MSNBC host Ari Melber brought Peter Navarro, former President Donald Trump’s senior economic adviser, on his show The Beat on Tuesday to discuss a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that Navarro describes in his new book, In Trump Time.
After Navarro detailed “Green Bay Sweep,” the name of a plot to keep Trump in office despite his electoral defeat to Joe Biden, Melber told his guest that Navarro had just described a “coup.”
So what was the Green Bay Sweep?
“The plan was simply this: We had over 100 congressman and senators on Capitol Hill to implement the sweep. We were going to challenge the results of the election in the six battleground states,” Navarro said. Those included Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“These were the places where we believe that if the votes were sent back to those battleground states and looked at again, there would be enough concern amongst the legislatures that most or all of those states would decertify the election,” he continued.
The intention, then, was that “that would throw the election to the House of Representatives,” Navarro said. “And I would say to you here, Ari, that all of this, again, was in the lanes legally. It was prescribed by the Constitution. There is a provision to go, rather than through the Electoral College, to the House of Representatives. And all that’s required was peace and calm on Capitol Hill.”
Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attack, disrupting the certification of the votes before the plan Navarro described could unfold.
“At 1 p.m., Sen. Ted Cruz and [Arizona Rep.] Paul Gosar started the Green Bay Sweep beautifully, challenging the results of Arizona,” Navarro told Melber on MSNBC.
The idea was that the members of Congress could continue to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes to cause a historic delay that would get media attention and allow public pressure to build for then-Vice President Mike Pence to send electoral votes back to the six contested states, Navarro previously told The Daily Beast.
Melber pushed back on how Navarro was casting the plan.
“You just described this plan as a way to take an election where the outcome was established by independent secretaries of state, by the voters of those states, and legal remedies had been exhausted with the Supreme Court never even taking, let alone siding with, any of the claims that you just referred to. So legally, they went nowhere,” Melber said.
After an interruption from Navarro, Melber continued: “Then you will use the incumbent, losing party’s power — that was the Republican party that was losing power — to overtake and reverse that outcome,” he said. “Do you realize you are describing a coup?”
To that, Navarro replied, “No. I totally reject many of your premises there.”
Though Navarro claimed the Green Bay Sweep would have followed guidelines of the Constitution and the rules of the Senate “by the book,” the entire plan was based on the false claim that irregularities and widespread fraud occurred in the election, which never happened.
