On Tuesday, ex-President Donald Trump called into Fox News while host Maria Bartiromo was on the air and reiterated his familiar delusions about the 2020 presidential election. He insisted, yet again, that cheating went on in an array of areas where Joe Biden was victorious, despite the fact that no court anywhere in the country ever even partially accepted the idea that any sort of impropriety was responsible for Biden’s victory. Despite all of the frenzied claims from Trump and his allies, no systematic election fraud was present.
During his time on the air on Fox, Trump addressed a recent correction from The Washington Post, which previously reported on a phone conversation that Trump had last year with Frances Watson, a top investigator for the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. At the time, Watson was leading an audit of mail-in ballot signatures in Cobb County, and according to the Post’s original reporting, Trump implored Watson to “find the fraud.”
At the time, a recording of the conversation was not available, so the Post relied on a source. A recording has since surfaced, and it turns out that the original story was off-the-mark — Trump pointed to “dishonesty” that Watson could find. He didn’t ask Watson to “find the fraud.”
The difference does not change the takeaway that Trump attempted to pressure Georgia officials into basically conducting elections oversight in line with his political wishes. The Watson call was separate from Trump’s more widely circulated conversation with Raffensperger himself, who Trump asked to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in the state. A recording of that conversation was available from the get-go, protecting against errors in reporting.
On Fox, Trump said as follows, discussing his remarks to Watson and the 2020 election in general:
‘It was a beautiful and perfect statement, and The Washington Post saw that when they heard it, and I guess they were relying on the statement without hearing what was said, but they were relying on the statement made by people in Georgia that run the elections. It’s a very terrible thing — a very, very terrible thing for our country, what took place in Georgia — but not only Georgia. What took place in Pennsylvania; what took place in Detroit, Michigan, and Michigan generally; what took place in Wisconsin and Arizona — it is a disgrace.’
Subsequently, he complained that courts didn’t have enough “courage” to “overturn” the election. Trump is, in other words, sticking to his idea that the duly expressed will of the people should have been thrown out.
As he petulantly put it:
‘Our Supreme Court and our courts didn’t have the courage to overturn elections that should have been overturned, because you’re talking about decisive amounts, hundreds of thousands and even millions of votes.’
Trump’s glaring detachment from reality seems difficult to overstate. What he’s saying is delusional. Hear his comments below:
"Our Supreme Court and our courts didn't have the courage to overturn elections" — Trump pic.twitter.com/yYdxRP4Uqf
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 16, 2021
