the results of the election? It is, technically speaking, an unknowable thing.
On J.D. Vance and His Embrace of Great Replacement Theory:
- Taylor: After the awful mass shooting in Buffalo, I saw when you were asked by some reporters about the concept of the Great Replacement Theory and comments JD has made that seem to line up with that. He has said on Fox News earlier this year and a broader sentence about who he feels is engaging in this that Democrat politicians who have decided that they can’t win reelection in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters who are already here, and he called it an invasion. So I know you said at the time you weren’t aware of what he was saying about it and what he was being accused of. That was the main statement and I saw what you said on Twitter afterward, where you said “like most Ohioans, I’m with JD Vance on this issue, lawful immigration matters.” But you also said what happened in Buffalo was racist murder. So my question for you is: Do you agree with Vance that Democratic politicians are bringing in a large number of new voters in an invasion to replace voters that are already here?”
- LaRose: Yeah. So I don’t know exactly what JD meant by that. I can tell you that I know the man. I know that he’s not a racist. That’s not who he is. In fact, his wife is- is a person of foreign descent and he’s got people on his campaign that are of all different ethnical backgrounds. And so you know, it’s up to him to- to answer what it means for that.
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