'Just doesn't hold up': CNN panel shuts down GOP strategist on Jan. 6 riot claims

A conservative commentator ran into pushback for justifying Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election by claiming that Democrats have also disputed losing results.

J.D. Vance denied that his running mate lost that election, flatly stating "no" when asked by a reporter in Pennsylvania, and a former 2020 Trump campaign staffer minimized the importance of the Republican vice presidential nominee questioning the results from the previous contest.

"Well, look this is not a new phenomenon," said Marc Lotter, who served as Trump's director of strategic communications in that campaign. "There are Democrats who still think the Supreme Court stole the election from Al Gore, there are still Democrats who think Russia influenced the 2016 election. By the way, it is a fact George Bush won based on the Electoral College, Donald Trump won based on the Electoral College.

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CNN's Kasie Hunt pointed out there was no violence associated with protests of those elections, and Lotter said he had "long condemned anyone who crossed that police line and [went] into the Capitol."

"If you were at the Ellipse, you were practicing your First Amendment right," he said. "If you crossed into the Capitol, you violated the law, but what we've got to do is stop on both sides. It's been happening now for 24 years, where the losing side is going to claim that something was rigged with the election. [In] 2004, they challenged Ohio. We've got to stop it."

Meghan Hays, a former White House staffer for president Joe Biden, challenged Lotter's claims.

"Challenging the election, and the Democratic Party challenging the election, is very, very different than the leader of their party challenging election and blatantly lying and saying it's been rigged and that he won," Hays said.

Lotter claimed that Hillary Clinton still believes the 2000 election was "stolen" from Gore, but Hays disagreed, and Hunt explained the difference between Trump's efforts and other disputes.

"Mark, no one is arguing Donald Trump did not have a right to the court system in the wake of the election or that any of the candidates that you named had a right to the court system," Hunt said. "If they have concerns about whether or not something was fairly counted or evaluated, there are ways to deal with that in our system, but the fact is that Trump did all of that in this period between the November election in 2020 and what we were playing or Jan. 6, 2021, he lost them all, and then that's what happened."

Lotter again pointed to Democrats insisting for years that Bush had been illegitimately handed the election by the U.S. Supreme Court, but Axios correspondent Alex Thompson highlighted a crucial distinction.

"Let's be honest, there's a difference between those things and also siccing and riling up a mob to attack the Capitol on the day of certification," Thompson said.

Hunt then reminded Lotter that his former boss Mike Pence was targeted by Trump on Jan. 6, when he complained that the former vice president "didn't have the courage" to unilaterally reject Biden electors and the crowd responded by calling for his hanging.

"There's no other leader in the United States of America that has gotten us to the point where there's a mob chanting to kill someone of the same party," Hunt said. "Like, Mike Pence is one of the most conservative leaders this country has ever seen. I've covered him for decades and I think anyone that has worked with him would consider him to be an upstanding person, right? I mean, we can agree on that. The comparison doesn't – it just doesn't hold up."

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