The Devil Went Down to Georgia, He Was Lookin’ For A Vote To Steal

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Donald Trump held another coronavirus super-spreader rally in Georgia last night, one day after Georgia set a single-day coronavirus record, ostensibly in support of Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) and interim Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) in the January runoff elections that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.

Not so much: the two senators spoke for less than two minutes — combined. Before the November election, Trump humiliated Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) the same way by only letting her speak for one minute at an Arizona rally.

Aboard Air Force One on the flight to the coronavirus super-spreader rally, Trump attacked two Republican governors: Brian Kemp of Georgia and Doug Ducey of Arizona — and made a veiled threat of political retribution against the pair for not going along with his debunked conspiracy theories about the election.

In fact, at the coronavirus super-spreader rally, Trump floated a potential 2022 gubernatorial run by Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) to challenge Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, The Hill reports: “I want to thank Doug Collins. Thank you, Doug. What a job he does. Doug, you want to run for governor in two years?”

The Washington Post reports, Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state – an honest to God example of attempting to rig an election! Where is the Department of Justice investigation?

President Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Saturday morning to urge him to persuade the state legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state and asked the governor to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures, the latest brazen effort by the president to interfere in the 2020 election.

Earlier: President Donald Trump called Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp a “moron” and a “nut job” in a recent disturbing phone call, sources have told CNN. “Takes one to know one!”

Trump pressed Kemp to call a special session of the state legislature for lawmakers to override the results and appoint electors who would back the president at the electoral college, according to two people familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private call.

Trump also asked the governor to demand an audit of signatures on mail ballots, something Kemp has previously noted he has no power to do. Kemp declined the president’s entreaty, according to the people.

The governor later [confirmed] his conversation with Trump in a midday tweet, noting that he told the president that he’d already publicly advocated for a signature audit.

Kemp’s spokesman, Cody Hall, confirmed that the two men spoke. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said that if Trump invoked his federal authority in his conversation Saturday with Kemp, or made the call from the Oval Office, he could have violated criminal provisions of the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from political activity in their official roles.

Though the civil penalties of the Hatch Act do not apply to the president, the criminal provisions do, she noted.

Even if Trump did not commit a crime, Clark added, his actions threaten to disenfranchise voters in Georgia who participated in the November election.

“Such a move would undermine public confidence in our constitutional system and do damage to future elections,” she said.

Here’s yet another crime in public: Lara Trump, an adviser for President Donald Trump’s campaign, over the weekend suggested that the president expects a quid pro quo from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to overturn the election in his state. Lara Trump says Brian Kemp ‘owes’ quid pro quo to president: ‘It would be nice if he reciprocated’:

Lara Trump made the remarks during a Saturday appearance on Fox News after the president held a rally for the Senate runoff elections in Georgia.

“Gov. Kemp owes his position, quite frankly, to Donald Trump,” Lara Trump opined. “You know, it would be nice he reciprocated in some way, not just to make sure that this goes the way we know it went for the president but for the American people. I mean, he owes it to all of us to do the right thing here.”

Ah, It seems like only yesterday since Donald Trump was impeached after being accused of offering a quid pro quo to Ukraine’s president in exchange for damaging information about then-candidate Joe Biden.

The coronavirus super-spreader rally was actually an early Festivus (December 23) “airing of grievances” and “feats of strength lying.” At Rally for Georgia Senators, Trump Focuses on His Own Grievances:

President Trump used a rally for the Republican senators on Saturday to complain about his own loss last month, insisting he would still prevail and, with notably less ardor, encouraging voters here to re-elect the two lawmakers.

Taking the stage for his first rally as a lame duck president, Mr. Trump immediately, and falsely, claimed victory in the presidential race. “You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” he said.

Mr. Trump lost this state by just under 12,000 votes to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who won the White House with 306 electoral votes. But the president has persisted in his baseless claims that the final outcome remains in doubt.

“They cheated and rigged our presidential election, but we’ll still win,” Mr. Trump said, offering no evidence but nonetheless prompting about 10,000 supporters gathered on the tarmac at a regional airport to chant, “Stop the Steal!”

Speaking for an hour and 40 minutes, the president did read a series of scripted lines about the two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and repeatedly urged his supporters in Georgia to vote next month, even mentioning the deadlines for the mail-in ballots he has so often scorned.

Yet he embedded those dutiful remarks of support in a deep thicket of conspiracy-mongering about his defeat and even aired a lengthy montage of video of clips from the conservative news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network, which also depicted a sinister plot of electoral theft.

At the rally, Mr. Trump amplified the critique he had been making of Gov. Kemp much of the day on Twitter, all but demanding that the governor overturn the will of the voters for him. “Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” the president said. “Stop it very easily.”

The crowd booed when he invoked Mr. Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the two Georgia Republicans Mr. Trump has been demanding abet his effort to overturn Georgia’s results.

And they cheered when he turned to Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican and Trump loyalist, and suggested he challenge Mr. Kemp in a gubernatorial primary in 2022.

Sens. Perdue and Loeffler’s brief remarks were “drowned out by the audience, which showered him with a “Fight for Trump” chant that only grew louder when the two candidates handed the microphone back to the president. The president’s supporters will not tolerate anything less than total fealty toward him.”

With Mr. Trump sowing distrust in Georgia’s voting system, railing against the vote-counting machines the state used and falsely asserting that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud, he’s giving Republicans in the state reason to question both voting by mail and in-person voting.

This mixed message led to this Atlanta Journal Constitution headline: At Georgia rally, Trump tells GOP to vote in ‘rigged’ election.

If that prompts even a modest number of Republicans to sit out the Senate runoffs, especially in rural areas where Mr. Trump’s support is strongest, it could be enough to alter the electoral math in the evenly divided state and tip the races to the Democrats.

AP FACT CHECK: Trump floods rally with audacious falsehoods.

Trump did exactly what Republican strategists had feared he would do: turn this rally into a pity party about his own grievances.

Republican Party consultant Jennifer Horn leveled Donald Trump on Sunday morning for his performance before a rally crowd in Georgia on Saturday night that she labeled the “world’s biggest hissy fit.” Trump burned to the ground by GOP advisor for throwing ‘world’s biggest hissy fit’ at Georgia rally:

Speaking with MSNBC hosts Kendis Gibson and Lindsey Reiser, GOP strategist Jennifer Horn expressed disgust with the president for focusing on himself when he was supposed to be boosting the fortunes of Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue who are both facing a runoff election against their Democratic opponents in January.

Asked if Trump is hurting or helping Republicans, Horn launched into a tirade about the president’s latest actions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnH41cc2MHY&feature=emb_logo

“Donald Trump doesn’t care,” she began. “To extend the analogy earlier about the spoiled child, Donald Trump is throwing the world’s biggest hissy fit because he did not get what he wanted, only instead of trying to break all the toys in the toy aisle, he’s literally destroying American democracy as he gets dragged out the door here.”

“And the person to blame are the parents who spoiled him,” she continued. “It’s the RNC, it’s the Republican Party that allowed him to believe that somehow their job was to protect him and to give him everything he wanted. What Donald Trump is doing as he undermines the credibility of this election, as he asks sitting governors to literally disenfranchise tens of thousands of credible, legitimate votes, is damaging our country for cycles, for generations to come. But Donald Trump is not alone in the blame for that anymore. It’s the Republican Party that has allowed him to believe he has the authority to do this.”

Well said.