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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Jan. 6 hearing lays out efforts directed at state officials to void election results
The House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday heard from state and local officials who say they were pressured by President Trump2 and his allies to help overturn the 2020 election results.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's getting harder by the day to frame the January 6 hearings as partisan3. At each hearing, the strongest testimony4 comes from Republicans. Some say openly that defeated President Donald Trump had no evidence of election fraud in 2020. Many resisted his effort to overturn his obvious defeat. And that got them death threats and harassment5. Yesterday's witnesses included the conservative Republican speaker of the Arizona House, who says he considers the Constitution to be divinely inspired. He says Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, asked him to violate the Constitution because he is Republican. Here's how he answered.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUSTY6 BOWERS7: You're asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.
INSKEEP: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson is here. Mara, good morning.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE8: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do you make of these witnesses?
LIASSON: I think you're right. We heard from the rare Republicans who stood up to Trump publicly, not just criticized him behind closed doors. We heard testimony from familiar faces like Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and his deputy, Gabriel Sterling9. But I think you're right. The standout witness was Rusty Bowers, who you just heard from, the Arizona House speaker, who talked about how Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, tried to get him to reconvene the state legislature in order to overturn Biden's win in Arizona and retract10 the electors that were chosen to vote for him. He also recalled that at one point, Giuliani said to him that they have a lot of theories about election fraud, but no evidence. And I think Trump would say that Bowers was from central casting. He was ramrod straight. He was a rock-ribbed conservative. He saw his duty to the Constitution in religious terms. He spoke11 very emotionally. He actually was asked to read a passage from his personal journal from 2020. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BOWERS: I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived12 desire towards deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God's will, as I believe He led my conscience to embrace.
LIASSON: He went on to say, how could I ever approach Him, God, only to show myself a coward?
INSKEEP: What happened to that official and election officials who did their jobs?
LIASSON: They got a lot of death threats. The committee heard yesterday - in addition to Bowers, they heard from two election workers from Georgia, Shaye Moss13 and her mother, Ruby14 Freeman. They had to go into hiding. They had to deal with an onslaught of violent, racialized death threats, including one that said, you're lucky it's 2020, not 1920. That was a clear reference to lynching. But Shaye Moss talked in really vivid terms about how their lives have been ruined.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SHAYE MOSS: I no longer give out my business card. I don't transfer calls. I don't want anyone knowing my name. I don't want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle15 or something. I don't go to the grocery store at all. I haven't been anywhere at all.
LIASSON: And the most significant thing is she said - Shaye Moss said, no - not a single local election official who worked with her is still on the job. She left her job. And that's really at the heart of the threat to democracy that the committee is trying to lay out, that what Trump and his allies set out to do has succeeded in many states - drive out the people, nonpartisan civil servants, who work in the voting apparatus16 and replace them with their own loyalists.
INSKEEP: So Mara, if honest people - honest Democrats17, honest Republicans, people trying to fill nonpartisan roles - are being shoved out of the way, who's on their way in?
LIASSON: Well, in many cases, it's going to be people who embrace Trump's election lies. About a hundred candidates who ran on the lie that the election was stolen from Trump have already won their Republican primaries. This is for federal and state offices, including secretaries of state, governor, AG, legislature. Now, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia who stood up to Trump, he is the exception that proves the rule. He won his primary against a Trump-backed opponent. But, you know, Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the committee, brought up a case from New Mexico a couple of weeks ago where a Republican commissioner18 refused to certify19 primary election results in a conservative county based on the same conspiracy20 theories about Dominion21 voting machines that we heard from Trump's team in 2020. And he said that his decision wasn't based on facts. It wasn't based on evidence. Quote, "it's only based on my gut22 feeling and my own intuition. And that's all I need."
INSKEEP: OK.
LIASSON: So this is the problem, you know? Election officials are the heart of democracy, and they're being driven out.
INSKEEP: I appreciate this repeated admission that there are no facts there at all. The hearings are putting this on display and on television. I know lots of people are watching, but does it matter?
LIASSON: Well, we don't know yet. It depends on how many people are listening, how many people are open-minded. But also, it depends on what the committee says is needed to stop this from happening again in the future. The committee keeps on saying that the threat isn't over, we can't just look backwards23. But we're waiting to see what kind of reforms they will lay out.
INSKEEP: NPR's Mara Liasson. Thanks, as always.
LIASSON: Thank you.
1 transcript | |
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书 | |
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2 trump | |
n.王牌,法宝;v.打出王牌,吹喇叭 | |
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3 partisan | |
adj.党派性的;游击队的;n.游击队员;党徒 | |
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4 testimony | |
n.证词;见证,证明 | |
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5 harassment | |
n.骚扰,扰乱,烦恼,烦乱 | |
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6 rusty | |
adj.生锈的;锈色的;荒废了的 | |
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7 bowers | |
n.(女子的)卧室( bower的名词复数 );船首锚;阴凉处;鞠躬的人 | |
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8 byline | |
n.署名;v.署名 | |
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9 sterling | |
adj.英币的(纯粹的,货真价实的);n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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10 retract | |
vt.缩回,撤回收回,取消 | |
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11 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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12 contrived | |
adj.不自然的,做作的;虚构的 | |
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13 moss | |
n.苔,藓,地衣 | |
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14 ruby | |
n.红宝石,红宝石色 | |
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15 aisle | |
n.(教堂、教室、戏院等里的)过道,通道 | |
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16 apparatus | |
n.装置,器械;器具,设备 | |
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17 democrats | |
n.民主主义者,民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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18 commissioner | |
n.(政府厅、局、处等部门)专员,长官,委员 | |
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19 certify | |
vt.证明,证实;发证书(或执照)给 | |
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20 conspiracy | |
n.阴谋,密谋,共谋 | |
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21 dominion | |
n.统治,管辖,支配权;领土,版图 | |
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22 gut | |
n.[pl.]胆量;内脏;adj.本能的;vt.取出内脏 | |
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23 backwards | |
adv.往回地,向原处,倒,相反,前后倒置地 | |
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