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Posted: 2021-06-11T06:22:16Z | Updated: 2021-06-11T10:52:54Z

Conservative pundit Charlie Sykes on Thursday cautioned against dismissing the Arizona state Senate GOPs partisan audit of the 2020 election.

Sykes told MSNBC s Nicolle Wallace that the beating heart of the GOP was to embrace ex-President Donald Trump s lie that he actually beat President Joe Biden and to use that then as an excuse to change the laws, referencing Republican-sponsored voter suppression measures in many U.S. states.

As weve said before, we can roll our eyes and treat the Arizona audit as a joke, but a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower, said Sykes, founder of the conservative website The Bulwark .

We are post-evidence. There is no logical connection to it except that this has now become gospel in the Republican Party , he added. And it is not just Arizona . I think that the latest count you had legislatures from seven states visit this Arizona audit, so what youre seeing here is about to metastasize across the country.

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Watch the interview here:

\"We can roll our eyes and treat the Arizona audit as a joke, but a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower, and the danger of this is spreading from state to state... This has now become gospel in the Republican Party\" - @SykesCharlie w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/bDSbVeT4YQ

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"We can roll our eyes and treat the Arizona audit as a joke, but a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower, and the danger of this is spreading from state to state... This has now become gospel in the Republican Party" - @SykesCharlie w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/bDSbVeT4YQ

Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) June 10, 2021

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Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. We hope you'll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.

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