Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger knew he had a problem. After several ballot recounts and signature audits confirmed that President Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Georgia since 1992, he’s had to dodge angry phone calls from the White House.
For weeks, Mr. Trump has excoriated Mr. Raffensperger on social media and denounced the entire Georgia Republican apparatus from Gov. Brian Kemp on down as “traitors” and “criminals.” At one point, he threatened to withhold support for the Republican senatorial candidates because of his anger at Mr. Kemp and an “illegal” voting process in the state.
After an estimated 18 attempts by the White House to get through to him, Saturday afternoon was the first time Mr. Raffensperger spoke by phone with Mr. Trump since his Election Day drubbing.
The facts on the ground hadn’t changed. Mr. Trump lost decisively, especially in the big cities and suburbs of Atlanta, where more than half of the state’s votes are cast. This is unwelcome news to a man who traffics in lies and wishful thinking.
“So look,” Mr. Trump said in the most quoted line of an extraordinary hourlong call to Georgia’s secretary of state. “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.”
Knowing Mr. Trump’s predilection for lying, Mr. Raffensperger recorded the call to counteract the inevitable tsunami of lies and for his own protection. His office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs were also on the line to bear witness to the criminality they all knew was coming. They feared it would be another “perfect call” in the tradition of the “perfect call” Mr. Trump made to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that got him impeached.
Mr. Trump recruited White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, his top capo when Rudy Giuliani isn’t in the room, and attorneys Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert to join him. As it turns out, the conversation was so bonkers that everyone listening to it afterward wondered how such a legally incriminating stunt could happen without Rudy being involved somehow.
Still, Mr. Raffensperger’s dilemma at that moment boiled down to one inescapable quandary: How does one speak truth to power when the person in power is incapable of handling any “truth” that doesn’t conform to his version of reality?
After listening to Mr. Trump gas on about thousands of dead people voting, ballot shredding, ballot stuffing on-site, voting machines being wheeled off-site, out-of-state voters, missing machine parts and all sorts of nonsense he read online, Mr. Raffensperger had had enough.
“Mr. President,” Mr. Raffensperger said trying to maintain the calm he displayed throughout a call he knew was destined to make it into history books as an example of presidential corruption and coercion, “the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.”
“Oh, this isn’t social media,” Mr. Trump said showing a hint of epistemological self-consciousness at odds with his usual thuggishness. “This is Trump media. It’s not social media. .… I don’t care about social 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.”
It is an incredible thing to hear the president of the United States begging a public official to enter into a criminal conspiracy. In a season of appeasement, shamelessness, cowardice and capitulation to those who have power, but no morals, it is also incredible hearing public servants — in this case Mr. Raffensperger and Mr. Germany — calmly and firmly resisting the pressure.
This is not to romanticize the “resistance” of these public servants. After all, they are members in good standing of a statewide political party that has conspired to disenfranchise Black and minority voters in Georgia for decades. Both looked the other way as former Secretary of State Brian Kemp stole the 2018 gubernatorial election from Stacey Abrams to become the current governor.
Mr. Trump is morally incoherent, but he isn’t stupid. He knows politics in Georgia, especially when it comes to the ballot box, has been played fast and loose since the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Mr. Trump correctly suspects that Mr. Kemp “beat” Ms. Abrams behind the scenes where it counts more than at the actual ballot box in 2018. That’s why he’s genuinely confused and frustrated by what he considers a sudden and arbitrary fealty to fair play at the ballot box. Where was this fair play and scrupulous attention to electoral procedure two years ago when polling places were hard to find in Black districts in Georgia? Why this sudden aversion to skimming along the margins?
Still, Mr. Raffensperger and Mr. Germany are literally profiles in courage compared with their Republican colleagues in the U.S. Congress who have announced plans to defy the certification of Joe Biden’s victory on Wednesday.
While seditious senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and their ilk in the House are too slick to engage in solicitation to commit election fraud on tape, their actions will speak for them as they go through a performative ballet to make Mr. Trump feel good. Their fake patriotism is disgusting and shows how morally and intellectually unserious they are.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is as ambitious as his fellow senators, but he’s too smart to get entangled in a thankless bog of constitutional nihilism like his likely 2024 primary rivals. For showing even a scintilla of discretion by backing away from that effort, Mr. Cotton was blasted by Mr. Trump on Twitter. Mr. Trump lumped the hardliner with the “Surrender Caucus” for showing insufficient loyalty to the Trumpian lost cause.
Kudos to Mr. Raffensperger and Mr. Germany for showing more courage and commitment to democracy than the nationally elected leaders of their party. Standing up to a vindictive autocrat isn’t easy when so many lack conviction. They’ve done their jobs admirably.
But they, like the rest of us, can look forward to one certainty — in two weeks, Mr. Trump’s immunity to prosecution will lapse. That’s clearly weighing on him as he threatens and cajoles elected officials to reverse his loss somehow. He’ll be the first president to go from the Oval Office to the expectation of criminal prosecution, financial ruin and threat of federal prison. Every mob boss who has ever made “the perfect call” knows how this story ends.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631. Twitter @Tony_NormanPG.
First Published: January 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m.
Updated: January 5, 2021, 10:25 a.m.
