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President Donald Trump’s lies about election stealing have an unintended consequence: There are now members of his base who are pleading for Republicans not to vote in Georgia’s second round for two vital Senate seats.
Democrats can take control of the U.S. Senate if Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff beat incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the next rounds. But Trump has damaged his party’s cause by attacking two Republican state officials – Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican Trump has demeaned as “RINO” or Republican in name only – for their alleged involvement in a wacky ploy to stage the state presidential election for Joe Biden. (In fact, Raffensperger and Kemp are Trump supporters.)
Georgia’s secretary of state, a self-styled Republican (RINO), won’t let people who check the ballots see the signatures for fraud. Why? Without it, the whole process is very unfair and almost meaningless. Everyone knows that we have won the state. Where is @BrianKempGA?
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 14, 2020
A core Trump faction – including a PAC with ties to Roger Stone – took Trump’s conspiracy and attacks on Kemp and Raffensperger as a call not to participate in the second round. Those rumblings were big enough that, on Monday, Donald Trump Jr. felt compelled to intervene with a tweet in which he dismissed discussions of Perdue and Loeffler’s refusal to vote as “Nonsense,” adding: “We need ALL of our people going out. vote for Kelly and David. “
I see a lot of people who are supposed to be on our side telling GOP voters not to go out and vote for @KLoeffler and @LostSenate.
It’s absurd.
IGNORE these people.
We need ALL of our people who vote for Kelly and David.#ITSELF #GASES
– Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 23, 2020
The irony, however, is that Trump fans whom Don Jr. rebuked are simply taking inspiration from his father, who continues to push baseless conspiracy theories on election theft, even after half-heartedly approving. the General Service Administration’s decision Monday night to officially begin the transition to Biden.
Trump fans refuse to believe Trump actually lost
On the right-wing social media platform Speak, investigative reporter Marcus Baram documented how posters say things like “Don’t vote!” Don’t be part of the corruption ”and“ With the Dominion voting machines, our votes won’t be counted anyway. The only way to show corruption is to boycott the election or write Donald Trump instead.
Of course, the idea that the fraud involving Dominion Voting Systems, an electronic voting system used across the country, somehow rigged Joe Biden’s election is an unproven MAGA fever dream. But he was relentlessly pushed by Trump and is at the center of demands he continued to make on Tuesday for an overhaul of the election.
The idea that Trump fans should boycott the second round in Georgia as a form of punishment for establishment Republicans resonated beyond Talk. At a “Stop the Steal” rally held in Georgia over the weekend, for example, one speaker was cheered as he attacked Raffensperger and Kemp as “traitors” and said: “Everything Republican who allows this to happen is an accomplice and we’ll get you there. ! … We will do whatever it takes to completely destroy the Republican Party. (Asset tweeted his support for the rally.)
And it’s not just the hikes that publicly call on Trump fans not to participate in the second round. On Tuesday, Lachlan Markay and Will Sommer wrote for the Daily Beast about how “ Tory agents and a super PAC with ties to infamous GOP trickster Roger Stone are calling on Trump supporters to punish Republicans by avoiding the crucial second round of the Georgia Senate or writing in Trump. name instead. ”
Meanwhile, a lawyer who worked for the Trump campaign in Georgia, L. Lin Wood, tweeted on Saturday that unless Purdue and Loeffler no longer push for investigations into the (baseless) fraud allegations. from Trump, “I will NOT vote in the second round of the GA. . “
Let’s tell the truth about @SenLoeffler & @sendavidperdue.
Why are they doing little or nothing to support the efforts of GA citizens to fight illegal elections and the need @BrianKempGA order an extraordinary session of the legislature?
If this is not resolved, I will NOT vote in the second round of the GA.
Are you going?
– Lin Wood (@LLinWood) November 21, 2020
It should be noted that some of these efforts are remarkably half-baked. The Stone-affiliated PAC, for example, encourages Trump fans to write on Trump’s behalf, even though the second-round ballot in Georgia does not allow written entries. But given the expected proximity of the Warnock-Loeffler and Perdue-Ossoff races, demoralizing even a fraction of the Republican electorate could tip the crucial races for Democrats.
Now that he is indeed set to leave the White House, it is unclear how much Trump cares about Republicans retaining control of the Senate. It’s also not clear that he is thinking about the implications of the conspiracy theories he was advocating, given that last week he endorsed Loeffler and Purdue.
But Don Jr.’s tweet to ignore calls made by fellow MAGA supporters around the vote illustrates one of the great challenges the Republican Party faces as it emerges from Trump’s defeat. Is it possible to please those Trump fans who refuse to believe their leader has been defeated while still existing in a world where elections still have consequences? The first feedback seems to indicate that it will be difficult.
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