The call was on Saturday, and the Washington Post had the story up Sunday, two days before the critical Senate run-off elections in Georgia, after receiving audio of the call from the Republican secretary of state.
“It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible,” Trump said. “When I heard it was close, I said there’s no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night, you know that, Brad.”
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated because the 2,236 and absentee ballots,” the president told Raffensperger.
In the one hour call, Trump claimed there were “corrupt” ballots, which he said was “totally illegal.”
“It is more illegal for you than it is for them, because you know what they did, and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense,” he said, speaking to the secretary of state. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you.”
Detailing reports of “criminal” behavior he has heard about, he told Raffensperger he was allowing this behavior to happen — that is when he spoke of needing to “find” the votes referenced above.
“And you can’t let it happen, and you are letting it happen,” the president said. “You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
It’s clear that Trump is not asking Raffensperger to find the votes, which contradicts the dishonest media spin.
“Look, we need only 11,000 votes. We have far more than that as it stands now. We’ll have more and more,” the president said, imploring the Republican official to check for fraudulent ballots.
After claiming that hundreds of thousands of ballots were dumped into Fulton County and another county next to it, Trump said, “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already.”
Again, the ask is to address the alleged illegal voting, not generating favorable votes for him out of thin air.
Or, in other words, this appears to be yet another nothing-burger — a product of the corrupt media, which “completely decontextualized” Trump’s statements, according to Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini.
