Georgia STILL on my mind . . .

Trump's latest criminal attempt to overturn election results

The Washington Post dropped a bombshell today. President Trump spent an hour on the phone Saturday trying to strong-arm Georgia’s Secretary of State into “finding” enough votes to throw Trump the election.

I was going to write today about the historical role of white journalism in anti-Black policing, but this explosive story has changed my plans.

Georgia is on my mind yet again (see letter from 12-31-2020).

“I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump told Brad Raffensperger in a weird monologue of threats, jibber-jabber, and outright lies. You can listen to audio of the phone call and read the full transcript here.

The takeaway: the President of the United States asked the Georgia Secretary of State, a member of his own party, to commit voter fraud and overturn the most secure presidential election in U.S. history.

Here’s what Laurence Tribe, Harvard constitutional lawyer, said on Twitter:

Trump’s call for election fraud—which legal experts say constitutes a crime in Georgia and is beyond the protection of a presidential pardon—is a deeply disturbing act in his GOP-abetted campaign against American democracy. Trump has convinced at least 11 Republican senators and senators-elect to deny President-elect Biden’s victory when Congress meets Wednesday for what should be a pro-forma electoral certification process.

Vice President Mike Pence, ever Trump’s lapdog, is playing along. His role Wednesday is merely ceremonial. Still, he wants us all to know, especially Trump and his base, that he “shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election,” as his chief of staff reports.

Experts tell us the Republicans’ effort to overturn the election results is futile. Every state has certified its election results, and courts across the country have dismissed at least 60 Trump challenges to the outcome. The Republicans have not offered a single piece of meaningful evidence to support their claims of voting irregularities and malfeasance.

But Trump and his allies have spread misinformation about election “rigging” far and wide, with the help of right-wing news media, sowing doubt in Trump’s base about the legitimacy of Biden’s win. As a result, only a quarter of Republicans believe Biden won the election fair and square. Trump is encouraging his supporters to demonstrate in DC against Biden’s victory on Wednesday. So far, at least four different rallies protesting the results of a fair and free election, and the congressional certification of those results, are planned. The Proud Boys say they will attend. Chat rooms are awash with people planning to bring arms to the protests.

Here is what the incomparable Pulitzer Prize-winning Hannah Nikole-Jones of the NYT’s 1619 Project had to say on Twitter:

What is really going on here?

Consider this: Biden won 306 electoral votes, Trump 232. Georgia has 16 electoral votes. What about the remaining 58 electoral votes Trump would need to win the election?

We need to hear from election officials in the other swing states Biden won: Arizona (11 electoral votes), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10). If Trump tried to intimidate Georgia officials, what has he done in these other states? I expect journalists will let us know in the next few days.

Now, consider this: Fox News reports that GOP members of the House are pressuring GOP Senators to object to the certification of at least three states’ results. Their goal, if we are to believe Fox News and the Republicans floating this information, is to challenge the results for at least three states and to appoint an Electoral Commission to conduct a 10-day emergency audit of voting returns in the contested states.

The Trumpist precedent for such an action? The infamous Tilden-Hayes election of 1876, which led to a shameful comprise ending Reconstruction in the South. The compromise gave white Southerners the freedom to build a white supremacist totalitarian society on a foundation of racial caste and racial terror. This society lasted at least until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We can only hope they won’t be successful in these anti-democratic and racist efforts.

When Trump asked the Georgia Secretary of State to commit voter fraud, he was asking for the disfranchisement of Black Georgian voters who delivered the state to Biden, a Democratic victory Black women in Georgia made happen with years of preparation. A Democratic presidential candidate has not won Georgia since 1992.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Stacey Abrams and other Democratic organizers, including a coalition of powerful Black women, are preparing for Tuesday’s U.S. Senate special elections in Georgia. Control of the Senate hangs in the balance, along with the success of the Biden-Harris agenda.

What do you make of all of this? I’d love to know.

Best, Kathy