Trump Makes Clear The Price Of Joining His Gang

You have to be willing to do something illegal

The Republican state government and elections officials who have been standing up to Trump have been kind of shouting that from the rooftops. But it’s been missed by most of the reporting we’re seeing, which is kind of mixing all of Trump’s various pressure efforts together, and thus keeps missing a very important and dangerous distinction.

Let’s take Georgia as an example: it has a Republican Governor and Secretary of State, both of whom are (or were) staunch Trump supporters. Biden won the election there by well over 10,000 votes. A hand recount of all the votes on paper was not mandatory, but they decided to do it anyway. Biden still won. Then the Trump campaign had the right to request another recount, which it did, so they did that. Biden won again.

They even did something Trump keeps saying they didn’t: matching signatures on mail-in ballots with signatures of voters on file. Twice. Once when the voter requested the ballot, and again before the ballot was opened and counted. If they did it again at this point, it would prove nothing, because once the signatures were verified, twice, the ballot was then separated from the signature envelope. Which isn’t called fraud; it’s called honoring the right for a person’s vote to be secret. So even if they went through and found tens of thousands of signatures that didn’t match, they’d have no way of determining who those people actually voted for. Of course, Trump has a way in mind: focus only on those areas with high concentrations of minority voters, ’cause that’s where all the fraud occurs. The fact that he doesn’t get many votes in those areas — according to him and his people — is at best coincidental, and at worst tantamount to proof of those no-good goings on he alleges. Because, as is always the case: how could he possibly lose?

So that’s Georgia. And those Republican guys there actually did a lot to confirm and re-confirm outcomes and count and re-count stuff just in case they might’ve found something to change things up. But they didn’t. And so that’s that.

But Trump wants more. Since he didn’t win by the rules and multiple replays, he demands of Georgia’s governor to call a special emergency session of the…