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Georgia 6th Update
26 Plays3 years ago
M discusses that stuff in Georgia...
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Transcript
Introduction to the Georgia 6 by-election
00:00:09
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. Indenta.
Voter fraud claims and official responses
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, this being a special episode about that Georgia 6 by-election, which I believe is going on right about now, and this little episode will come out before we even know what the results are, because
00:00:37
Speaker
What a time it's been for the people in Georgia. They've had a president who is claiming there's massive voter fraud. They have a variety of elected officials in Georgia saying there isn't. And frankly, it's been going all around the place, up and down, and no one knows what's going
Trump's call to Raffensperger and electoral fraud implications
00:00:55
Speaker
on. Or at least,
00:00:56
Speaker
That's what certain people are trying to say. And there's been quite a lot of talk about what's been going on in Georgia recently due to that infamous phone call that President Trump engaged with with Secretary of State Brad Reth... Now I'm gonna get this wrong aren't I? Brad Rethinsperger. This is why I get just to say all the names because with speech disfluency sometimes you just can't say a name properly.
00:01:20
Speaker
and it's quite embarrassing. So I get Josh to jump in, tell me how the name is pronounced and then I move on with my life and you move on with listening to the podcast. This was an hour-long phone call where it appeared that President Trump was asking Brad, we'll just call him Brad for the sake of arguments here, to find him enough votes to make him the winner of the Georgia elections and not Joe Biden.
00:01:47
Speaker
Now, this has been a bit of a sticking point for people in the last few days, in that on one interpretation, it really does seem like Trump was telling Brad Restonberger that if he was a really good guy,
00:02:03
Speaker
and a fan of the Republican Party, given he is a Republican lawmaker, that he should make sure those votes appear.
Does Trump believe he won? Bad advice and conspiracy theories
00:02:11
Speaker
And that seems like a criminal act in which it seems that Donald Trump and his advisors are trying to subvert the process in Georgia to create the impression that he won the election when he did not.
00:02:23
Speaker
Now, if that's the case, that seems to be electoral fraud. Begging people to provide you with votes in order to fraudently win an election which has been certified as you having lost seems like the kind of thing that Republicans have been talking about for quite some time, but blaming the other side for doing.
00:02:43
Speaker
Conversely, as people have been pointing out, it may well be the case that Trump sincerely believes he won the Georgia election, and that he is simply being badly advised and engaging in a case of motivated reasoning.
00:02:59
Speaker
Trump doesn't think he could have lost the election, he certainly doesn't think he could have lost the election in Georgia, he has no advisors who are telling him actually what really happened was X rather than Y, and thus he's ringing up Brad going, look I don't understand how I could have lost and I've been told a whole bunch of conspiracy theories
00:03:21
Speaker
about how I did lose when actually I should have won and surely as a respectable republican you should be investigating these conspiracy theories because these imperil the republic and the safety of our electoral system.
Are Trump's advisors enablers? Opposition's impact
00:03:37
Speaker
And so an awful lot rests here as to whether Trump is being sincere or insincere with his conspiracy theories about having lost the election in Georgia and more widely having lost the US presidential election. So some people are saying this is clearly the kind of phone call that if Donald Trump wasn't about to leave office in a few days would be an impeachable event
00:04:04
Speaker
Event? Yeah, event. Yup, event. Event, so I'm sticking with the word event here. I meant to say event, but I said event instead. Speech disfluency. It's weird. I'm also weird that when I do these episodes without Josh, I talk about my speech disfluency an awful lot, and that I can vamp in front of the crowd quite effectively. But when there's no crowd to vamp to,
00:04:29
Speaker
it turns out I become quite self-reflective. So yes, some people are saying it's quite obviously an impeachable offence, and other people say, no, what you have to realise is that Trump is meant to be relying on his legal advisers, and his legal advisers are not particularly good at saying no to President Trump.
00:04:51
Speaker
So to use a sexist term, he's surrounded by yes-men. And indeed this seems to be the kind of tenor of Trump's way. Trump has been enabled by people in his orbit for a long time.
Trump's lawsuit and by-election stakes
00:05:03
Speaker
in part due to the fact that Trump chooses people who are always going to say yes to whatever he believes, and also because certain people thought he was going to win the election anyway, and thus it was in their interest to curry favour with the President, and they're quite aware that people who go against what Trump wants himself to do,
00:05:25
Speaker
or the Trump organisation in general to do, tend to come to a sticky end. And I'm not saying they die, there's no Clinton death list here, but they don't do well with Republicans afterwards. Although, who knows, once Trump leaves office, things may change.
00:05:46
Speaker
Now, of course, the Georgia thing has been ticking along, not just with phone calls. There was a lawsuit that Trump's campaign put forward to the judiciary in Georgia, asking them to decertify Georgia's election results. And the judges basically went with this unprecedented and know we're not going to do that. And so an awful lot now rests on what's happening with the by-election in Georgia and what's going to happen in Congress and the Senate.
Republican challenges to Biden presidency
00:06:16
Speaker
tomorrow slash today depending on where you are in the world as to whether the Noah Hawley gambit is going to work out. Now of course it's not just Noah Hawley,
00:06:26
Speaker
Actually, it's not even Noah Hawley. I believe Noah Hawley is the writer behind Fargo. Anyway, Representative Hawley, first name, probably not Noah. Sorry, Noah. You're probably not a fan of the show. You probably have no idea the show exists. But if for some reason you are listening and you thought I was impugning you, definitely not. It just turns out that I don't remember first names particularly well, and I probably should have notes for these things.
00:06:55
Speaker
Anyway, Representative Hawley is the one who is going to, with support from congressional members, claim that there's been large-scale electoral fraud and is going to open up the floor for the two-hour debate that that allows. There's also going to be a whole bunch of other senators being led by people like Ted Cruz, who seems to have forgotten that Donald Trump went against him quite viciously in the last election.
00:07:20
Speaker
who are also going to put forward claims of electoral malfeasance requiring them to be investigated. So there appears to be at least a cohort of Republicans who are wedded to Trumpism, who are going to at least give the impression of resisting the Biden presidency,
00:07:40
Speaker
presumably because they want to campaign on that in the next election as standing up for the people whose votes were ignored despite the fact their votes were not ignored at all.
Trump's rumored escape plan to Scotland
00:07:50
Speaker
But that's another matter for basically four years time. The thing which actually strikes me the most about all of this discussion is the rumour, and I will stress the rumour, that Donald Trump is going to flee to Scotland
00:08:06
Speaker
before Biden is inaugurated. Now this is a stunning development intro. So the stories are coming out that one of the planes that Trump uses as president has been cleared to fly into Scotland around about January the 19th of this year, and indeed is cleared to fly into an area near to one of Trump's golfing resorts.
00:08:31
Speaker
And so the theory is that Trump is going to skip Biden's inauguration and is instead going to go golfing or take out residency in a rival presidential palace in Scotland. Now, good luck to you, President Trump, if you decide you want to retire to Scotland.
00:08:50
Speaker
I don't think the Scots like you particularly much, and you might find that your neighbours are not very gracious if you move in permanently.
00:09:03
Speaker
But if I were the kind of person who thought there was some kind of grand plan, say a QAnonner, who believed that there is the plan and Trump is the oncoming storm, I would be ever so slightly put out by the idea that the guy I'm supporting to be the real President of the United States of America
00:09:25
Speaker
is choosing to flee the country rather than fight to the bitter end. So the idea that Trump is planning this now, more than a week away from inauguration day, to my mind, if I were the kind of person who thinks that Trump is the rightful president who should be fighting for this,
00:09:44
Speaker
Seems like he's kind of given up that he's got this gambit on the six, which I'm sure his advisors have said probably isn't going to work out, and so has decided to preemptively flee the country in order to not be around when Biden becomes president.
00:10:04
Speaker
Now, once again, this is a rumor. We actually don't know whether Trump is literally flying out of the country. We only have some information that there has been clearance for a military plane which Trump has used in the past to fly into Scotland around about the 19th of
Georgia runoffs and House certification
00:10:21
Speaker
January. But certainly it's the kind of thing which people have been predicting that Trump is simply going to leave the US and allow his allies to deal with the fallout.
00:10:33
Speaker
So, you know, that's interesting.
00:10:39
Speaker
So yeah, we've got the runoffs in Georgia, and of course the certification in the House tomorrow slash today, once again, depending on where you are in the world and whether you're listening to this episode promptly. Otherwise, it was a few days ago, and you're probably going, why didn't you talk about the Warruses that broke into the House and devoured most of the Democratic members who knew the Republicans were genetically engineering Warruses to ensure electoral victory long-term? I certainly had no idea about it.
00:11:08
Speaker
and I just made that up. So yeah, there's stuff going on and it's all kind of exciting.
00:11:15
Speaker
So, the next big update, presumably, is going to be as we approach Inauguration Day, unless, of course, something really, really spectacular happens between now and then, and frankly, it might.
Conclusion and Patreon support
00:11:27
Speaker
It really, really might. But until then, it's totally pipped from me, and Josh is saying absolutely nothing, because suspicion is, he's not even in the room. Cheery bye-bye.
00:11:42
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy is Josh Addison and me, Dr. M.R. Exdenteth. You can contact us at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider supporting the podcast via our Patreon. And remember, it's just a step to the left.