Trump Accuses Georgia’s Governor of Being An “Obstructionist,” Calls On Him To Resign
[guest post by Dana]
It’s mind-boggling that almost two months after the election and after the vast majority of President Trump’s baseless complaints about election fraud have been tossed by the courts, Trump is now publicly pressuring a sitting governor to resign for refusing to rescind Joe Biden’s election win. As a reminder, Georgia election officials certified that Trump lost the election by approximately 12,000 votes:
Hearings from Atlanta on the Georgia Election overturn now being broadcast. Check it out. @OANN @newsmax and many more. @BrianKempGA should resign from office. He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2020
In other words, we have the President of the United States calling on a sitting governor who was elected by the people of Georgia to resign because he is standing his ground and refusing to confirm Trump’s ongoing delusion that he won in the state of Georgia.
Trump and his allies have trained their grievances at Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), accusing the duo of mismanaging the election in Georgia. Trump’s tweet on Wednesday, however, marked the first time the president has called for Kemp to step down.
Trump has also sought to pressure Kemp and other Georgia officials to call a special session of the state General Assembly in a bid to toss out the state’s election results and appoint pro-Trump electors. That effort fell flat, however, and Georgia’s electors cast their votes for Biden on Dec. 14.
Last month, Sens. David Perdue (R-Ga.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who are facing competitive runoff elections on Jan. 5, demanded that Raffensperger resign over his handling of the election. That demand was immediately dismissed by Raffensperger.
Unfortunately for Trump, after Raffensperger acquiesced to pressure from the President and conducted an audit of ballot signatures, the result was just more bad news for the President:
Law enforcement and election investigators didn’t find a single fraudulent absentee ballot during an audit of over 15,000 voter signatures, according to a report by the Georgia secretary of state’s office released Tuesday.
The audit contradicted allegations that absentee ballots were rife with fraud after President Donald Trump said the election had been stolen, said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump lost to Joe Biden by about 12,000 votes in Georgia.
There were 10 absentee ballots that had been accepted but voter signatures didn’t match or signatures were missing, according to the report. But agents from the GBI and investigators with the secretary of state’s office contacted those voters and confirmed they had submitted those ballots.
In one case, a voter’s wife signed her husband’s ballot envelope. Another voter signed the front of the envelope instead of the back. Eight voters had mismatched signatures, but the voters told investigators the signatures were legitimate.
Raffensperger, a Republican said the audit results confirmed the election outcome again after two recounts— both by hand and machine — of all 5 million ballots cast in Georgia’s presidential election.
Meanwhile, early voting has already started in the state’s Senate runoffs. Both President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-president elect Kamala Harris will be heading to Georgia to campaign for Democratic candidates on January 3 and January 4. President Trump is scheduled to hold a “big and wonderful rally” on Monday night on behalf of the Republican candidates.
It’s anybody’s guess whether the antics of the President and his latest call for Gov. Kemp to resign will help or hurt Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue Right now though, it appears to be as tight of a race as you can get:
Even with many prestigious pollsters sitting the Georgia runoffs out, there have been plenty of polls of the two U.S. Senate runoffs and they continue to show an exceptionally close race. As of Tuesday afternoon, Democrat Raphael Warnock had a nominal lead of 0.5 percentage points over Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the special Senate election, while Republican Sen. David Perdue had an equally slim 0.4-point lead over Democrat Jon Ossoff in the regular Senate election. We aren’t planning to make probabilistic forecasts in Georgia, but it’s safe to say that a “polls-only” view of the runoffs would put each race at about 50:50.
–Dana
I can’t imagine what the post-election commotion will be like, no matter who loses.
Dana (cc9481) — 12/30/2020 @ 10:28 amTweets are cheap. What does the orange sewer rat have to lose?
nk (1d9030) — 12/30/2020 @ 10:42 amTrump’s not giving up.
Where this goes from here after January 6, especially if Trump manages to force a vote in the Senate and the House, I don’t know.
We could get an open split in the Republican Party, which could be a good thing, or else Trump is headed toward renomination in 2024, followed by a Goldwater/McGovern/Mondale Electoral vote loss even against Kamala Harris.
Another possibility is somebody serious starting a third party run early. He’ll have to sacrifice about 10% to 15% of the vote. It’s almost a trap with no way out for the Democrat to win in 2024.
Of course, all these bad claims of election fraud could be abandoned by 2024.
Sammy Finkelman (69aa73) — 12/30/2020 @ 10:42 amI even saw some so-called conservatives hoping the Republicans lose both GA senate seats.
Imagine the possibilities of a Dem Senate to go along with their control of the House and the Executive.
Beware what you wish for and congrats Biden voters.
harkin (8fadc8) — 12/30/2020 @ 10:58 am_
538:
This could signal a change. Most polls till now (of the same people)s show Jon Ossoff doing about 1 percentage point better than Raphael Warnock. Here, Warnock outdoes Ossoff.
David Perdue refused to debate. It is said he doesn’t like the ethics charges against him with regards to buying and selling Pfizer stock. Yet he has a simple explanation (although he may be too stupid to say it)
1. Perdue was in the habit of doing a great deal of stock trading. Just by coincidence, a few of them could make it look like he was trading on the basis of some kind of inside information.
2. Perdue did not give orders to sell Pfizer stock and then buy it back later or make any stock picking decisions. These details had been delegated to a fund manager.
3. If Perdue knew enough to first sell and then buy back Pfizer stock he would have had to be very insightful: Knowing that people were too hopeful of how soon a Pfizer vaccine would be available and then that they would recover their optimism on a longer time scale. Which is beyond him.
4. The real reason the stock was sold, and then bought back, was portfolio re-balancing. Simply put, Pfizer stock had risen to a very high value, so it was sold because the downside potential was too great, and then it dropped again, so now it had more upside potential, so it was bought back. This was done purely for technical reasons, not because anybody did some astute analysis using any kind of public, public but more readily available to him as a Senator, or non public information.
And there was already a plan to get out of Pfizer, at a good price, in the fall of 2019.
5. Finally Perdue could note that he has stopped playing with individual stocks so this kind of thing won’t happen again..
And then Perdue could also note that Ossoff has not released his tax returns. Although maybe he can’t do that because that might reflect badly on Trump.
And there are some possibly unfair charges against Ossoff of getting rewarded in his business by China. One of the charges, a $1,000 purchase by a Hong Kong company, back before it came under such control by the PRC, is clearly unfair. The other charge is a more significant amount of money from Al-Jazeera to which Ossoff replies that is Al Jazeera in English!
Perdue may be losing votes because of false charges against Ossoff:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/26/politics/fact-check-georgia-senate-warnock-ossoff/index.html
Sammy Finkelman (69aa73) — 12/30/2020 @ 11:18 amTrump linked the Georgia Secretary of State’s brother to China. But he doesn’t have a brother. Facts are diff cult for Trump.
DRJ (4d6f5d) — 12/30/2020 @ 11:23 amHe already has. The golfing. The Mar A Lago redesign. Those are actions of someone who has given up. The tweeting? That’s fundraising. Thumbing his nose at Democrats.
But he’s done and he knows it.
Hoi Polloi (139bf6) — 12/30/2020 @ 11:37 amThe examination of signatures is good, as it was really the only way to inject votes without a conspiracy. That it found nothing is unsurprising, but it needed to be done. Procedures need to be in place to allow this in the future (i.e. not destroying envelopes until all challenges are dealt with).
As for Trump calling on Kemp to resign, I think that Kemp has a better call on Trump to resign.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:12 pmThe tweeting? That’s fundraising. Thumbing his nose at Democrats.
Doing more harm to the country as well. For someone who campaigned on “Make America Great Again” he seems to have little actual interest in America.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:13 pmBut he doesn’t have a brother.
That’s what they WANT you to believe!
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:14 pmWe could get an open split in the Republican Party, which could be a good thing, or else Trump is headed toward renomination in 2024
The way Trump is going, he’ll have a stroke before 2024. Although he might still get the nomination. Frankly, I’d like to see the House Republicans split the caucus.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:18 pmLatest poll democrat candidates lead in ga. senate races. If you still believe in polls. David purdues empty debate chair didn’t help him that much.
asset (dec1ea) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:35 pm6,
In Trumpworld, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t Raffensberger’s brother. What matters is that the President said it was his brother, and used it as “proof” of cheating. That is what they heard, that is what matters. Not only does the truth not matter to Trump, but it doesn’t matter to his loyal base either. Birds of a feather.
Dana (cc9481) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:49 pmI wonder if the stock trading issue was the only thing he was afraid of.
They are buying so many political ads for the Georgia race that’s it’s spilling over into out-of-state media markets: Chattanooga, Tennessee; Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Tallahassee, Florida; and even Dothan, Alabama.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/us/politics/georgia-senate-ads-tennessee.html
About 9 percent of Georgians live in various spillover television markets. In Tallahassee, about 35 percent of viewers live in Georgia. For Jacksonville, it’s about 10% and as low as 5% for Dothan Alabama.
Candidate’s official campaigns are guaranteed by law the lowest rate ($6,000 for a 30-second ad during “Jeopardy in Atlants); independent expensitures, like by Super PACs, cost four times as much right now.
Sammy Finkelman (69aa73) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:55 pm13. Dana (cc9481) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:49 pm
It’s at least a two-stage process. First, make up a lie, then use it to “prove” something else; never flat out make up a lie. That’s how “right-wing” propaganda works.
Sammy Finkelman (69aa73) — 12/30/2020 @ 12:59 pmHere is Trump’s misidentifying another person as Raffensperger’s brother:
Dana (cc9481) — 12/30/2020 @ 1:06 pm16. There is no link here or name of a website or anything. You said “here” But anyway I’d rather see it mentioned without a link than not mentioned at all.
This is a different person than the one DRJ mentioned at 6?
Sammy Finkelman (b78e49) — 12/31/2020 @ 3:34 amTrump probably is in favor of Loeffler and Purdue losing. It will give him yet another reason to blame McConnell and Thune for not helping him steal the election. He’ll just say that their refusal to do so is the reason why they lost. IMO, I still think the GOP has a slight edge in those two races due to historically lower turnout in runoffs. But given the post election behavior of Trump and his hard core sycophants, it will most likely be a wafer thin margin, one way or another.
HCI (92ea66) — 1/1/2021 @ 7:18 pm