If President Trump plans to show up Monday night in Georgia to complain further about his loss in 2020, he should stay in Washington, D.C., and enjoy what’s left of his time in the White House. It would be a wasted opportunity.
However, if he wants to have a serious effect on the Senate runoff elections that will define the last days of his term, he can make a difference that will further cement him as a towering legend of the Republican Party.
The Washington Post on Sunday reported on a phone conversation between Trump and Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, from the day before, wherein Trump tried to get Raffensperger to “find” several thousand votes that would flip the results of the 2020 election in that state in Trump’s favor.
The president asked about a “rumor” that ballots were being shredded in one of Georgia’s counties and that Dominion, which makes voting equipment, was tampering with voting machines. He also raised claims about votes cast by dead people and ballots in favor of President-elect Joe Biden being counted multiple times over, all of which apparently fell on Raffensperger’s deaf ears.
This went on for about an hour, which is a little less than the length of a Trump rally, such as the one scheduled for Monday night. And that rally will be absolutely pointless if it’s a reproduction of that phone call.
Trump and his 75 million supporters have legitimate reasons to be angry. The 2020 election was tipped in Biden’s favor by court rulings and Democratic states that shifted normal voting deadlines and allowed mail-in ballots that are, of course, subject to tampering. (I wouldn’t trust a poll worker to repay me a borrowed $10, let alone to handle my ballot properly.) The excuse for every change, even changes that directly contravened state law, was, “Well, it’s a pandemic!”
A pandemic shouldn’t mean that we flood every corner of the country with ballots that can be turned in after normal deadlines and that every single one is counted with only marginal attempts at ensuring their validity. That happened all over the place.
Democrats want Republicans to shut up about it and “move on,” as if they had any moral authority regarding the acceptance of election results. But Trump still has a job to do, and it’s to ensure that Republicans secure at least one of the two Senate seats up for grabs in the Georgia runoff races this week.
If Trump wants to fail at that task, he should spend his rally complaining that he was robbed. On the other hand, if Trump wants to make good use of the time, he should explain that even if he does think the election was stolen, that shouldn’t be an excuse to sit this one out. It is, in fact, even more reason for Republicans to vote and ensure that it never happens again.
A Republican-controlled Senate won’t, on its own, be able to secure future elections, but it can continue investigating claims of wrongdoing in the last one and explain to the public what it finds. There are still plenty of questions that need answers. That’s only one of a million reasons for Trump to encourage Republicans to vote for their candidates, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both incumbents.
If Democrats take the Senate, they have already promised to eliminate the filibuster on legislation. With control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, they will pass a slew of new laws fulfilling every liberal wish to redistribute wealth, institute “diversity” quotas at every level of government, and cripple the economy under the guise of environmentalism. They have also openly discussed packing the Supreme Court.
Maybe it’s just me, but those battles seem at least as important as Trump’s need to air personal grievances over the 2020 election.
