The WaPo released the full transcript and audio of the call, perhaps due to suggestions it had been selectively edited, but I hope more because it needed to be released. The American people deserve to hear his words, and those of the others on the call, not the words he wants us to hear.
It's beyond shocking (to normal folks, anyway) that he made the call at all, this late in the game - but even more shocking was what he said on the call, knowing as he must have that it was being recorded. I mean, the thought that anyone would have a phone conversation with him and not record it (where it's legal, of course) is beyond me.
Also shocking? That this was the 18th time the president reached out to Raffensperger. Just imagine that - picture the mental state, picture the desperation, and picture the president of the United States being that desperate, that deranged... I was going to say 'situationally' deranged, but I don't see any benefit pretending that it isn't widespread derangement, do you?
Also shocking? The possibility that we wouldn't even had known about it, had the president not tweeted his dismay that his efforts to redirect the outcome had failed, and had he not disparaged the folks in Georgia in the process. "The truth will come out," Raffensperger tweeted in response. And the truth did come out, didn't it?
And the truth notwithstanding, the president will likely want us to agree it was a perfect call, a beautiful call. And that there's nothing wrong with the call, it's just perfect and beautiful and he did nothing wrong. The only people who did things wrong, he'd have us believe, are all of the Republicans involved in the election process in Georgia. He'll be telling us that any minute, I'm sure. Maybe after a quick trip to his golf course or something.
The call happened last Saturday afternoon. From Trumpworld were Mark Meadows and a couple of attorneys I'd never heard of - no Rudy, no Kraken, no Lin Wood, and certainly none of the famous ones who defended Trump in his impeachment. The deputy secretary of state and his office's general counsel joined Raffensperger.
There's so much material in the transcript, it's hard to pick out highlights. But here's some of it, including the president's contention that he couldn't have lost.
...I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense.
Because, as we know, voters don't vote, rally-goers vote. That's in the Constitution somewhere, right? Where's Jonathan Turley when you need him?
After listening to the president describe his truth, which included hundreds of thousands of alleged irregularities, amounting to many more than the 11,780 votes needed to win, Raffensperger had the chance to respond.
Well, I listened to what the president has just said. President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don’t agree that you have won. And we don’t — I didn’t agree about the 200,000 number that you’d mentioned...
He went on to describe all of the time they've spent rebutting Trump's numbers in lawsuits, and with the state Senate, the state House, the US Congressmen from Georgia. And he mentioned the recounts, which gave Georgia to President-elect Joe Biden again. And again.
"Well, Brad." That's what the president said next. "Well, Brad." And then, after talking about other states, and saying "we have all the votes we need," he went back to his favorite theme: he won. He won, and he proved there's way more votes than needed, but he only had to show one more than 11,779 because that's how many he lost by in the bad count from "Well, Brad."
Not only that, but
...what's the difference between winning the election by two votes and winning it by half a million votes. I think I probably did win it by half a million. You know, one of the things that happened, Brad, is we have other people coming in now from Alabama and from South Carolina and from other states, and they’re saying it’s impossible for you to have lost Georgia. We won. You know in Alabama, we set a record, got the highest vote ever. In Georgia, we set a record with a massive amount of votes. And they say it’s not possible to have lost Georgia.
And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible. When I heard it was close, I said there’s no way.
He went on, and on, again. But here's where Well, Brad steps up his game.
Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen, and they were surprised.
And he gave the example of some guy from Trumpworld and his 5,000 dead people - and Well, Brad said they've proven there were two votes cast by dead people. Which - although Brad didn't say this - is one less than the number of dead people votes cast for the president in Pennsylvania.
There was a lot of talk about the video supposedly showing a woman putting what Trump said was 18,000 ballots through the machines - 100% of them for Biden - three times, Trump said. Or maybe it was 56,000 ballots, or 20 hundred bazillion ballots, who knows.
Here's part of the response from Well, Brad.
... I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context.
After more babble from Trump, Well, Brad continued.
We did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.
The president attacked the law enforcement folks, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the FBI, who have been investigating the allegations, the "law enforcement president" did.
Well, there's no way they could - then they're incompetent. They're either dishonest or incompetent, okay?
There's only two answers, dishonesty or incompetence There's just no way. Look. There's no way. And on the other thing, I said too, there is no way. I mean, there's no way that these things could have been, you know, you have all these different people.
Later, after more allegations from Trump -most of them coming from Qanon and other conspiracy outlets - Well, Brad had to chime in again.
Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they - people can say anything.
The president's response is hilarious.
Oh, this isn't social media. This is Trump media. It's not social media. It's really not; it's not social media. I don't care about social media. I couldn't care less. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side, you know. I don't even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accurate election. And you're a Republican.
He "couldn't care less about social media?" Isn't that why he vetoed the NDAA, the military spending bill, for not including the removal of protections for social media companies that are flagging all of his tweets about election fraud? What the actual hell?
I don't know about you, but I'd bet my ballot that Trump media is way more bigly less trustworthy even than social media.
More back and forth, more "you must be wrong because you won't show us anything" from the Trump side. After all, they had experts look at stuff and determine that the official certified counts are all wrong - even though the Trump team admittedly doesn't have the records they need to prove that their own numbers are right. Got it?
And when Well, Brad's team explained that the Trump team isn't entitled to all of the records they want, for privacy reasons among other things, here's Trump.
Well, under law, you're not allowed to give faulty election results, okay? You're not allowed to do that. And that's what you've done. This is a faulty election result. And honestly, this should go very fast. You should meet tomorrow because you have a big election coming up, and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam — and because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote. And a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected. Really respected, if this thing could be straightened out before the election.
And once you work on those numbers?
Because I know, Brad, that if you think we’re right, I think you’re going to say, and I’m not looking to blame anybody, I’m just saying, you know, and, you know, under new counts, and under new views, of the election results, we won the election. You know? It’s very simple. We won the election.
So, the Rs are going to vote, and they're not going to vote, and they're going to vote negative, and they're going to vote. Word.
And for some reason, after a lot of back and forth between others on the call, Trump decides this is the time to play And Now for Something Completely Different.
And Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying these guys are dumber than a rock. What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you. And I only ran against her once. And that was with a guy named Brian Kemp, and I beat her. And if I didn’t run, Brian wouldn’t have had even a shot, either in the general or in the primary. He was dead, dead as a doornail. He never thought he had a shot at either one of them. What a schmuck I was. But that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is.
I hope Brian was alive when he voted, I really do. It would be horrible otherwise. And speaking of voting, Trump also said he wanted everyone to meet, quickly
because I think we should come to a resolution of this before the election. Otherwise, you’re going to have people just not voting. They don’t want to vote.
Except, as we know, they do want to vote. Negatively, maybe, but 'they' don't like Well, Brad. Except for the ones that do. Dear lord, my head hurts.
They hate the state, they hate the governor, and they hate the secretary of state. I will tell you that right now. The only people that like you are people that will never vote for you. You know that, Brad, right? They like you, you know, they like you. They can’t believe what they found. They want more people like you. So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And, Brad, we just want the truth. It’s simple. And everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out. It’s okay. It takes a little while, but let the truth come out. And the real truth is, I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000 votes. We need less than 2,000 votes. And are you guys able to meet tomorrow, Ryan?
Well, sure, Mr. president, you need "less than 2,000 votes." Except that we all know you need 11,800 votes: one more than President-elect Biden's margin of victory. How stupid is he with this math stuff, anyway?
And how stupid are we?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!