Trump again tried to overturn the election results using conspiracy theories that have spread on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, this time it was in a private call caught on tape.
On Sunday, The Washington Post published a leaked recording of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In the hour-long phone call, Trump pulls out conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory about the election in Georgia, in an attempt to convince Raffensperger to throw out the results and hand Trump the win.
Trump lost the state of Georgia to President-elect Joe Biden by 12,670 votes.
Since losing the election, Trump has backed a number of outlandish conspiracy theories about voter fraud and Dominion Voting Systems, which supplied voting machines to Georgia.
The company, based in Denver, supplies many U.S. states and counties with both voting hardware and software. Dominion has been at the center of many right-wing conspiracy theories. There has been no proof shown to legitimize any these claims. At least one Dominion employee had to go into hiding due to threats from Trump supporters.
The Georgia results have been recounted and audited multiple times — a fact laid out by Raffensperger and his lawyer, Ryan Germany, in the call — with no irregularities found.
Earlier today, Trump tweeted about a call with Raffensperger, a fellow Republican. The outgoing president claimed the Georgia secretary of state was unable to answer his questions concerning dead voters, voter machines being destroyed, and other frequently debunked conspiracy theories. Twitter slapped a warning label on Trump’s tweet.
“What you’re saying is not true,” Raffensperger fired back. “The truth will come out.”
Hours later, the Washington Post released audio excerpts from the call.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump told Raffensperger on the call, begging him to overturn the election results. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump falsely claimed on the call before stating that he believes he actually won by “hundreds of thousands of votes.”
In one of the weirder parts of the exchange, Trump asked Germany about several Dominion-related conspiracy theories.
“Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County?” asked the president of the United States. “Cause that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?”
When the secretary of state’s general counsel responded that there was no truth to these claims, Trump added an additional twist to the conspiracy theory.
“But have they removed the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?” Trump asked.
“But have they removed the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?”
The answer from Germany, again, was “no.”
Every fraud claim Trump brought up on the call has been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers and state officials.
“The data you have is wrong,” explained Raffensperger to Trump during the call.
Nearly a dozen GOP senators vowed to contest the election results on Jan. 6.
After that, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20 and become the 46th president of the United States.