Since Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger left Congress, Rep. Ken Buck has been one of the Republicans remaining in the House who’s most outspokenly critical of his party’s complicity in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Now, just over a week after he voted for Mike Johnson—“the most important architect of the Electoral College objections,” according to The New York Times—as speaker of the House, Buck has announced his planned retirement, citing his party’s election denial as one of his reasons.
“I’m also disappointed that the Republican Party continues to, you know, rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen and rely on the Jan. 6 narrative and the political prisoners from Jan. 6 and other things,” Buck told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “If we’re going to solve difficult problems, we’ve got to deal with some very unpleasant truths or lies and make sure we project to the public what the truth is.”
Again, Buck just voted to make a major election denier the speaker of the House. He doesn’t get to pretend he’s standing on principle here. And he will leave the House Republicans that much more firmly in the grip of people who wanted to overturn the 2020 election without even his voice, as ineffectual as it generally is, opposing them.
Buck’s retirement announcement follows that of House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger.
Laura Clawson
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