3/31/20: The nation is wracked with death and disease.
The economy is cratering. The people look to the president for guidance and
comfort and…
…we’re screwed.
At 6:27 a.m. Tuesday, Trump fires
up Twitter and buckles down to addressing the complex tasks at hand. That means
it’s time to praise himself. “New York Governor Cuomo says
President Trump has been ‘very helpful.’ @foxandfriends Thank you,” he tweets, “everybody
is working very hard!”
What else is Donald fixated on as the nation awakens? The
sick and dying? Fat chance. His feelings have been badly damaged! Monday, on Fox &
Friends, he called Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “sick puppy” because she had the
audacity to criticize his blundering delays and denials of the COVID threat.
You know, like his praising Xi Jinping on January 24, saying
the Chinese were working hard to contain the spread of the virus. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and
transparency….I want to thank President Xi!”
Or, a month later, saying, “The
Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. Stock Market starting to
look very good to me!”
Or on March 6, calling Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington “a snake” after Inslee criticized Trump for not taking
the COVID-19 threat seriously.
Or, on March 27, tagging Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan with
a juvenile nickname, after she said he had been too slow to respond to her
state’s calls for relief. “I love Michigan, one of the reasons we are doing
such a GREAT job for them during this horrible Pandemic,” he claimed in a tweet. “Yet your Governor, Gretchen ‘Half’ Whitmer is
way in over her head, she doesn’t have a clue. Likes blaming everyone for her
own ineptitude!”
That’s some irony right there.
In fact, the president’s petulance is so all-consuming that
he’s willing to put lives at risk. He admitted, in typical tone-deaf fashion, during his press
conference that same day, that he told Vice President Pence, “Don’t call the woman in Michigan. I
say, if they don’t treat you right, don’t call.”
____________________
If a few more people die in
Michigan while the president pouts, too bad for them.
____________________
So, where do we stand, with numbers changing every hour? Johns
Hopkins reports that as of 6:05 p.m. the U.S. has 184,183 confirmed cases of
COVID-19, more than any country on earth.
South Korea has 9,786.
The two countries discovered
their first infections on the same day: January 20.
Keep that depressing coincidence in mind.
*
LET’S HIT some lowlights in the news. CNN notes
that from Monday to Tuesday, five states – New York, New Jersey,
California, Louisiana, and Michigan – report more than a
thousand new cases, each. (Trump hates CNN too.) That brings the total
in Michigan to 7,600; and Whitmer has shut down
her state.
Florida, where a Trump pal is governor, has 6,338 cases.
Trump hasn’t coined an insulting nickname for him yet.
Ohio, under a Republican governor with good sense, remains
shut down, with 2,199
confirmed cases.
The bad numbers keep piling up while Trump tweets and brags
and lashes out at anyone who criticizes or questions what he does.
California counts 6,932 cases, with 150 dead and 657 patients
in intensive care.
This past weekend, the New York City Police Department reported
that 442 uniformed officers and 70 civilian personnel had been infected. Three
officers had already died.
The situation in New Jersey was also dire, with 338 police
officials having tested positive and 3,081 quarantined.
Tuesday morning, we learned that more than a hundred sailors on the U.S.S. Theodore
Roosevelt have been infected and the vessel remained parked off Guam. The
captain was pleading with the Navy to set up facilities where his entire crew could
be isolated, and the spread of the virus contained.
“We are not at war,” he explained. “Sailors do not need to
die.”
Unemployment numbers continue to skyrocket this week. Macy’s
has announced it will be furloughing 125,000 workers.
Kohl’s announced it would lay off 85,000 employees, two-thirds of their workforce. Several
other major retailers are set to follow suit.
One of tens of thousands of New Yorkers out of work as of Tuesday
was Chris Smalls. Smalls’ situation was different than most. He had the
nerve on Monday to lead a walkout at an Amazon shipping
center, as he and co-workers clamored for safety gear and better protection.
You can understand why Smalls, and most Americans are
worried. Freak virus hotspots have popped up all over. A biotech
conference in Boston on February 26-27 included at least one sick
participant. The virus spread from there. Of 95 cases in Massachusetts, in
early March, 77 could be traced back to that meeting. Then the participants
scattered, carrying the coronavirus back to North Carolina, New Jersey,
Tennessee, Indiana, and Washington D.C.
A funeral in Albany, Georgia two days later led to another
outbreak, what experts refer to as a “super-spreading event.” Six
siblings in one family became infected. Dougherty County, where the funeral was
held, has had 24 deaths and 600 confirmed cases since.
Fifty wealthy guests gathered at a March 5 birthday party
in Westport, Connecticut. After all the presents were opened, and the candles
blown out, and the cake and ice cream were consumed, guests hugged and kissed
and went home. At least half
the people who attended would later test positive and spread the
virus everywhere they went.
As of 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, it was estimated that theU.S.
had tallied 3,807 deaths as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Another 3,981 Americans were in serious or critical condition.
Weep then for President Trump.
His feelings have been hurt.
*
AT LEAST ONE FAMILY had a good time
Saturday. The wedding of the daughter of White House Head Buffoon Mark Meadows
is held in Atlanta, and best wishes to both bride and groom. It later appears
that the father-of-the-bride decided rules about limits on number of attendees
and rules about wearing masks did not apply on his daughter’s great day.
At a time when Gov. Brian Kemp had limited
gatherings to no more than 10 persons,
Head Buffoon Meadows thought 70 seemed about right. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio was
also there to wish the couple a long and happy life.
POSTSCRIPT:
Monday, I ran the numbers, comparing the 143,532 cases we had then to the 4,661
we had on March 17. I said our confirmed cases had increased 3,079%.
As any bonehead could see I had divided 143,532 by 4,661,
and saw that we had almost 31 times as many cases as we had, two weeks before.
But, as I’m sure all math fans will realize I had to subtract the original
4,661, and should have said our caseload had increased 2,979% instead.
I hope you can get over your horror for my mistake.
BLOGGER’S NOTE, (7/3/21).
Checking and editing my work later, we can look forward from this date and
learn that Meadows spent the next few months yelling at White House staffers
who wore masks to work.
President Trump, of course,
was later infected, and had to make a trip to the hospital. So was the First
Lady, though her case was mild. Meadow’s number came up in November and he and
several other aides come down with COVID-19.
8/5/20: Trump proved once again this
week that when his lips are moving, he’s either lying or super-spreading misinformation.
The man needs to wear a mask to protect others. Or provide us with earmuffs.
____________________
That made the president’s misstatement dangerous, not just
the latest example of how ill-informed he is.
____________________
On Tuesday, in the wake of a massive explosion in Beirut, he decided
to open his mouth and let nonsense pour out. Knowing almost nothing about what
had happened (because he has the intellectual depth of rutabaga), he described the
blast as an “attack.” When reporters asked him, specifically, if he felt it was
an attack, he said that he had met with “some of our great generals, and they just seem to feel” that the destruction
was the result of “a bomb of some kind.”
It didn’t take a demolitions expert
to tell otherwise. The first pictures available indicated the blast area was massive,
too large for any surgical air or missile strike, unless someone hit a vast military
ammunition dump by mistake.
Who then might have had reason to attack Lebanon? Terrorists?
Unlikely. Israel? If it really was an attack, they might have been striking at a
Hezbollah arms storage facility. But this was Trump talking. You wouldn’t have
been surprised if he blamed Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
Unfortunately, across that region, people would assume the
President of the United States knew what he was talking about. In the
Muslim world, where suspicion runs hot, Trump’s words might sound like an admission
that we played a role. Would jihadists seek revenge? Would they insist the
catastrophe in Beirut was the work of a U.S. missile strike? Or an American
super bomb? Muslims have their own conspiracy theorists. They have their Alex
Joneses in turbans.
That made the president’s misstatement dangerous, not just the
latest example of how obtuse he is.
*
The blast
involved 2,750 metric tons of ammonia nitrate
IT SOON PROVED not to be an attack, but rather a blast
centered on a warehouse stuffed with ammonia nitrate. This was the material
Timothy McVey used to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. In
that attack, McVey, a right-wing conspiracy crazy, used two-and-a-half tons to
fashion a bomb. McVey killed 168 people, including children at a daycare center
on the first floor.
As terrible as that crime had been, this was worse, Lebanon’s
9/11. The blast in Beirut involved the accidental explosion of 2,750 metric
tons of ammonia nitrate. The material had been impounded in 2014, when a
Russian cargo ship docked at port, but could no longer pay its crew or other
bills. Hundreds are feared dead. At least 5,000 Lebanese are injured. Billions in
damages resulted. The explosion left a giant crater where the warehouse had
been.
The problem is, Trump had informed the world this was an
“attack.” He could have cleaned it up the next day and admitted error. Instead,
he sent his toadies out to say that he was right from the start. (Secretary of
Defense Mark Esper correctly said Wednesday that U.S. intelligence was gathering information, “but most believe it was an
accident as reported.”) That meant it fell to White House Chief of Staff Mark
Meadows to march out, stand in front of cameras, and say the president was
correct.
“The initial reports looked at
the explosion.” As for it having been an attack, he said, “We still have not
totally ruled that out.”
Meadows ignored the fact U.S.
intelligence was ruling out an attack.
“Obviously,” he continued, “there’s
no group that has claimed any responsibility.” That would make sense, since
evidence was piling up that a catastrophic accident had occurred. What “the
president shared with the American people is what he was briefed on,” Meadows
claimed. “And as we look at that, we’ll continue to evaluate it. Hopefully, it
was just a tragic accident and not an act of terror.”
It was a tragic accident.
Within hours everyone knew it. Trump just couldn’t admit he was wrong. This
afternoon, he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down. Asked during a press
conference about his earlier statement – which some officials feared might
spark an international crisis – you knew Trump was going to have to make sh*t up. The
president did not disappoint.
“How can you say ‘accident’ if somebody left
some terrible explosive-type devices and things around perhaps – perhaps it was that. Perhaps it was an
attack,” Trump explained lamely. “I don’t think anybody can say right now. We’re looking into it
very strongly right now.”
Just about every man, woman and child in
Lebanon realized that the blast was a horrific accident and that 2,750 metric
tons of ammonia nitrate had been left “around.”
Not “explosive-type devices.”
Trump couldn’t let go. He
couldn’t admit error. He couldn’t cite which “great generals” had told him it
had been an attack, because none had. “Some people think it was an attack and
some people think it wasn’t,” he continued, repeating himself, as is his habit.
“In any event, it was a terrible event and a lot of people were killed and a
tremendous number of people were badly wounded, injured. And we’re standing
with that country.”
He had a memo in his hands,
and, as usual, read that last statement in a monotone, as if completing a task reluctantly,
like a child eating lima beans. You knew the president didn’t have a
humanitarian bone in his body. If Lebanon had been wiped from the face of the
earth, he wouldn’t have shed a tear. It’s doubtful he could even find the
country on a map.
Multiple sources, however, contradicted the president’s claim that an attack had occurred. Lebanese
authorities said no. Multiple U.S. officials told Fox News there was no evidence of an attack. CNN said
three Defense Department officials told them there was no evidence. Two officials told the Associated Press the same. Secretary
Esper was already on record.
The best the Pentagon could
do in “support” of the fool in the White House, was to decline comment and tell reporters to go find Kellyanne
Conway or “Birther” McEnany. You could always count on them to back what Trump
had said, even if he claimed his cheeseburgers sometimes talked to him when he
was alone in his private quarters.
Satellite image of crater left by explosion.
*
ARE WE BEATING
COVID-19 yet? No. We are not. New cases in the United States, August 5:
10/26/20: The president declared
victory in the fight to contain the coronavirus this weekend.
With eight days until the election, he and his
minions will now focus on:
A)Infecting each
other (See: Mike Pence & Co.,10/25/20).
B)Bragging about how Trump
created the greatest economy in U.S. history, for which he gets every bit of
credit.
C)Whining because
that economy is lagging, which is the entire fault of Joe Biden and Antifa.
D)Insisting we’ve
turned the corner on the coronavirus, we just don’t realize it, because the
media keeps reporting on all the new cases and an alarming wave of
hospitalizations.
E)And deaths!
Meanwhile, we learned that on Saturday, we
passed the same old corner, and the record for most new cases of coronavirus
recorded in one day, in this country, was broken. That “old” record was set this
past Friday.
Several of those new cases were people close to Vice
President Pence. Over the weekend, Pence’s chief of staff, a top political
advisor, and three other members of his inner circle fell ill.
____________________
“We’re
not going to control the pandemic.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
____________________
Sunday morning, White House Chief of Staff Mark
Meadows appeared on Jake Tapper’s show on CNN. Tapper wanted to know – since
VP Pence had been in close proximity to several people who were infected – why he
wasn’t self-quarantining as CDC guidelines say he should.
Meadows defended the vice president’s decision
to go off campaigning, saying, “actually, he’s working.”
For some reason, Meadows dropped Pence in his
very next sentence. He switched to bucking up Mr. Trump. “We saw a Middle East
peace agreement with Sudan in the Oval Office, that the president engaged in,
and for anyone to suggest that the president has been campaigning and not
getting things done, all you have to do is look at the facts.”
I myself was “looking at the facts” as I watched
tape of the show. I wondered why Meadows decided to talk about the president
campaigning, and not Pence, since Pence was the one who had just been exposed.
Meadows went on to say that CDC guidelines say
“essential workers” can keep going to work.
So: Pence was at work. While off campaigning?
Tapper held a hand across the bottom part of his
face, and responded, yes, they can go to work, “if they wear a mask.”
After
all, I thought to myself…you could do both.
Meadows grew irate, blaming Tapper for putting
information about the spread of the virus on his CNN website! Tapper’s website
warned that the virus was spreading even through small family gatherings.
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows
fumed. “We are going to control the fact…”
I found myself watching Meadows’ lips move, but
thinking that controlling “the fact” wasn’t going to stop the spread.
“…that we give vaccines, therapeutics, and other
mitigation,” he continued.
“Why aren’t we going to control the pandemic?
Tapper interjected.
“Because it is a contagious virus, just like the
flu.” Meadows said animatedly. They went back and forth, with Meadows repeating
“the vaccine, etc.,” and Tapper asking why the administration wasn’t doing more
to contain it.
(After
all, I thought to myself…you could do both.)
Meadows tried to shift blame to Tapper. And Vice
President Biden! “To suggest that we’re going to quarantine all of America,
lock down our economy…Joe Biden’s saying that, lock everybody down, we’re going
to have, we’re going to have a dark winter, we’re going to have a dark winter…”
Tapper noted that that’s what health
officials were saying.
Meadows retorted that even some CNN reporters who
have worn masks “religiously” had contracted COVID-19.
In other words, Meadows couldn’t explain why
Pence was out on the trail when health guidelines would have him quarantine.
Nor did Meadows care to address the poor example Trump continued to set, with
his masks-are-not-needed, social-distancing-is-for-sissies campaign rallies.
In Trumpistan, if a reporter wore a mask and got
sick, that proved to followers of the Orange God, that masks did not work.
11/7/20: You know what
they say, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” So true, for
President Trump.
As votes pile up, Joe Biden’s lead in
Pennsylvania grows. The trend is clear. He’s going to gain the state’s twenty
electoral votes and send Trump packing after one tumultuous term.
Symbolically, Trump happens to be golfing – symbolically, again, at
one of his private courses – at the moment Fox News, CNN, the Associated Press,
and other news services declare Mr. Biden, “President-Elect.” (The BBC does have film
of the president playing golf again.)
Liquor store owners in Washington D.C. announce that sales of champagne Saturday are higher than during the
last two New Year’s Eve celebrations, combined.
Back at the White House after his round of golf,
the president tweets in all-CAPS, red-hot fury:
THE
OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT
71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED
TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE
WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM!
If Arizona remains blue, let’s give it up for
the Navajo Nation. In three counties that overlap their lands, the Navajo
people gave Joe Biden 73,954 votes.
Trump got 2,010.
Biden’s lead in the state when I last checked: less
than 20,000.
On the other hand, Kanye West’s run for the
White House came up short, although he did get 1,266 votes from the people of Essex County, Vermont. I am
going to assume this was the “humorous protest” vote, since Essex went for
Biden by a 2-1 count.
Otherwise, I think it’s safe to say, no one who
voted for Kanye should ever get to vote again.
*
MARK MEADOWS, Trump’s fourth and last White
House chief of staff, will be recovering at home next week, if he’s lucky, or
headed for a hospital if he’s not. It’s going to be a good week to stay away
from the White House, since Trump will be raging at everyone he sees. Meadows
and four other staffers, plus Trump’s campaign director of battleground
strategy, have contracted COVID-19. Meadows, of course, scoffed at wearing a
mask. In fact, he showed up for the White House Election Night celebration
without one. Meadows enjoyed himself –
good food – good drink –
good company – spewing droplets of infection wherever he went.
Meadows has also been quick to defend the
president’s “handling” of the coronavirus by saying we’re not going to control
the spread; and the real path to victory is to get vaccines ready.
(I’m going to assume you can figure out why this
is a stupid position to take, since no vaccine will be widely available for
months.)
Texas has become the first state in the nation
to pass 1,000,000 cases. For the day, 17 states report their highest one-day totals of new cases; 14 report record
daily numbers of hospitalizations.
In fact, Saturday was the worst day yet for new cases: 132,830 according to the CDC,
with 1,211 Americans dying.
1/3/21: The Washington Post and other media outlets reveal a
call made by President Trump, the day before. That call, lasting a little more
than an hour, goes to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
You’d have to be blind, deaf and
dumb, with a red MAGA hat, two sizes too small screwed to your head, and
cutting off blood to your brain, to miss the meaning of this call.
____________________
“And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the
country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that
you’ve recalculated….I mean, they’re all exact numbers [the litany of claims Trump
has just piled up] that were done by accounting firms, law firms, etc. And even
if you cut ’em in half, cut ’em in half and cut ’em in half again, it’s more
votes than we need.”
President Trump
____________________
We now learn that the president called
Georgia election officials and pleaded with them to “find” just enough votes to
eliminate Biden’s Peach State margin of victory.
We already know that you can’t indict
a sitting president; but the plan the president is floating would guarantee a
felony charge for anyone else.
*
If you can bear to listen to the
entire 62-minute recording, you’ll hear Trump saying, in essence, he’s not
asking for much. Just 11,780 votes, one more than needed to take the state’s 16
electoral votes away from his opponent and put them in his win column. Really,
just one little felony was all he needed!
In the recorded call, he repeatedly
claims to have won the state by “hundreds of thousands” of votes. At one point,
he says he won by “400,000 votes.” At another: “500,000.” All he’s asking for
is a little help. You know, maybe Georgia officials could “recalculate” their
totals.
If they could just “find” 12,000
votes, a nice, round number, well, then, who could possibly complain?
In an effort to spare you as much
time and effort as I can, here are the key moments from the call. The first
nineteen minutes consist of Trump rattling off huge numbers of votes, in
multiple categories, that he claims were fraudulently cast or cast for him and
then stolen for Mr. Biden. Dead people by the thousands voted. People who had
moved out of Georgia still voted in Georgia. People who had moved out of
Georgia and died came back (from heaven) to cast ballots. Some Democratic lady
pulled 18,000 votes out of a “suitcase,” hidden under a table. Those votes were
counted once … twice … three times. All those 54,000 votes went to … Joe Biden.
The Georgia officials on the
receiving end of the call – three Republicans – Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger, his deputy, Jordan Fuchs, and a state lawyer, Ryan Germany,
listened patiently. Only in the second half of the call did they have much
chance to try to talk sense.
*
Amoral on a good day, immoral on a bad.
THIS CALL captures the soul of Donald
J. Trump. He’s amoral on a good day, immoral on a bad. He’s crude. He’s
unethical. He’s ill-informed. He’s logic-impaired. Twice he insists there’s no
way he could have lost the election in Georgia because his rallies drew bigger
crowds than Biden’s.
(A total irrelevancy, of course.)
In Fulton County, the president says,
the “rumor” is that thousands of ballots were “shredded.” In his mind a “rumor”
equals proof.
At one point, White House Chief of Staff Mark
Meadows, also participating in the call, interjects. “What I’m hopeful for is there some way that we can, we can
find some kind of agreement to look at this a little bit more fully?”
Trump does most of
the talking. He justifies his request by piling up massive numbers to show he
was cheated out of a landslide win. He just needs a little nudge to get him
over the line. During the call he cites “5,000” as the
figure for the number of dead people who voted, and that’s at “minimum.” He
pulls another number out of thin air, insisting there were “300,000 fake
ballots.”
Next, we have a
classic bit of Trumpian proof:
Then the other thing they said is in Fulton County and other
areas. And this may or may not be true ... this just came up this morning, that they are burning their ballots,
that they are shredding, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They’re changing
the equipment on the Dominion machines and, you know, that’s not legal.
Trump injects
another dose of Trump Math (also known as “making shit up”), saying that “they supposedly
shredded I think they said 300 pounds of, 3,000 pounds of ballots. And that
just came to us as a report today. And it is a very sad situation.”
Yes, “very sad.”
Even though it might be 300 pounds. Or a ton-and-a-half. Just make some big number
up.
Georgia officials
tell him bluntly that the rumor is not true.
Naturally, Trump hammers away at one of his
bugaboos. Dominion Voting Machines were rigged! He and most of his fans believe
that software used in those machines was set to steal votes from one deserving
orange hero and give them to one underserving socialist, “Sleepy Joe” Biden.
Raffensperger says he can’t vouch for other states which used the machines, but
notes,
I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion
machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the
ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and came up with
virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the
same result. So I guess we can probably take that off the table.
Trump tries again. He has heard that county
officials are getting rid of the machines, or replacing the software parts, to
hide their crimes.
All he needs is a
little help. “What’s the difference between winning the election by two votes
and winning it by half a million votes,” he wonders. “I think I probably did
win it by half a million.”
“The data you have is wrong.”
Trump and Meadows,
and several lawyers on the White House end of the call may be careful not to come
out and say, “Steal the goddam votes we need, Brad.” They’re close. Trump
insists he won by hundreds of thousands; and now all he needs is a little boost.
And the people of Georgia are angry,
the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying
that, you know, that you’ve recalculated….I mean, they’re all exact numbers [the
litany of claims Trump has just piled up] that were done by accounting firms,
law firms, etc. And even if you cut ’em in half, cut ’em in half and cut ’em in
half again, it’s more votes than we need.
“Well, Mr. President,” Raffensperger replies, “the challenge
that you have is the data you have is wrong.”
He mentions a signature check done in Cobb County, involving
15,000 names. It turned out, only two were fraudulent.
The president insists he was robbed and that’s it. “I mean, look, you’d have to be a child to think anything other
than that. Just a child.”
He and his lawyers insist that they
have video showing “suitcases” full of bogus votes for Biden being rolled out
and counted in Fulton County. The Georgia officials tell them they’re wrong.
This exchange follows:
Trump:For some reason, they put it in three times, each ballot, and I don’t
know why. I don’t know why three times. Why not five times, right? Go ahead.
Raffensperger: You’re talking about the
State Farm [Center] video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy
Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out
of context. The next day, we brought in WSB-TV, and we let them show, see the
full run of tape, and what you’ll see, the events that transpired are nowhere
near what was projected by, you know –
Trump: But that was – and Brad, why did
they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.
Raffensperger: Mr. President, they did
not put that. We did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that they
were not scanned three times.
Ryan Germany, the attorney for the Secretary of State’s
office, identifies himself on the call. The story of the thrice-scanned votes
is false.“We had our
law enforcement officers talk to everyone who was, who was there after that
event came to light. GBI was with them as well as FBI agents.”
Facts are stumbling blocks for most people. Not Trump. “Well,
there’s no way they could – then
they’re incompetent. They’re either dishonest or incompetent, okay?”
Investigators couldn’t be right. “There’s only two
answers, dishonesty or incompetence. There’s just no way. Look. There’s no way.”
“People can say anything.”
Balked at one turn after another, the president
shifts again. What about all the people who voted who didn’t live in Georgia?
There were at least 4,500, possibly “in the 20s.” Or: 20,000 plus.
Germany: We’ve been going through each of those [claims] as well…Every
one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different
state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately. And in many cases –
Trump: How many people do that? They
moved out, and then they said, “Ah, to hell with it, I’ll move back.” You know,
it doesn’t sound like a very normal…you mean, they moved out, and what, they
missed it so much that they wanted to move back in? It’s crazy.
Germany: They moved back in years ago.
This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something
about that data [Trump’s] that, it’s just not accurate.
Trump’s lawyers complain at length about being
denied information they need to prove their case: That billions of fraudulent
votes were cast in Georgia. That the gates of Hell were sprung; and the dead
poured out to vote.
The Georgians point out that information Trump
and his lawyers are demanding is shielded by state privacy laws.
Once again, Trump makes it clear he won in a
landslide and all he needs is a teeny-tiny bit of help.
I won this election by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s
no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of
votes. I’m just going by small numbers, when you add them up, they’re many
times the 11,000. But I won that state by hundreds of thousands of votes.
Trump circles back to an earlier claim he made: That in Fulton
County, tons of bogus votes had been shredded.
Trump:Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County?
Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out
machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh,
machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?
Germany: No, Dominion has not moved any
machinery out of Fulton County.
Trump: But have they moved the inner
parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?
Germany: No.
Trump: Are you sure, Ryan?
Germany: I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr.
President.
Trump: What about, what about the
ballots. The shredding of the ballots. Have they been shredding ballots?
Germany: The only investigation that we
have into that – they have not been shredding any ballots. There was an issue
in Cobb County where they were doing normal office shredding, getting rid of
old stuff, and we investigated that. But this stuff from, you know, from you
know past elections.
Trump: It doesn’t pass the smell test
because we hear they’re shredding thousands and thousands of ballots, and now
what they’re saying, “Oh, we’re just cleaning up the office.” You know.
Raffensperger: Mr. President, the problem you
have with social media, they –people can
say anything [emphasis added throughout, unless otherwise noted].
Trump: Oh this isn’t social media.
This is Trump media. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side,
you know. I don’t even know why you have a side because you should want to have
an accurate election. And you’re a Republican.
Raffensperger: We believe that we do have an
accurate election.
Trump: No, no you don’t. No, no you
don’t. You don’t have. Not even close.
Flummoxed in regard to the imaginary shredding,
the president and his team try a new tack. Since the signature check proved the
votes were tallied accurately in Cobb, Trump wants to know, how come they
didn’t investigate Fulton County?
“We chose Cobb
County,” Mr. Germany explains, “because that was the only county where there’s
been any evidence submitted that the signature verification was not
properly done.”
Trump switches to
an attack on Democratic leaders in Georgia who organized a turn-out-the-vote
campaign. “Look. Stacey, in my opinion,” he grumbles, “Stacey is as dishonest
as they come.” Stacey Abrams has “outplayed” and “outsmarted you at every
step,” he tells the three Republicans.
He continues to
adhere to the basic line: “I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won quite
substantially.”
“Flipping the state.”
His frustration
begins to show:
Trump: We can go through signature
verification, and we’ll find hundreds of thousands of signatures, if you
let us do it…in Fulton, where they dumped ballots, you will find that you have
many that aren’t even signed and you have many that are forgeries.
Okay, you know that. You know that. You
have no doubt about that. And you will findyou will be at 11,779 within
minutes because Fulton County is totally corrupt, and so is she [Abrams] totally
corrupt.
And they’re going around playing you
and laughing at you behind your back, Brad, whether you know it or not, they’re
laughing at you. And you’ve taken a state that’s a Republican state, and you’ve
made it almost impossible for a Republican to win because of cheating, because
they cheated like nobody’s ever cheated before. And I don’t care how long it
takes me, you know, we’re going to have other states coming forward – pretty
good.
I think you’re going to find that they are shredding ballots
because they have to get rid of the ballots because the ballots are
unsigned.
The state
officials have already explained that the machine count of votes, and the
hand-count of votes and then a second machine count all substantially match.
The ballots are still there. They weren’t “shredded.”
They weren’t
basted or broiled.
They’re still there.
Finally, the president
makes what most listeners on such a call would consider a threat. Bad enough,
he says, that Abrams and the Democrats stuffed ballot boxes. Worse:
And you are going to find that they are – which is 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. And you can’t let
that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And
that’s a big risk.
Then you get the
ask, in bluntest terms. Trump wants election officials to “flip the state.”
And
you can’t let it happen, and you are letting it happen. 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.
And
flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, you know, this
is – it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to
call it.
(As noted earlier, if most of us tried this, a jury would
call it a felony.)
I don’t know, look, Brad. I got to get ... I have to find 12,000 votes, and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the
state.
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.
The answer he
wants is clear: What the Georgia folks are expected to do is “find” enough
votes for Trump to carry the state. Say whatever else you want about the
president’s claims. He’s asking officials to cheat.
“We can play this game with the courts.”
Trump rehashes
several of his claims, including the 18,000 fake ballots x’s 3. His frustration
is mounting. His target is new – and his thinking increasingly dangerous:
Trump:And every single ballot went to Biden, and
you didn’t know that, but now you know it. So tell me, Brad, what are we going
to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this….And
I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can
reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers,
not people that don’t want to find answers.
Raffensperger: Mr. President, you have people
that submit information, and we have our people that submit information. And
then it comes before the court, and the court then has to make a determination.
We have to stand by our numbers. We believe our numbers are right.
Trump: Why do you say that, though? I
don’t know. I mean, sure, we can play this game with the courts, but why do you
say that? First of all, they don’t even assign us a judge.
Trump has made this clear before. He hates a
three-branch form of government. If he had his way, there would be one. The
president hints that he’ll make sure Raffensperger’s career in politics is over
if he doesn’t cave.
Same for the governor of the state:
You just say, you stick by, I mean I’ve been watching you,
you know, you don’t care about anything. “Your numbers are right.” But your
numbers aren’t right. They’re really wrong, and they’re really wrong, Brad. And
I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you
know – Look, ultimately,
I win, okay? Because you guys are so wrong. And you treated this. You treated
the population of Georgia so badly. You, between you and your governor, who is
down at 21, he was down 21 points. And like a schmuck, I endorsed him, and he
got elected, but I will tell you, he is a disaster.
The people are so angry in Georgia, I can’t imagine he’s ever
getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now. But why wouldn’t you
want to find the right answer, Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are
right? ‘Cause those numbers are so wrong?
Discussion follows
about setting up a meeting to address some of the president’s concerns. He wants
more. “I’m just saying, you know, and, you know, under new counts, and under
new views, of the election results, we won the election. You know? It’s
very simple. We won the election.
“This is wrong, this is wrong, this is
wrong…”
Kurt Hilbert, a
Georgia attorney working for Trump, suggests that lawyers from both sides sit
down and look at just four categories, totaling 24,149 votes. Why not “compromise?”
Hilbert explains:
That [number] in and of itself is sufficient to change the
results or place the outcome in doubt….And if you can convince us that 24,149
is inaccurate, then fine. But we tend to believe that is, you know, obviously
more than 11,779. That’s sufficient to change the results entirely in and of
itself. So what would you say to that, Mr. Germany?
Meadows jumps in
and says it sounds like they have an agreement to meet and discuss the numbers.
“Is that correct?”
Germany: No, that’s not what I said. I’m
happy to have our lawyers sit down with Kurt and the lawyers on that side and
explain to him, hey, here’s, based on what we’ve looked at so far, here’s how
we know this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is
wrong.
Germany makes clear again, that some of the
information Trump’s lawyers are demanding is shielded by law. He doesn’t intend
to violate state law.
“But you’re allowed to have a phony election? You’re allowed to
have a phony election, right?” Trump complains.
“No, sir,” Germany responds.
Trump has the last word. He wants help. He
deserves help. He expects help. And he has a warning, too. His supporters,
…They hate the state, they hate the governor, and they hate the
secretary of state. I will tell you that right now. The only people that like
you are people that will never vote for you. You know that, Brad, right? They
like you, you know, they like you. They can’t believe what they found. They
want more people like you. So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And, Brad,
we just want the truth. It’s simple.
And everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out.
It’s okay. It takes a little while, but let the truth come out. And the real
truth is, I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t
need 400,000 votes.
He only needs one more than Joe Biden
received. That’s the truth as Lame Duck Donald sees it, with time running out.
