Tom Corbett’s Crusade: Conquering Donald Trump’s Big Lie
Can the most recent Republican to serve as Pennsylvania governor convince millions of Americans that our elections aren't rigged?
Tom Corbett on the Duquesne University campus in Pittsburgh in September / Photograph by Kevin Scanlon
Lifelong Republican Tom Corbett served as the governor of the commonwealth from 2011 to 2015 and attorney general for eight years prior to that. Now, through his work with the nationwide bipartisan coalition Keep Our Republic, founded amid the mess of the 2020 election, he has a Herculean task: Get everyone to trust the process.
The morning after I watched the fascinating new documentary Stopping the Steal on HBO in late September — if you haven’t seen it, it’s a bunch of former Trump appointees and acolytes explaining quite convincingly that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen — I received an email explaining that you, a staunch Republican, have been trying to drive home this same point across Pennsylvania. I knew I had to speak with you.
Well, I thank you for the opportunity, and, yes, I’ve been working with Keep Our Republic since last year. Our goal is to try to ensure that eligible voters can vote, that all votes will be counted, and that the process will go smoothly.
Before we delve deep into the topic of elections, this being Philadelphia magazine, it’s important to disclose that you’re not — nor have you ever been — a Philadelphian, you live in Pittsburgh, and you’re a huge Steelers fan.
Well, you’re right on those last points, but wrong about me never having been a Philadelphian. I was actually born in Philadelphia!
Consider me fact-checked and rightfully embarrassed! You’d think I could have looked at Wikipedia for a few minutes before calling you.
[Laughs] When I was in Philadelphia campaigning for governor back in the day, I would tell people “I’m from Philadelphia,” and then they’d ask me what high school I went to. And I would say, “Well, I moved to Harrisburg when I was one.”
Why Harrisburg?
My father had a master’s from Wharton and then went to Temple Law. He became a lawyer; we moved to Harrisburg for his work, then Pittsburgh, and I now live in the same house in Pittsburgh that I lived in when I was seven. Have you been to Pittsburgh, Victor?
I have. Many times. I love Pittsburgh almost as much as I hate the Steelers.
[Laughs] Sometimes people from the Philadelphia area will start talking about the Steelers, and I just look at them and say, “We have six Super Bowl titles. How many do you have again?”
On that note, it seems like a good time to change the subject. In late November of 2000, I was in Haiti during their presidential elections. There were pipe bombs going off all over Port-au-Prince and masked gunmen riding around in the beds of pickup trucks firing into crowds. And yet, all anyone could talk about once they heard I was from the United States was how we still didn’t know who our next president would be. Will we know who the next president of the United States is by the end of November this time around?
Ah yes. Bush versus Gore. It wasn’t until December 2000 that we had our answer there. As for this year, I’ll speak to Pennsylvania. I do believe that we’ll know who won the election in Pennsylvania by the Friday after Election Day.
But the other states?
We’re primarily working in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. What I can tell you is that these states have been doing a lot of work, focusing on the process. Here in Pennsylvania, I can tell you that we have many clear processes in place. So if this happens, then X happens. If this happens, then Y happens. If this happens, then Z happens. I can’t say what is going to happen in Georgia. And who knows what is going to happen in Arizona? This is such an unusual race. Even more unusual than four years ago, since we switched candidates midstream.
Do you see Pennsylvania going blue, as it narrowly did in 2020, or red, as it narrowly did in 2016?
I personally hate the idea of these red and blue labels. It discourages people from running for office. It discourages some people from voting. And I really wish the media would stop using these terms. I also wish the media would stop exit polling the day of the election. You have no way of knowing if the exit polls are accurate, but you get people’s expectations up, even though you actually have no idea whatsoever how the vote went. And you create the expectation of what’s going to happen, and then when that doesn’t happen, Oh, gee, there must be something going on! People love their conspiracies, don’t they? I was a prosecutor for many years. I love facts.
Unfortunately, so much of the discourse I see today about the presidential election and otherwise is short on or utterly devoid of facts. People love to talk about how terrible the homicide rate is in Philadelphia. I recently pointed out that we are actually on track to have the second-lowest number of homicides in decades. The response? Oh, the Democrats are covering up murders to skew the data. Even though there’s not the slightest bit of evidence to suggest that.
Just the other day, a friend of mine — a lawyer, no less — told me that because of illegal immigration, so many illegal immigrants are going to vote and sway the election. I asked him, Where are you getting this? Where are the facts?! Do you really believe in a conspiracy that would require the help of the people working the polls in serious numbers who would just let all these illegal immigrants vote illegally? I think I actually swayed him.
And with Keep Our Republic, that’s what you’re doing. Traveling around and trying to clear up the Big Lie and all these other lies. I don’t know, though. Feels like it might be a fool’s errand. I remember when I found out an acquaintance of mine truly didn’t believe that we ever landed on the moon. I didn’t even know how to address it with him, because he was coming from a place of such delusion, a place that lacked any rhyme or reason.
Right, but there are a lot of people who I think are not in the Man Was Never on the Moon group. They’re just not certain what happened with the election. They don’t understand the process, and so we are trying to explain to them the process.
Tom Corbett at Duquesne’s Thomas R. Kline Schoo / Photograph by Kevin Scanlon
As for the process, there’s so much background stuff that happens between Election Day and Inauguration Day, things we don’t normally think about. But the events of 2020 and the lead-up to January 6, 2021, really brought to light a lot of that.
Yes. The states have to certify the election results. The governor of each state has to send the results to the president of the Senate in Washington and to the National Archives by December 8th. But before the governor can certify, every single county in their state has to certify. In 2020, what were the Trump people trying to do? Delay certification.
Let’s say that due to objections and delays, Pennsylvania had not been able to certify its votes. Pennsylvania’s votes would not have counted, and then because Pennsylvania would not have been counted in the electoral vote, they wouldn’t have the 270 votes it takes to win. And that’s exactly what the Trump team was trying to do. Delaying and delaying and then trying to get the vice president not to certify the results at the Capitol.
But the electoral count reform act of 2022 now clearly says that the vice president’s role is purely ministerial; the vice president gets no right of saying whose votes count and whose don’t. And for there to be an objection to results, you need to get 20 percent of the membership of the House and 20 percent of the membership of the Senate to join you in the objection. Before, that could be done by just one person. So the reform act did tighten things up, but you’re still going to see lots of efforts to delay.
Yes, I recall in 2020, just in Pennsylvania alone, this flurry of objections to the count, so many challenges.
But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court actually did something very useful last August. They issued an order that says that any objections or appeals in individual Pennsylvania county results must be filed within three days, instead of 10. This is part of a major effort to not let things be delayed.
Why are you so sure that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen?
There’s just no evidence. Donald Trump can’t prove it was rigged. He can’t even make a prima facie case that it was rigged. Like I said, I was a prosecutor for many years. You tell me that some guys are drug dealers. Okay. Where is the evidence? Where are the facts? I can’t just arrest them because somebody says they are drug dealers. And the election wasn’t stolen just because some people say that it was.
What else are you doing other than trying to change people’s minds about the Big Lie?
Well, in 2020, we were not prepared as a state for what happened with the election. If you’re not prepared the first time, it’s not your fault. If you’re not prepared the second time, it is. So we need to be prepared, and we will be. We have people spending countless hours doing legal research before the challenges even come in. We are making sure that law enforcement is prepared to quickly deal with violence at polling locations. Many of the locations where they count the ballots are now completely equipped with video surveillance watching everything you do. We are trying to get this job done as quickly and accurately and safely as possible. You don’t want any one county screwing up the works. If we have a county that refuses to certify, we are prepared to offer legal opinions and legal writings from much better lawyers than me.
Tom Corbett during the Liberty Medal ceremony at the National Constitution Center in September 2012 / Photograph by Bill McCay/WireImage/Getty Images
I could be wrong, but it feels like you’re one of those Republicans who is not voting for Donald Trump this time around.
I’m not publicly supporting anyone. I will go into my polling place and cast my vote. CBS News interviewed me recently and asked me who I was voting for. Then they looked at me dumbfounded when I wouldn’t say.
Okay, so when was the last time you voted for a Democrat for president?
[Laughs] Nice try. My personal votes are irrelevant.
Well, they’re relevant for the future of the republic.
But not relevant to this story. Listen, if I can convince two people who can then convince two people and so forth and so on, then this is working, no matter who I vote for. What I can tell people is that I was a state prosecutor for years, I was a United States Attorney for years, I was the governor of Pennsylvania. So when I tell people that the election wasn’t rigged and that it’s not going to be rigged, this gives some people pause. They might hesitate the next time they’re lied to, and not just assume.
That said, former President Trump is a unique case. Well, that’s an understatement with all kinds of exclamation points. He has this strange salesmanship ability to convince people that he’s right and that everyone else is wrong. And if you say it loud enough and long enough and hard enough, people start to believe it.
Nowhere is that more true than with Donald Trump and the election.
But here’s where I get frustrated with the media. During the debate, the moderators had a chance to say, “President Trump, give me one instance where somebody voted illegally, and give me the facts to back that up.” One instance where the poll books were rigged, where the result was rigged, and the actual evidence. They didn’t do that. That was frustrating for me.
Speaking of the media, I recently participated in a high school career day, and I asked the students where they get their news. The answer was, resoundingly, TikTok. And we all know how quickly misinformation can spread on TikTok.
This is what I’m waging war against: the cell phone and the social media that comes through it. This has divided our country in ways we haven’t seen since the Civil War. People aren’t willing to listen. You’re either red or you’re blue. You’re either a Fox News person or an MSNBC person. And then you have this segment of the electorate that doesn’t care, or at least doesn’t vote, and that is very concerning. I haven’t figured that out.
And the Russians. The Iranians. The Chinese. We know they are using social media to interfere with our election, and I truly wonder if they weren’t doing it just as much in 2020. Earlier this year, I was at a conference where the last speaker was a professional hacker who is working for good now. He put up a video of Biden sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. And Biden said that because of technical problems, we’ve moved the election to Friday. You could … not … tell it was manufactured. You put that on cell phones on the morning of Election Day? I saw it on my cell phone; it must be true. You just can’t trust what you see anymore.
It’s an existential crisis.
It absolutely is.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Published as “Corbett’s Crusade” in the November 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
