Audio was leaked this weekend of an hour-long call between Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, during which Trump tried to get Raffensperger to help him overturn (meaning steal) Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election.
The Washington Post published the full audio along with a transcript of the call, and it is wild. Trump rambles at extreme length, repeating every baseless, debunked conspiracy theory that’s popped up around this election, which while Raffensperger calmly tries to tell him that he’s just parroting nonsense.
The audio of Trump demanding the Georgia secretary of state “find” enough votes so his loss to Biden can be overturned needs to be heard to be believed pic.twitter.com/jzjzwhcgDl
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 3, 2021
I listened to the entire hour of that call and it’s even more bananas/malevolent than the excerpts convey
— Josh Raby (@JoshRaby) January 3, 2021
The tapes immediately bring to mind Richard Nixon’s infamous Watergate tapes but in this case, history isn’t repeating itself. History has found a way to evolve into something even worse. At least, that’s what’s happening according to legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, and I guess he would know.
.@carlbernstein, the man who co-broke Watergate, says of the newly released Trump tapes, “It’s not déjà vu, this was something far worse than Watergate.” pic.twitter.com/MXBupvjqpx
— The Recount (@therecount) January 3, 2021
Speaking to CNN, Bernstein said this call is “not déjà vu. This was something far worse than occurred in Watergate.”
“We have both a criminal president of the United States in Donald Trump and a subversive president of the United States at the same time in this one person, subverting the very basis of our democracy and willing to act criminally in that subversion,” he said.
The audio of Trump with the Georgia secretary of state. Wow. It’s like telling the Nixon tapes to “hold my beer.”
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) January 3, 2021
“This is the ultimate smoking gun tape,” Bernstein went on to say. “It is the tape with the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly and immorally try to instigate a coup in which he remains the president of the United States.
“In any other presidency, this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the president of the United States, his conviction in the Senate … and really an immediate call by the members of Congress, including of his own party, that he resign immediately.”
But, as Bernstein notes, that’s not going to happen, and it’s one of the major reason why this is so much worse than Watergate.
why bother punishing a murderer when the murder happened in the past https://t.co/qYs8yNL0BQ
— Charles Louis Richter (@richterscale) January 4, 2021
“We’re not going to hear that,” Bernstein said. “We might from a few Republicans, but that’s what’s really called for here. And the one thing we should recall from Watergate was that the heroes of Watergate were Republicans who would not tolerate Richard Nixon’s conduct.”
With a dozen Republican senators having gone on the record to say they’ll vote against Joe Biden’s certification this week, based on absolutely nothing but Trump’s baseless claims of nonexistent voter fraud, I don’t think we can expect many of those “heroes” this time around.
(image: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
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