Upset by the withdrawal from the Missouri Senate race of his handpicked spoiler candidate, John Wood, Danforth published an angry op-ed in the St. Louis Dispatch, complete with a large color photo of the Jan. 6 protest. The 85-year-old Ralston Purina heir charged “radicals” Eric Schmitt, who is the Republican Senate nominee, and former President Trump with spreading the “big lie” about the 2020 election. Danforth took particular offense at Trump’s assertion that “the election was rigged against him.”
Let us put aside for a moment the issue of voter fraud and focus on the word “rigged.” The rigging, in fact, began with Joe Biden’s entry into the presidential race on April 25, 2019. Biden began his campaign announcement with two words: “Charlottesville, Virginia.” He continued, “[Trump] said there were ‘some very fine people on both sides.’ With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.”