Politics

Tommy Tuberville Makes False Statements About US Government In A Local Interview

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Republican Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville made misleading and false assertions during an interview Thursday with the Alabama Daily News.

Tuberville, a former football coach at Auburn, made a number of questionable claims relating to World War II and the basic structure of the U.S. government and described the Voting Rights Act in vague terms during his campaign.

During his interview, Tuberville also criticized the idea of one-party control in Washington, saying, “You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government.”

“It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and Executive,” he added.

The three branches of government are the Legislative, Executive and Judicial, as established in the first three articles of the United States Constitution.

Throughout his successful campaign against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, Tuberville often avoided the spotlight, campaigning infrequently and refusing to debate both former Sen. Jeff Sessions and Jones during his primary and general campaigns.

During his campaign against Jones, he also described the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law signed in the 1960s, in ambiguous terms.

“The thing about the Voting Rights Act is, you know, there’s a lot of different things you can look at it as. Who is it going to help? What direction do we need to go with it? I think it’s important that everything we do we keep secure. We keep an eye on it. It’s run by our government,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

In October, a member of the Alabama Media Group said that Tuberville’s strategy was “to say as little as possible.”

“No debates. No interviews. No nothing. Tuberville is in hiding,” the member said. “If a campaign won’t let its candidate speak openly because he can’t do so without saying dumb things that hurt his chances of winning the election, what the heck is going to happen when he’s in the United States Senate?”

Tuberville ultimately won in a landslide, defeating Jones by over 20 points.