I just finished listening to the hour long conversation between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger which took place yesterday and was leaked to The Washington Post. Here are six observations of the call.
1. To spend an hour on the phone with Donald Trump discussing any subject is cruel and unusual punishment. Under the circumstances, Raffensperger said very little and probably knew there was little he could say other than to stand firm without engaging in invective.
2. The big headline from this call is that Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes for him. From where I sit this call should never have taken place much less lasted an hour. It isn't the Georgia Secretary of State's job to find votes for the President of the United States. But now it's on the record.
3. There was a huge disconnect between Trump and conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell. While Trump was making all sorts of claims, Mitchell was arguing that they didn't have enough information and was demanding Raffensperger furnish it to them. Trump also repeatedly claimed that votes at the State Farm Arena were counted thrice for Biden which at one point Mitchell said that she "didn't know about that" much to Trump's annoyance. The fact is that nothing Trump has claimed could ever repeated in a court of law because there are no facts or evidence to support his claim. Period.
4. Trump repeatedly claims that he won Georgia by "hundreds of thousands of votes" ultimately settling on a figure of 400,000. I'm surprised Trump didn't say 2+2=5. Trump math is based on the number of people who attended his rallies. Yes, far more people attended his rallied than attended Joe Biden's rallies because Biden didn't want to cause any superspreader events. If you listen to this call you would never know there was a pandemic.
5. Speaking of the pandemic, if Trump had devoted this level of attention and energy to stopping COVID-19 that he has to overturning the election then perhaps we wouldn't have 350,000 dead Americans. But Trump cares more about 11,780 votes.
6. Getting back to rallies, Trump will be Dalton, Georgia ( a community on the Tennessee border now represented by QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene) ostensibly in support of Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. How much do you want to bet that Trump spends more of the rally decrying Raffensperger and Georgia's GOP Governor Brian Kemp (who he twice called a schmuck in the phone call) than defending Perdue and Loeffler? If that helps Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock on Tuesday night then wonderful.
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