By Tom Tillison | Business & Politics
Of course, that’s the spin coming from the same media
that has engaged in a four-year-long vendetta against this president.
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.
David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican
Party, announced in a tweet that Trump has filed two lawsuits – federal
and state – against Raffensperger after he secretly recorded the
“confidential settlement discussion” of that pending litigation.
“The audio published by the Washington Post is heavily
edited and omits the stipulation that all discussions were for the purpose of
settling litigation and confidential under federal and state law,” he added.
The tweet prompted claims that there was no such
stipulation, and Shafer countered to say the leaked call “begins immediately
after Mark Meadows states that the call is for the purpose of discussing the
settlement of pending litigation.”
The Washington Post reporter Amy Gardner disputed this
assertion.
What’s not getting much notice is that there were
attorneys from both sides on the call.
In addition to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,
conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell and Georgia-based attorney Kurt Hilbert
were on Trump’s end of the call, and Raffensperger was joined by his office’s
attorney Ryan Germany and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs.
As a result, as noted in a thread detailing the call
that’s getting a lot of attention, “The idea that POTUS was asking for ANYTHING
untoward is categorically insane.”
There was plenty of pushback against Raffensperger
online for leaking the call to the Washington Post.
_____________
Tom Tillison , Senior
Staff Writer, is the longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review. Tom grew up in
Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the
Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing
skills.
