Lies from ex-President Trump and his allies about the integrity of last year’s presidential election are pretty much an indefinitely well-established feature of the U.S. political landscape at this point. These lies continue to circulate despite the fact that no legitimate supporting evidence for the underlying notion of widespread election fraud has ever emerged — no court in the country has ever accepted the idea that the election was somehow rigged for Biden, as Trump claims. In a new article for the conservative publication known as National Review, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger went after Trump for his continued obsession with the election that he lost.
324 days ago terrorists ransacked the US Capitol and *hours later* 138-of-202 (68%) House republicans voted to make trump a dictator. They tried to finish the rioters’ job and end democracy. Never forget it.
— Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) November 27, 2021
In the article, Raffensperger recounted some of his personal experiences last year, as Trump publicly lambasted him for standing by the facts of the integrity of Georgia’s presidential election process. As Raffensperger put it:
‘While most Americans sat down to eat their Thanksgiving meals last year, I was looking forward to a few moments of peace with my family during what had been a chaotic few weeks. Georgia’s county and local elections officials had already counted the ballots in the presidential election twice, including once by hand, and had just started the third and final recount. All three counts affirmed Joe Biden as the winner of Georgia’s presidential contest. Yet my Thanksgiving was interrupted by news that President Donald Trump had called me an “enemy of the people” purely because I stood up for the integrity of Georgia’s elections. I refused to bend to the pressure and, on America’s day of thanks, this was the thanks I got.’
.@arimelber: "If Bannon's own team is admitting these holes in public, if that's their defense, just wait until the prosecution gets a hold of this and gives their version of their case." https://t.co/onqpa5E28a
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 27, 2021
Raffensperger subsequently observed how in “the year since, a signature audit and numerous investigations into allegations of fraud have turned up nothing. No one has come forward with evidence of any widespread scheme to steal the election. The courts have reaffirmed the results in Georgia time and time again,” and he added that now, he’s “even firmer in my conviction that Georgia’s elections were accurate and secure.” This ‘reality has not stopped Trump and his supporters from obsessing over an election that Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security called “the most secure in American history,”‘ Raffensperger noted, however.
As a senior advisor to then-president Donald Trump, Jared Kushner focused on the Middle East, developing close ties there. Now he is attempting to raise billions from Middle Eastern states for his investment fund, raising all manner of ethics issues. https://t.co/fHBl6w0Ntx
— Noah Bookbinder (@NoahBookbinder) November 27, 2021
He went on in the article to describe Trump as having “failed” to deal with the issues with which he should be grappling, like inflation and the supposed destructiveness of Democratic policies. While Raffensperger’s arguments against the Democratic agenda don’t reflect it accurately, he nevertheless shows how Trump’s self-centered obsessions have dragged the political conversation away from even the basic policy conflicts that have historically defined the space between Democrats and Republicans. Now, Trump’s cultishness leads the way forward for so many.
The public deserves to see any notes Bill Barr took in his meetings with Trump about the 2020 election. We’re suing to get them. https://t.co/rq0HH6YsBS
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) November 27, 2021
