August 26, 2022 10:58 AM UTC

Erik Aadland Tries (and Fails) to Scrub Away the MAGA

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Erik Aadland is fairly new to politics, but he apparently understands — albeit a bit late — that being a full-throated election denier and “Big Lie” MAGAbot isn’t going to be very helpful in trying to win election to Congress in CO-07 against Democratic State Sen. Brittany Pettersen.

Aadland spoke about his beliefs that the 2020 election was “absolutely rigged” during a June 2021 speech to the Jefferson County Republican Men’s Club. He would like that video to go away, but that’s not how the Internet works. As Chase Woodruff reports for Colorado Newsline:

A Jefferson County Republican group has quietly removed from its website a video of a conspiracy theory-laden speech by Colorado congressional candidate Erik Aadland, in which he falsely claimed the 2020 election was “absolutely rigged.”

Aadland, an Army veteran and former oil and gas executive, spoke to the Jefferson County Republican Men’s Club in June 2021, shortly after declaring his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Following longtime Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s announcement that he would not seek reelection in 2022, Aadland jumped to the 7th Congressional District race, where he faces state Democratic Sen. Brittany Pettersen.

“The 2020 election, it was rigged. Absolutely rigged,” Aadland said in the speech to Jefferson County Republicans last year. “If you do enough looking into it, I think you’ll be convinced.”

“It’s extremely scary what transpired,” he continued. “There was a significant amount of fraud in the 2020 election.”

You can see why Aadland would WANT to scrub this away, but there are too many other people who saw and heard those comments:

We reported in June 2021 when he launched his #COSen campaign that Colorado #CO07 Republican Erik Aadland told a GOP group: “The 2020 election, it was rigged. Absolutely rigged.” & cited alarm over “the Navarro reports” as an inspiration to run #copoliticshttps://t.co/wUhPg5p0N6

— Ernest Lee Luning (@eluning) August 26, 2022

Woodruff includes an excerpt of the video in his story for Newsline, but plenty of others realized at the time that this was probably a clip worth saving…including us!

D’oh!

As Woodruff writes, “Aadland’s campaign did not respond to questions about his position on the 2020 election or the removal of the June 2021 video.” And now he doesn’t have to!

Here’s a free tip for Aadland: Nothing draws more attention to something than trying to hide it.