当2021年1月6日亲特朗普的暴徒冲击美国国会大厦时，马克·贝斯利（Mark Baisley）给出了一个解释，预示了亚历克斯·琼斯（Alex Jones）一周后对其观众的说法。
When a pro-Trump mob ravaged the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mark Baisley offered an explanation that anticipated what Alex Jones would tell his audience a week later.
“我完全不理解特朗普爱国者为何要冲进美国国会大厦，以中断国会对选举人团结果的挑战，”当时的科罗拉多州共和党众议员在Facebook上写道。他说，这场暴力行为“符合反法西斯（Antifa）暴徒的特征”。他还补充说，希望能够揭露这些“幕后主使”。
“It does not make any sense to me that Trump patriots would storm the U.S. Capitol to interrupt a Congressional challenge to the Electoral College results,” the then-Republican Colorado state representative wrote on Facebook. The violence, he said, “matches the signature of Antifa rioters.”He added that he hoped the “sponsors” would be revealed.
这些说法根本不属实。近六年后，贝斯利已成为州参议员，并成为科罗拉多州美国参议院的共和党候选人，挑战民主党参议员约翰·希肯卢珀（John Hickenlooper）。在9News主播凯尔·克拉克（Kyle Clark）于10月14日主持的贝斯利与希肯卢珀之间的辩论时被问及此帖，贝斯利并未回避他曾称反法西斯分子发动袭击的谎言。
None of it was remotely true. Nearly six years later, Baisley is a state senator and the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Colorado, challenging Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper. Asked about the post by 9News anchor Kyle Clark, who was co-moderating a debate between Baisley and Hickenlooper on Oct. 14, Baisley didn’t back away from the lie that antifa activists carried out the attack.
希肯卢珀在投票仍在统计的周二夜间以明显优势击败了贝斯利。但贝斯利的丑闻不仅在于他是极端分子，更在于在唐纳德·特朗普总统执政十年后，没人再对共和党参议院候选人抱有更高期待。
Hicklenlooper defeated Baisley in what appears to be a landslide, as votes are still being counted Tuesday night. But the scandal of Baisley isn’t only that he’s an extremist. It’s that, after a decade of President Donald Trump, nobody expects anything better from a Republican Senate nominee.
共和党人不期待，民主党人不期待——即便是大多数独立选民，也会投票反对他。贝斯利属于“MAGA”阵营，这是一种围绕特朗普的个人崇拜，诞生于网络的种族主义污水中。党内领袖已无法再遏制它，也没有米特·罗姆尼（Mitt Romney）或莉兹·切尼（Liz Cheney）仍在职务上谴责贝斯利或其他类似的“MAGA”战士。
Republicans don’t, Democrats don’t — and neither do most independents, even those who will vote against him. Baisley belongs to MAGA, a cult of personality around Trump that grew up in the racist sewers of the internet. Party leaders can no longer contain it, and there’s no Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney left in office to condemn Baisley or the many MAGA soldiers like him.
指责国会大厦袭击是“反法西斯”所为的人，往往并不只持有一种极端观点。2020年5月，贝斯利（Baisley）要求地区检察官调查科罗拉多州公共卫生部门负责人，指控其办公室伪造新冠死亡证明以夸大死亡人数。该州当时不论死亡原因，只要检测呈阳性就计入死亡人数，随后在外界压力下改变了统计方式。这本是一场合法的数据争议，但贝斯利将其升级为犯罪指控。检察官未发现任何证据，贝斯利随后承认自己没有证据。
People who blame the Capitol attack on antifa rarely hold just one extreme view. In May 2020, Baisley asked a district attorney to investigate the head of Colorado’s public health department, accusing her office of falsifying Covid-19 death certificates to inflate the toll. The state had been counting deaths among people who tested positive regardless of cause, and it changed its reporting under pressure. That was a legitimate data dispute, but Baisley turned it into an allegation of a crime. The DA found no evidence, and Baisley later admitted he had no proof.
2022年1月，科罗拉多州众议院共和党人利用一项民主党提出的投票权决议，重新审议2020年选举。贝斯利投票支持一项修正案，该修正案本将要求立法机构“质疑约瑟夫·R·拜登的总统合法性”，并向1月6日冲进华盛顿的示威者致谢，同时支持当时正因涉嫌破坏该县选举设备而接受调查的梅萨县书记蒂娜·彼得斯（Tina Peters）。
In January 2022, Colorado House Republicans used a Democratic voting rights resolution to relitigate the 2020 election. Baisley voted for an amendment that would have had the legislature “call into question the legitimacy of Joseph R. Biden to be President,” thank the people who marched on Washington on Jan. 6 and support Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk then under investigation for a breach of her county’s election equipment.
该修正案未获通过。一周后，贝斯利在接受保守派电台主持人采访时表示，他对该投票感到后悔，主要是出于战术考虑。他说，共和党人“上钩了”，并将责任归咎于民主党人“用种族主义言论挑衅我们”，不论这句话到底意味着什么。
The amendment failed. A week later, Baisley told a conservative radio host that he regretted the vote, mostly for tactical reasons. Republicans, he said, had taken “the bait,” and he blamed Democrats for “goading us with racist statements,” whatever that means.
三个月后，贝斯利站在科罗拉多州议会大厦的台阶上，参加一场名为“科罗拉多选举真相集会”的活动。这场活动的阵容看起来像是怪人的大杂烩，而贝斯利就身处其中。领衔人物是MyPillow公司首席执行官迈克·林德尔，他在2021年一直预测特朗普将复任总统。当时已遭起诉的彼得斯也发表了讲话。这场活动由“信仰教育商业联合”组织推广，该组织由播客主持人、前科罗拉多州州长候选人乔·奥尔特曼创立，他曾多次呼吁绞死自己的政治对手，并称一个“撒旦犹太会堂”正在控制美国。
Three months later, Baisley stood on the steps of the Colorado Capitol at an event called the “Colorado Election Truth Rally.”The lineup looked like a Lollapalooza for cranks, with Baisley right in the middle of it. The headliner was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who spent 2021 predicting that Trump would be reinstated as president. Peters, by then under indictment, spoke, too. The event was promoted by Faith Education Commerce United, a group founded by Joe Oltmann, a podcaster and former candidate for Colorado governor who has repeatedly called for the hanging of his political opponents and said a “synagogue of Satan Jews” is controlling the United States.
与“信仰教育商业联合”有关联的民兵组织“美国联合防御力量”的成员在人群中巡逻。贝斯利是登上讲台的四名现任议员之一。彼得斯后来因参与选举设备入侵事件被定罪并入狱。
Members of the United American Defense Force, a militia tied to FEC United, patrolled the crowd. Baisley was one of four sitting lawmakers who took the stage. Peters was later convicted and sent to prison for her role in the election equipment breach.
你不必只凭他的阴谋论或他的交友来判断贝斯利。他的政策记录同样极端。2020年，他联署了一项法案，旨在执行同性婚姻禁令并限制同性伴侣收养子女——而此时距最高法院就此问题作出裁决已过去五年。众议院24名共和党人中只有四人签署支持，党派领导人也与之保持距离。在10月的辩论中，他将堕胎称为“我们这一代的奴隶制裁决”，并表示他会投票支持全国性禁令。
You don’t have to judge Baisley only by his conspiracy theories or the company he keeps. His policy record is just as extreme. In 2020, he co-sponsored a bill to enforce a ban on same-sex marriage and restrict adoption by same-sex couples, five years after the Supreme Court settled the question. Only four of the House’s 24 Republicans signed on, and party leaders kept their distance. At the October debate, he called abortion the “slavery decision of our generation” and said he would vote for a national ban.
当被问及他关于公立学校应被废除的观点时，他说任何级别的政府运营公立学校“从一开始”就是个错误。他甚至不确定州政府设定的学业标准是否是个好主意。
Asked about his view that public schools should be abolished, he said it was a mistake “from the very beginning” for any level of government to run them. He wasn’t sure even state-set academic standards were a good idea.
这一切在共和党内部并未给贝斯利带来任何代价。科罗拉多州共和党在4月的州代表大会上提名了他，他在初选中无人竞争。去年他发起短暂的州长竞选时，科罗拉多州议会新闻联盟——一个包括科罗拉多公共广播电台和《科罗拉多太阳报》在内的报道合作伙伴——的一篇报道指出，他在州议会任职期间“主要专注于商业和技术领域”。
None of this has cost Baisley anything inside the Republican Party. Colorado Republicans nominated him at their state assembly in April, and he ran unopposed in the primary. When he launched his short-lived campaign for governor last year, a story from the Colorado Capitol News Alliance, a reporting partnership that includes Colorado Public Radio and The Colorado Sun, noted that he had “primarily focused on business and technology during his time at the Capitol.”
他的竞选活动仍然依靠这一形象。他吹嘘在民主党主导的立法机构中通过了自己提出的18项法案中的14项，并提到他办公桌上摆放的托马斯·杰斐逊雕像。当希肯卢珀称他是特朗普的“橡皮图章”时，贝斯利反驳道：“如果我是谁的马屁精，那也是托马斯·杰斐逊的。”自2016年特朗普当选以来，科罗拉多州共和党再未赢得过全州范围的选举。
His campaign still leaned on that image. He touted passing 14 of his 18 bills in a Democratic-dominated Legislature and mentions the statue of Thomas Jefferson he keeps on his desk. When Hickenlooper called him a rubber stamp for Trump, Baisley answered, “If I’m anybody’s sycophant, it’s Thomas Jefferson’s.”Colorado Republicans have not won a statewide race since 2016, the year Trump was elected.
一个想要在这里获胜的政党会寻找能够争取中间选民的候选人。而这个政党却在没有竞争的情况下提名了贝斯利。MAGA运动公然蔑视民主，对调整其政策或言辞以赢过那些无需说服的选民毫无兴趣。更让我担忧的是，当说服失效时，这样的运动会做出什么——我们在2020年已经见识过了。
A party that wanted to win here would look for a candidate who could reach the middle. This one nominated Baisley without a contest. MAGA has shown open contempt for democracy, and it has little interest in moderating its policies or its rhetoric to win over voters it doesn’t need to persuade. What worries me more is what a movement like that does when persuasion fails, which we saw in 2020.
这就是为什么这场辩论中最耐人寻味的时刻，不是贝斯利在政策上说的任何话。而是克拉克直接就2020年大选向他发问的那一刻。
That’s why the most revealing moment of the debate wasn’t anything Baisley said about policy. It came when Clark pressed him on 2020 directly.
克拉克问道：“如果科罗拉多人无法指望马克·贝斯利告诉他们真相——哪怕是像谁赢得了2020年大选这样简单基本的事情——他们又怎么能相信你会告诉他们任何事情的真相？”
“If Coloradans cannot count on Mark Baisley to tell them the truth about something as simple and basic as who won the 2020 election,” Clark asked, “how can they trust that you’ll tell them the truth about anything?”
贝斯利说他对“结果出来方式没问题”，并指责克拉克把话塞进他嘴里。克拉克提醒他，他有记录在案投票认为选举不合法。当最后一次被要求为他帮助散布的选举操纵谎言作出解释时，贝斯利说：“你得帮我理解你在说什么。”贝斯利可能是在回避。但这句话同样可以当作供词：在特朗普十年之后，他的政党再也看不到任何通往权力的道路，除了这一条。而且即便在失败中，也几乎没有理由指望共和党会摆脱这种疯狂的极端主义。
Baisley said he was “fine with the way it came out” and accused Clark of putting words in his mouth. Clark reminded him he was on the record voting that the election was illegitimate. Asked one last time to answer for the election-rigging lies he had helped spread, Baisley said, “You’re going to have to help me understand what you’re saying.”Baisley may have been dodging. But the line works just as well as a confession: After a decade of Trump, his party can no longer see any path to power but this one. And even in defeat, there’s little reason to expect the GOP will rid itself of such deranged extremism.