In leaked audio that surfaced online, President Donald Trump shamelessly pressured a top Georgia official to find a way to illegally change the votes in his state so he could win reelection.
On Sunday, The Washington Post published the hour-long call President Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He once more voiced the widely debunked claims of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Trump inaccurately stated that he won the state of Georgia. The 74-year-old president of the United States also falsely claimed that other states that have already certified Joe Biden‘s win would change their vote counts.
After Raffensperger rejected the statements and pushed back on the conspiracy theories, President Trump demanded that the politician move heaven and earth to find more than 11,000 ballots that he needs to flip the state in his favor.
On the leaked telephone conversation, President Trump could be heard telling Georgia’s top election official: “The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”
Trump went on to tell Raffensperger: “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.”
President-elect Biden beat Trump in Georgia, 2,473,633 votes to 2,461,854, and the vote has already been certified after several recounts that were requested by POTUS.
“It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia,” Raffensperger responded to Trump by saying, “the data you have is wrong.”
Trump marched on with the conspiracy theories by saying: “You know the Internet? You know what was trending on the Internet?”
A baffled Raffensperger told Trump: “The problem you have with social media, people can say anything.”
Ryan Germany, special counsel in Raffensperger’s office, chimed in to counter Trump’s baseless claims by saying: “What we’re seeing is not at all what you’re describing. These are investigators from our office, these are investigators from GBI, and they’re looking, and they’re good.”
At one point during the exchange, Trump attempted to sway Raffensperger by bringing up the state’s upcoming runoff election set for January 5th.
Trump said: “You have a big election coming up, and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam. Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president.”
The president concluded by: “Republican officials would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris responded to President Trump’s leaked phone call by saying:
“It was certainly the voice of desperation. And it was a bald, bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States.”
American voters are on the edge of their seats, waiting for a Twitter storm from Trump addressing the audio leak.
