A Majority of Mormons Embraced Trumpism. Now What?
In the end, Utah Sen. Mike Lee rejected the voter fraud conspiracy. It’s time for repentance.
After the Capitol was cleared of rioters on January 6, lawmakers returned to the Hill to finish counting the nation’s electoral votes. Sen. Josh Hawley continued to support the voter fraud conspiracy theory by challenging Pennsylvania’s election results, but the Senate rejected his challenge by a vote of 92 to seven. Sen. Mike Lee was among the few Trump supporters who diverged from Hawley’s challenge; he registered his vote with a strident “hell no.”
Mike Lee and I are both Mormons. Mormons do not support Trump with the same fervor as some religious groups, but a majority of Mormons do support him—even though Joe Biden received the most votes of any Democratic presidential candidate in Utah since LBJ. Coming into the 2020 election, Lee was a powerful voice in that majority, and plenty of prominent Mormons joined Lee over the past four years: Former Sen. Orrin Hatch, Rep. Burgess Owens, and Rep. Chris Stewart are all Donald Trump loyalists. (Both Owens and Stewart supported the voter fraud conspiracy.) Utah’s Attorney General Sean Reyes was on the board of the election committee “Latter-day Saints for Trump.” Tim Ballard, a former DHS agent, known for his controversial…
