Alyssa Pointer/ZUMA
In the two months after losing his reelection bid, President Trump has dedicated nearly every waking hour into building something of a coup, pulling together dozens of failed lawsuits, conspiracy-packed tweets, and strange press conferences in a desperate attempt to stay in power. Now, thanks to a taped phone call first obtained by the Washington Post on Sunday, we saw the latest iteration of the maybe-coup feature Trump oscillating between sweet-talking and vaguely threatening Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” nonexistent votes and overturn the election results in his favor.
The conversation, which you can also listen to here, lasted about an hour. That’s an awfully long time for a demand ultimately based on…nothing! But perhaps the president simply had much to get off his chest. After all, it had reportedly taken 18 attempts to finally getting Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to pick up the phone.
Context about the Trump call: Raffensperger received the call from the White House on Saturday at 2:41 PM, after the White House switchboard had made 18 previous attempts to have Trump speak with him in the two months since the general election, a source tells @JulesJester.
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) January 4, 2021
It’s a small detail against the corruption rampant in the already-infamous phone call. But there’s something astonishing about Trump’s brute force phone campaign, failure to take a hint, and knowledge now that his 19th attempt has brought forth his latest scandal. Before you go on fashioning Raffensperger into a resistance hero though, take note that the staunch Georgia Republican pretty much confirmed this morning that despite everything that has ensued since November, he wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Trump again.
“I support Republicans,” he told Good Morning America, “I always have, I always will.” Sounds just about right to me.
