Laxalt was previously one of the top public faces of the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the election result in Nevada with baseless claims and innuendoes of mass voter fraud. Perhaps most infamously, Laxalt and American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp held a series of press conferences promoting cases of alleged voter fraud, including a claim by Nevada resident Donald Hartle that someone had voted illegally under the name of his deceased wife. This turned out to be one of the few genuine instances of fraud out there — perpetrated by Hartle himself, as he later pleaded guilty to doing it.
Laxalt has kept up the political attack on election integrity since 2020, as The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent has also documented. Laxalt has already stated his intention to get a team ready to contest the voting process in this year’s election in November, even if his campaign has to spend less time and resources on traditional voter outreach as a result. He has also simultaneously insisted that voting in the state’s Republican-leaning rural counties is “legitimate,” while claiming the state’s main population center of Clark County has “major problems.” (As a further sign of how deeply the Big Lie has permeated Republican politics, Laxalt’s main opponent in the primary, Afghanistan War veteran Sam Brown, attacked him for not having done enough to overturn the 2020 election result.)
Laxalt appeared the weekend before the primary on Sunday Morning Futures hosted by Maria Bartiromo, a longtime conspiracy theorist who coordinated with the Trump White House in trying to overturn the 2020 election. (Bartiromo is known to become oddly tongue-tied, however, when it comes to instances of election fraud involving Republican campaigns.)
Bartiromo and Laxalt did not discuss any conspiracy theories about election fraud this time around; he instead attacked billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Laxalt also appeared on Monday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, and co-anchor Bill Hemmer introduced him as a “Trump-endorsed candidate” and later asked him, “What do you think that endorsement does in Nevada now?”
“Look, he has received more votes than any Republican ever in the history of our state,” Laxalt replied, a talking point eerily similar to Trump’s public insistence that he could not have lost after receiving so many votes in a high-turnout election. “And so, people love our former president, and I’m honored to have his endorsement.”
At the conclusion of the interview, the program transitioned seamlessly to Fox’s coverage of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Co-anchor Dana Perino noted that the committee’s hearing that day was expected to “focus on President Trump’s claims of voter fraud and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.” Perino failed to note that Trump’s claims of mass voter fraud were demonstrably false and that Laxalt, who had just been on the program, had been a prominent local voice in those very efforts to overturn the election result in Nevada.