While ignoring the pandemic and continuing to rail against “widespread voter fraud” on Twitter, President Donald Trump took a small moment Friday night to warn his followers about Georgia’s “illegal and invalid”January 5 special runoff elections that will determine which political party controls the Senate.
Then, on Saturday morning, Trump told his followers to vote in said “illegal and invalid election,” mentioning that he’ll be campaigning for the two incumbents on Monday night and adding, “GET READY TO VOTE ON TUESDAY!!!
In a three-Tweet thread (marked by Twitter as “disputed” and untrue), Trump wrote:
“Before even discussing the massive corruption which took place in the 2020 Election, which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States (only need three), it must be noted that the State Legislatures were not in any way responsible for the massive changes made to the voting process, rules and regulations, many made hastily before the election, and therefore the whole State Election is not legal or Constitutional. Additionally, the Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both “illegal and invalid”, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections. In Wisconsin, Voters not asking for applications invalidates the Election. All of this without even discussing the millions of fraudulent votes that were cast or altered!”
In short, Trump told his voters that the entire Georgia election is rigged, a sentiment shared by his legal team who have repeatedly blasted Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the state’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp for accurately declaring that Biden fairly won the state, thus contradicting Trump and his supporters’ baseless claims of widespread voter fraud (which, by the way, have been almost entirely rejected from courts for lack of evidence nearly 60 times over).
“It’s not going to matter how the people vote in the Georgia race,” former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell told The Rush Limbaugh Show on December 29. “It obviously didn’t matter how they voted nationwide, did it? … It might be that they’ve even rigged the system so that the two Republicans win.”
For months, Republicans have worried that Trump’s repeated claims that voter fraud made him lose Georgia in the November elections would discourage Republicans from voting in the January 5 election. Trump supporters pledged not to vote to help punish state Republicans who affirmed Biden’s victory.