President Donald Trump gave Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger a chance to make things right in a call Saturday where he argued there was widespread irregularities in Georgia in the 2020 Presidential election.
In a Sunday morning tweet the President stated “I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters,’ dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” Trump wrote.
I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
Both the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Washington Post claim to have a recording of the roughly hour long call but full transcripts have been made available only in the last few hours and only edited portions of a recording purporting to be the same have been shared on social media.
Throughout the call Trump spoke of widespread voter fraud and urged Raffensperger to reverse the election outcome.
“Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. We have that in spades already,” Trump said. “Or we can keep it going. But that’s not fair to the voters of Georgia.”
Raffensperger refused to consider the competing analysis, telling Trump that “the data you have is wrong.”
Trump continued, “We won this election in Georgia based on all of this. There’s nothing wrong with saying that, Brad. The people of Georgia are angry and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night,” he said, adding: “There’s nothing wrong with saying that you’ve recalculated.”
“I just want to find 11,780 votes” – one more than the vote gap between him and Biden, who became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992.
“It’s pretty clear that we won. We won pretty substantially. And you even see it by rally size,” Trump said.
“There’s just no way. Look, there’s no way. There’s no way.”
The conversation got heated as the two argued as to the validity of the data.
“Mr. President, the problem you have with social media is that people can say anything.”
“No, this isn’t social media. This is Trump media,” the president responded. “You should want to have an accurate election and you’re a Republican.”
“We believe we do have an accurate election,” Raffensperger replied.
“No you don’t. No. No you don’t. You don’t have it — not even close.”
Among the people on the call were Raffensperger, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several aides and attorneys. At one point, Meadows urged Georgia officials “in the spirit of cooperation and compromise” to find a path forward that doesn’t involve the court system.
“The state is in turmoil over this. I know you would like to get to the bottom of it,” Trump said, chastising Raffensperger for a recent TV appearance where he said there’s no systemic election fraud.
“People should be happy to have an accurate count, instead of an election where there’s turmoil. There’s turmoil in Georgia and other places — you’re not the only one. We have other states I believe will be flipping to us very shortly.”