Former GOP governor of Pennsylvania condemns Trump meeting in Gettysburg as attempt to ‘undermine the Republic’

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge accused President Donald Trump of staging a “fake Gettysburg Hallowed Event” to overturn the election result.

Ridge, who served as the first US Secretary of Homeland Security under the George W. Bush administration, tweeted his disdain for a meeting held Wednesday by Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania to discuss the alleged election irregularities.

Trump continues to insist he won the election when battlefield states such as Keystone State are already certifying their results, effectively blocking a victory for President-elect Joe Biden.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf certified the election results on Tuesday, showing Biden won the state by more than 81,000 votes. The next day, a Pennsylvania judge ordered state officials to suspend further efforts to certify the results of the election that is under appeal by the Wolf administration.

Trump had planned to attend the event in person with his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, but his trip was canceled after Giuliani was exposed to someone who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Giuliani attended the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee meeting in which Trump appeared by loudspeaker and made other unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.

Ridge, who served as governor of Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2001, tweeted the significance of the meeting held at the Wyndham Gettysburg hotel, located about a mile from the Pickett’s Charge stage, where the Union troops repelled a Confederate attack in July 1863.

“History will record the shameful irony that a president who lied to avoid military service staged a bogus event on the sacred grounds of Gettysburg in a brazen attempt to undermine the Republic for which dozens of true patriots had stood. beaten and died to preserve since its founding, “he tweeted.”

History will record the shameful irony that a president who lied to avoid military service staged a bogus event on the sacred grounds of Gettysburg in a brazen attempt to undermine the Republic for which dozens of true patriots had fought. and have died to preserve since its founding.

– Governor Tom Ridge (@GovRidge) November 25, 2020

As of Thursday morning, Ridge’s post was liked over 90,000 times and retweeted more than 16,000 times, sparking a thread in which many expressed support.

This isn’t the first time Ridge has criticized Team Trump’s election dispute. Earlier this month, he described attempts to prevent votes from being counted as “un-American,” accusing the president of trying to “disenfranchise not only millions of Pennsylvanians, but millions of voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada and elsewhere “.

Trump’s repeated legal attempts to overturn the election have been rejected by state and federal judges. The Trump team’s call on Pennsylvania lawmakers to change how its presidential voters are chosen or to consider calling a special election is likely to fail as well, Penn Live reported.

Jason Gottesman, spokesman for the House Republican majority, told the outlet that House GOP leaders have no plans to recall House members until the November 30 end of the legislative session 2019-2020.

“We have been clear from the start: the General Assembly has no role to play in the selection of voters,” he said.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.

The graph below by Statista shows the tightest presidential races of the past 124 years.