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  • The Atlantic

    Inside the Red-State Plot to Take Down a Top Trump Ally

    Mike Lee, the former Trump critic, and current Trump acolyte, may be vulnerable in 2022. An unusual coalition of opponents in Utah is trying to unseat him.
    by McKay Coppins Nov 12, 2021 6 minutes
    Source: Getty; The Atlantic

    Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET on November 13, 2021.

    For many Utahns, the Trump rally was the breaking point. A few days before the 2020 election, Senator Mike Lee paced across a red, white, and blue stage in Goodyear, Arizona, microphone in hand, rhapsodizing about the president’s many virtues while he looked on. Lee’s talking points were mostly familiar. But then he arrived at a novel line of flattery, pitched to his coreligionists: He compared Trump to a figure from the Book of Mormon.

    “To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni,” Lee bellowed, pointing to the president. “He seeks not power, but to pull it down. He seeks not the praise of the world or the fake news, but he seeks the well-being and the peace of the American people.”

    The backlash was swift. Members of the aren’t used to seeing their sacred texts so brazenly politicized on the stump, and many members—including even some Donald Trump voters—regarded the invocation of a scriptural hero at a MAGA rally as blasphemous. Lee’s

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