When asked whether Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election, many MAGA Republicans respond evasively, citing “questions” about election security while stopping short of claiming outright that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump. But journalist Brian Beutler, a veteran progressive political writer who previously served as editor in chief of Crooked Media’s website, argues that this evasiveness is no longer serving them well — and that, in some cases, Republicans have “quietly admitted that Joe Biden won.”

In a Wednesday, August 19 post on X and an accompanying article for Off Message, Beutler noted that CNN contacted five Republican gubernatorial nominees to ask who won the 2020 election: Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania’s Stacy Garrity, Wisconsin’s Tom Tiffany, Michigan’s John James and Georgia’s Rick Jackson.

The question has shadowed Republican candidates since 2020, when Biden defeated Trump with 306 electoral votes and a popular-vote margin of more than seven million — a result upheld by recounts, state audits and dozens of court rulings, including losses for Trump’s campaign before judges he had appointed. Even so, years of polling have found a majority of Republican voters saying they do not consider Biden’s victory legitimate, which has kept the issue alive inside the party.

“All five of them have lengthy track records of lying about the election, or, in some cases, even trying to overturn the election,” Beutler wrote. “But now that they have general elections to win, Tiffany, Garrity and Jackson have reversed themselves without explanation. Tiffany says, ‘Biden won.’ A Jackson spokesperson says Jackson acknowledges ‘Biden’s win.’ Closer to the borderline, Garrity says ‘Biden was elected.’ But none hide behind the standard MAGA weasel words — that Biden ‘was certified’ the winner.”

In his post on X, Beutler asked: “Serious question: is Trump aware that these election denying GOP gubernatorial nominees have now quietly admitted that Joe Biden won? Not ‘was certified,’ but won.”

Beutler argues the development reflects Republican desperation ahead of the November 3 midterms — a condition Off Message describes as a “downward spiral.”

For the nominees involved, the pivot carries echoes of the 2022 midterms, when high-profile 2020 deniers lost statewide races in key swing states — among them Kari Lake, defeated in Arizona’s governor’s race, and Doug Mastriano, defeated in Pennsylvania’s. The offices at stake this year also carry direct election responsibilities: governors certify their states’ results and the appointment of presidential electors, machinery that became a focus of the failed effort to overturn the 2020 outcome, which is why candidates’ answers about that election draw scrutiny well beyond campaign rhetoric. What remains to be seen heading toward November 3 is whether Trump, who continues to falsely insist the election was stolen, responds to the reversals — and whether Tiffany, Garrity or Jackson offer voters any explanation for the change.

“Consider the following three still-unfolding developments: Republican voters are ignoring Trump’s endorsements in high profile GOP primaries. Trump-backed nominees are ‘tacking to the center’ by abandoning years of election denialism and admitting that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. MAGA operatives find themselves unable to achieve narrative dominance, in large part because they’ve shredded their own credibility,” Beutler wrote.

The journalist further argues that “illusions of mastery and forward motion are essential to the Trump project” — and that those illusions are now falling apart.

“If the movement weakens, and begins to flag, its internal contradictions become much easier to detect, and everyone who’s signed up to operate its machinery is exposed,” Beutler wrote. “They weren’t swept along by some irresistible juggernaut; they were fully in control of their own faculties. They knew the difference between right and wrong, and chose wrong…. It’s hard to say when the artifice began to crumble. But the failed censorship of Jimmy Kimmel and the success, in defiance of right-wing histrionics, of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show were two key tells: Fascists do not, in fact, dominate American culture.”