Some Republicans are outraged after The Washington Post published the audio recording of a phone call in which President Donald Trump urged Georgia’s top election official to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
But, the Trump loyalists aren’t upset the president encouraged Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top election official, to “recalculate” and “find” votes. They’re mad that a fellow Republican would record and leak the phone call to the press. Other members of the GOP found the call “deeply troubling” and called for a Justice Department investigation.
On his radio show Monday, conservative commentator Glenn Beck accused the Post of “selective editing” of the leaked audio.
“The way they edited that, if you listen to the conversation and you listen for context, you’ll see everything The Washington Post has(sic) claiming is yet another lie,” Beck alleged. The conservative media personality alleged the Post’s story was part of larger liberal conspiracy to discredit Trump.
The Washington Post had also posted the hour-long conversation between Trump and Georgia officials.
Other Republicans — including leading members of the party in Georgia — expressed their disappointment in their fellow GOP members for betraying the lame duck president by turning over a confidential conversation to the press.
Georgia Sen. David Perdue said on Fox News Sunday night he was “shocked that a member of the Republican Party would tape a sitting president” and then then leak the audio.
“It’s disgusting in my view,” Perdue added, but he didn’t believe any fallout from the president’s pressuring of Georgia election officials wouldn’t affect Tuesday’s runoff elections there.
Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler will try to defend their Senate seats in a runoff election against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock on Jan. 5.
“Mind boggling that @GaSecOfState (Raffensperger) and his lawyers would secretly record and release a confidential settlement conference with the President,” Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer said on Twitter. “I have made open records requests to the Secretary of State which have never been acknowledged or answered. This is lawlessness.”
NBC News reported that “Raffensperger’s office recorded the call, and he made clear to his advisers that he did not want a transcript or an audio recording released unless Trump attacked Georgia officials or misrepresented the conversation.”
Trump said in a Tweet Sunday, before the Post reported on the leaked audio, that he had spoken with Raffensperger about the Georgia election results and that the secretary of state had “no clue” about alleged voter fraud in the state. Raffensperger responded to Trump’s tweet, saying “the truth will come out.”
Charlie Kirk, the 27-year-old president and founder of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, called the sharing of the president’s comments a national security threat.
“Leaking private phone calls with the President of the United States is a national security threat and it should be treated as such,” Kirk wrote on Twitter, adding that Georgia secretary of state should be investigated.
Raheem Kassam, the editor in chief of conservative digital media outlet The National Pulse, defended what the president said in the call, writing that Trump was only calling for transparency in the election and chalks up the president’s tone to nothing more than “New York businessman bluster.”
“And the pushback from Raffensberger’s (sic) team wasn’t even particularly punchy, which is presumably why they leaked the call instead of pressing ahead with the details discussed and requested,” Kassam wrote. He called the state election officials’ responses to Trump’s allegations a reflection of “bad faith” and that the Georgia Republican “simply does not” want “openness and transparency.”
Donald Ayer, who was a deputy attorney general in President George H.W. Bush’s administration, said Trump’s call to Georgia was “a horrendous effort to undermine our system of government,” USA Today reported. He said Trump should be investigated by the Justice Department to “ figure out whether there is something you can do to stop it or punish it.”
Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, said the call was “deeply troubling, and I think everybody ought to listen to the full hour of it,” according to USA Today.
During the the call, Trump tells Raffensperger inaccurately that he won Georgia and that top election official could recalculate the results.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” Trump said to Raffensperger, the Post reported. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”
Later in the call, Trump said all he wanted Raffensperger to do was “to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”
The Washington Post reported that Raffensperger explained to the White House throughout the call that “the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.”
Biden won the November 2020 presidential election with 306 to 232 Electoral College votes. Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would not be enough to overturn the results of the election.
Some Republican members of Congress say they will vote against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election on Wednesday, but their action won’t change the outcome.
Correction: An earlier version incorrectly stated Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., was chairwoman of the House Republican Committee. She is chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.