No, Trump’s idiotic phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state isn't being taken out of context
As-is.
Related highlights:
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President Trump’s private phone call Saturday with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is exactly as idiotic and disturbing as the reports say it is.
This is not a case of media overselling a story or leaving out crucial context, as some of the president’s defenders on the Right allege.
The phone call is exactly as the press advertised.
The president spent nearly an hour this weekend alternately begging and threatening the Republican secretary of state to do something, anything, about the election results in Georgia, which show President-elect Joe Biden won by an estimated 11,779 votes. Trump focused mostly on repeating allegations and conspiracy theories claiming Georgia was stolen via improperly scanned ballots, votes cast by thousands of dead people, and tampered-with voting machines. Throughout the call, Raffensperger, who apparently has the patience of a saint, calmly refuted each charge, informing the president, repeatedly, that statewide audits and investigations have found no evidence of the election chicanery described by Trump and his legal team. The president was unimpressed, maintaining all the while with the self-assuredness of a religious zealot that he is the legitimate victor in Georgia.
“I think I probably did win it by half a million. … We won,” Trump said. “And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night. The place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible.”
He also leveled none-too-subtle threats at Raffensperger, warning that a failure to prove the White House's voter fraud allegations would go very badly for Republicans in Georgia.
“I think you’re going to find that they are shredding ballots because they have to get rid of the ballots because the ballots are unsigned,” said Trump. “The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt.”
He added, “And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did, and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal offense, and you can’t let that happen.”
Later, Trump said in the most eye-opening part of the conversation, “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
There is no defense for the president’s behavior. It’s clear what Trump tried to do this weekend, his winding asides and befuddling nonsequiturs notwithstanding. He tried to strong-arm Georgia’s Republican secretary of state into, ahem, reconsidering the Peach State’s election results.
Yet, after the Washington Post published its scoop, which is as much the real deal as it is maybe a little too heavy on the editorializing, the president’s usual supporters on the Right claimed immediately that the media had taken Trump’s comments out of context.
Well, this is funny.
This is a role reversal of 2015, back when pro-life activist David Daleiden released surreptitiously recorded footage showing Planned Parenthood associates discussing the processes by which organs from the remains of aborted children can be harvested and donated (for a fee). At the time, Planned Parenthood’s defenders on the Left alleged falsely that Daleiden’s tapes had been “selectively edited.” The tapes were neither taken out of context nor deceptively edited, according to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. (At any rate, what additional context would have exonerated the senior director who said on tape that the nation's largest provider of abortions was doing "a little better" than breaking even for the donated organs? It is illegal to profit from the donation of fetal tissue. It is also illegal under federal law to perform partial-birth abortions.)
Likewise, there is no additional “context” that exonerates Trump’s phone call. There is no missing evidence that makes Trump’s obvious attempt to pressure Raffensperger, whom the president called an “enemy of the people,” seem reasonable or even defensible. Like Daleiden, the Washington Post has the goods.
The Trump phone call isn’t being taken out of context. There is no selective editing going on here. Media characterizations of the conversation are right on the money.
But don’t take my word for it. You can read the entire transcript of Trump’s phone call here. It’s exactly as advertised.