Time magazine has invented a new definition of “election denial.” It boils dow to this: only Donald Trump supporters can be election deniers. Nobody else.

The new definition was necessary because lots of Democrats have denied the legitimate results of elections. Most prominently the new House Democrat Leader has denied the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

BREAKING: Election Denier Hakeem Jeffries was just elected as the new leader of the House Democrats. pic.twitter.com/skZqcnXiG7

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 30, 2022

Republicans noting the irony have had more than a bit of fun at Hakeem Jeffries’ expense. After all, we are told all the time that Donald Trump and his supporters are threats to the very Republic due to their suspicion that not everything was totally on the up and up during the extraordinary 2020 election.

I, for one, believe that the Democrats definitely did some shady stuff in 2020, using the COVID emergency to outright break cut and dried election laws in the name of public health. That isn’t under any serious dispute. Whether these violations of election law were legitimate or not is clearly under dispute, and whether those shady dealings changed the outcome of the election are matters of dispute. But there is little question that they happened or that they may have had an effect.

Unlike many of the more angry folks, I don’t think that there is anything we can do about it now and that we should look forward to winning elections and firming up the laws. Arguments about election cheating now get us nowhere. Rightly or wrongly, the issue is settled. Fume all you want to yourself and your friends, but the important political move is to move forward and win.

Nobody wants to hear about our suspicions any more. It is a losing issue. So drop it. We have a country to save.

Time is clearly bothered by the obviousness of Jeffries’ hypocrisy, and by extension the hypocrisy of the Democrats and their press minions. So they simply rewrite the meaning of “election denier.”

In recent days, some top Republicans have called Rep. Hakeem Jeffries an “election denier,” starting a line of attack against the New York Democrat after he was chosen to lead his party as House Minority Leader next year.

“The newly elected incoming leader of House Democrats is a past election denier who basically said the 2016 election was quote ‘illegitimate,’” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor on Thursday, “and suggested that we had a quote ‘fake president.’”

The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) Twitter account also posted a tweet on Wednesday referring to Jeffries as an “election denier.”

If you look at what Jeffries has said (see above tweet) he pretty clearly is an election denier. Trump was elected president in 2016, and the entire Democrat establishment and Elite™ spent 4 years attacking his legitimacy. That sure seems to fit the definition, right?

Yeah, well, no. Not really. Because they are Democrats, and Democrats can say or do anything and be the good guys.

McConnell and the RNC are referring to comments Jeffries made in the wake of the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. In tweets, news interviews, and House hearings, Jeffries called to question the legitimacy of Trump’s election because of Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 race, and accused Trump of colluding with Russia to win the election. (A special counsel investigation that concluded in 2019 did not find sufficient evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia.)

At least Time has the decency to point out that all that whinging about Russia Russia Russia was unproven, although in reality it was simply bullsh!t made up by the Hillary Clinton campaign. They cannot ever admit that because the entire MSM ran with it for 4 years, and some still push the phony narrative.

The term “election denier” has taken on a particular meaning, however, after Trump’s failed re-election campaign. The phrase has come to be associated with Republicans who claim the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, assert without evidence there was fraud in 2020 voting, and cast doubt on secure voting systems—claims that lead to the deadly January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Calling Jeffries an “election denier’ is misleading and conflates different issues. “Casting unfounded doubt on the outcome of an election is irresponsible when either party does it,” says Rachel Orey, associate director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “But I think it’s important to remember that the culture around elections was quite different before 2020.

Uh, yeah right. When Trump did it it was evil. When Jeffries and every other Leftist did it it wasn’t a big deal. Besides, Russia. You know. Orange Man Bad. Really bad.

“In this day and age, it’s incredibly easy for public servants to post something online, and a couple years down the road have it come come back up in public discourse,” Orey says. “But I think that as the nature of threats to democracy shift, we all need to be vigilant and make sure that we are placing democracy first and politics second.”

So Jeffries repeating the same allegations for 4 years is OK because it was just bloviating. But now things are different because…well, he is a good guy. So move along.

Nothing to see here.