Today, Explained - All eyes on Georgia

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Tuesday’s election will decide who controls the Senate, but the president is still hung up on the election he already lost. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Well, the old president has other plans. There's no way I lost Georgia. There's no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes. The Washington Post rang in the new year with some explosive audio on Sunday. The outgoing president desperately, dumbfoundingly, agonizingly begging for Georgia to reverse its election results in his favor. And no, not the election that hasn't happened yet. Not Tuesday's runoffs. He's still hung up on the one that feels like a short lifetime ago. The tape yesterday showed that

that Trump is still very wrapped up in an election that happened now two months ago. And it is not as focused on, I would say, the Senate races happening on Tuesday. Ellen Nielsen, you covered the White House for Vox. The call is painful to listen to. He starts by saying he should have won because more people showed up to his rallies in Georgia during a pandemic, and it just descends into his pathology from there. What is pertinent, if anything? I think that the line that jumped out to everyone is when he tells Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have have because we won the state.

You know, he's literally directing the Georgia secretary of state to find votes that are not there. I mean, it was kind of wild to listen to. I mean, I guess we have sort of known for a while that Trump lives in a different reality than reality. But it was it was like listening to two people operating from two completely different worlds, basically. You should want to have an accurate election. And you're a Republican. We believe that we do have an accurate election.

How does Georgia's Secretary of State respond? He was very calm and very measured on the call. Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. He had his lawyer there as well to back him up on certain things. What we're saying is not at all what you're describing. And these are investigators from our office. These are investigators from GBI. And they're looking, and they're good, and that's not what they're seeing. Basically, you know, he just very calmly and politely told Trump, look, Mr. President, the data that you have is not real.

Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, people can say anything. No, this isn't social media. This is Trump media. It's not social media. It's really not. It's not social media. I don't care about social media. I couldn't care less. Social media is big tech. Big tech is on your side, you know. I don't even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accurate election. What's the response been since? How did Congress respond to this call? Well, I mean, Congress was having a pretty busy day of its own yesterday. The House and Senate were both swearing in new members. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reelected on a narrow vote as the Speaker of the House. It is my great honor to preside over this sacred ritual of renewal as we gather under the dome of this temple of democracy to begin the 117th Congress. Over in the Senate, you know, that outcome has not been determined yet because the Georgia races will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate.

And so, yeah, I mean, I think that some members of Congress expressed outrage and worry. There were some moderate Republicans like Senator Mitt Romney, who, you know, have been talking about how it's outrageous that a faction of Republican senators and Republican House members are going to try to object to certifying the election on January 6th, the presidential election, that is. But I would say that January 6th, the presidential election that is. But I would say that, you know, the response to the president's phone call kind of fell along partisan lines again, where it was, you know, Democrats and some moderate Republicans speaking out against it. But then Trump supporters either didn't really acknowledge it or, you know,

it seems like they're not going to do anything other than double down on their support for the president. At best, there are a lot of problematic insinuations on this call. At worst, you have the outgoing president of the United States bullying and threatening criminal charges if election results aren't changed illegitimately. Is that even legal, brah? It doesn't appear to be, although it could violate Georgia's state law, intimidating elections officials and, you know, all of that not good stuff. And actually, two House Democrats are now asking the FBI Director Christopher Wray to open a criminal probe on whether Trump violated the

law specifically around this phone call. There's Congressman Ted Lieu of California and Kathleen Rice of New York, who wrote a letter to Christopher Wray on Monday, asking him to open an immediate criminal investigation to the president. So we don't know yet whether Wray is going to do that, but House Democrats are very angry and want to see action taken. Do we have any idea where this tape came from? I think that it was sort of assumed that it was leaked by the Secretary of State's office. And you have to remember that this is a Secretary of State's office that has just been under strain basically since the presidential election in November. To their credit, Raffensperger and

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp are both fairly conservative Republicans. Raffensperger said that he personally voted for Trump. I'm a passionate conservative. And as I've said before, I'm a proud Trump supporter. But, you know, he has received death threats. Other people that work at the secretary of state's office and other lower level election officials in Georgia have received death threats or other threats of violence. He's somebody that has just been targeted by Trump and Trump supporters relentlessly since November 3rd, simply because Trump did not win the election in Georgia. Even after this office request that President Trump try and quell the violent rhetoric being borne out of his continuing claims of winning the states where he obviously lost, he tweeted out, expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia. This is exactly the kind of language that is at the base of growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs.

How does this compare to everything else he's been up to since losing the presidential election? It is a continuation of the rhetoric that we have heard and seen on Twitter and, you know, other forums. But it's different because, you know, this is a private phone call that he had with an elected state official. And it's very clear, you know, you can't necessarily talk your way out of this one because it's very clear what he's asking to do. And it's also just very clear that he cares more about this election that he lost than the future of his party, the Republican Party, and whether they can keep control of the Senate. It's also, I think, the most worrying thing is what it does to people's confidence in the outcome of elections in the future. And, you know, the outcome of this Senate election, if it goes a way that Trump doesn't like, or the outcome of future elections, because

there has been so much doubt cast on this election, even though, you know, election experts inside the U.S. and also people who were, you know, watching this election from outside the U.S. across the board said that this was a very drama-free election that went pretty smoothly. How much of his party is with him at this point? It seems like even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would very much like to move on. I would say that Trump has more friends in the House on this than he does in the Senate. So right now, you know, on Wednesday this week, it's time for the House and Senate to basically certify

the election results, the presidential election results. And this is normally, you know, just kind of a boring ceremonial thing that they, you know, read results from the states and certify electors. And it's the final thing that, you know, guarantees that now incoming president-elect Joe Biden and incoming Vice President Kamala Harris will be sworn in. So this is normally a pretty boring process. But this year, there are going to be a certain number of Republicans in the House and Senate that object to this.

And on the same day as the certification, the outgoing president is planning a rally in D.C., right? Yeah. So on Wednesday, Trump is saying that he wants his supporters to come to D.C. to basically join him and he's going to make some sort of announcement. I'm in D.C. right now and things in the city are pretty tense. You know, the D.C. mayor issued a statement saying that she doesn't want D.C. residents basically going downtown on Tuesday or Wednesday because there have been violent scuffles that have broken out with members of the Proud Boys, that far-right group that supports Trump, and other pro-Trump

protesters. And so she just wants to make sure that there is as little violence as possible with these pro-Trump elements coming into town. So it's going to be a tough week, but this might finally be over soon? After this process in the House and Senate this week, there's nothing else that Trump can really do. I mean, besides, I guess, continuing to spout off that Georgia was stolen or that the election was stolen from him, I think that he has exhausted all of his options,

you know, from challenging things in court to this thing with certifying electors in the House and Senate. His avenues are now all closed, basically. And exhausted is the operative word. Yes. Everybody is exhausted. Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, Sean. After the break, the real election story in Georgia, the runoffs.

Before the break, the Gregory brothers. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 bucks. One more that we have. Have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts? No. 11,780... Support for Today Explained comes from Aura.

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Ladies and gents, welcome to the Georgia Senate runoffs, the heaviest of heavyweight runoff elections in the history of the republic, with the potential to once again tip red to blue, with the upper chamber of the Congress, the United States Senate, hanging in the balance. This is the moment you've all been waiting for. And without further ado, your contestants, in the corner to my left, Republican David Perdue. David Perdue, he is best known for sort of his business ties. You know, he ran Reebok Athletics, Dollar General, and he had no political experience before he ran in 2014. And David Perdue is an ardent Trump supporter. In 2016, there were only two United States senators who supported Donald Trump.

And you're looking at one of them. He is very well liked in the South. There's been a big attachment to sort of the more rural parts of Georgia, thinking about the farms, some of the devastation that happened from hurricanes and trying to get relief for those folks. And he's pretty anti-immigrant. He's been part of introducing legislation that is aimed to limit the number of immigrants coming into this country or extended green cards. So, yeah, I would say David Perdue pretty much aligns with a lot of the Trump agenda. In the corner to my right, Democrat John Ossoff.

Yeah, so John Ossoff is kind of on the total opposite end of the spectrum of David Perdue. Ossoff is from Metro Atlanta. He's not really been in politics otherwise before 2017. So, you know, before then, he's running a media company. He's, you know, investigating corporations, all kinds of documentary work. And he's really been calling out Perdue on, frankly, not being present. I think folks here certainly talk about the debate that the two of them were supposed to have, and Senator Perdue just didn't show. Like, Ossoff had a debate with a chair. As a chair, I won't stand for this. And, you know, it was a great television moment because it's really,

I think, a great symbol of the point that he was trying to paint. Y'all, Senator Perdue hadn't held a public town hall meeting in six years. He feels entitled to this seat. But this is not David Perdue's Senate seat. This is the people's Senate seat. And the people are going to come out and vote on January 5th to claim it. And it's been interesting that Perdue, by and large, has not been attacking Ossoff by name. He's really calling out the Democratic Party, but he's really not engaging with Ossoff in the way that I think a lot of people thought he might. And in the second ring, we have Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler. She's actually not from Georgia.

She's from rural Illinois. And she is married to the chair of the New York Stock Exchange. And in 2010, she actually purchased the WNBA team here, the Atlanta Dream. And there's actually been a lot of really interesting controversy coming up there this year because a lot of the WNBA fan base, a lot of the players tend to be more Democratic-leaning. You know, and there's actually the WNBA is noted for being some of the first players who wore Black Lives Matter shirts. They were actually fined by the league. And Loeffler has been very outspoken against Black Lives Matter shirts. They were actually fined by the league. And Loeffler has been very outspoken against Black Lives Matter. She's really taken a lot of opposition to both the movement and

engagement with it, to the point where Atlanta Dream players this summer were wearing Vote Warnock shirts that talked about Loeffler's opponent and have tried to ask her to sell the team. You're still not disagreeing with President Trump's statements about personally sexually assaulting women. I'm not familiar with that. The Access Hollywood tape. He's referring to the Access. Yeah, no, look, this president is fighting for America. Kelly Loeffler was appointed in December of 2019 when Senator Johnny Isakson said that he was going to be stepping down early from his term for health reasons.

President Trump actually really lobbied hard for Governor Kemp, Governor Brian Kemp, to appoint Doug Collins. There was just a lot of angst and a lot of tension in the Republican Party when Kemp decided to appoint Kelly Loeffler instead. She was not a Trump pick at all. And this race in particular really highlights a lot of the tension and some of the splitting that might be happening and is happening in the Republican Party. Versus Democrat Reverend Raphael Warnock. So Raphael Warnock from Savannah, Georgia, grew up in the public housing there. He went to Morehouse College, which is a historically black college university. And he went on to become a minister.

And he's actually the senior pastor now at Ebenezer Baptist Church, which if that sounds familiar, that's where Dr. Martin Luther King was pastor here in Georgia. And so he's really emblematic of a lot of the current, you know, black civil rights movement here in Georgia. He's been very involved in anti-death penalty work. He's been very vocal about expunging records for folks who've been incarcerated. He's actually best known for staging a protest in the Georgia State Capitol in 2014. The pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church was arrested today in Washington, D.C. Reverend Raphael Warnock was among several religious leaders protesting the proposed budget and the handling of the Republican health care bill.

You know, Dr. King said that of all the injustices, inequality in health care is the most shocking and the most inhumane. And so when we passed the Affordable Care Act in this country and Georgia refused to expand Medicaid, I thought it was important to stand up. He has never dipped his toe into politics, but very well known, certainly among folks in metro Atlanta and within the larger social justice movements across the state. Sasha Friedman, you make the Small Power podcast in Atlanta, Georgia. Historically speaking, the two Republicans, Loeffler and Perdue, would be favored to win here, right? But that's not the case with this election tomorrow? I think for the first time in really 20 years is when we had a Democrat last elected to our state. It really feels like a toss-up, you know, and I think there's a couple of reasons for that. One big one that you saw from November is just the massive turnout in a lot of areas that had previously been Republican,

and you're starting to see more Democrats registered and voting in those places, namely Cobb County, Gwinnett County. That is due in large part to huge efforts from organizations like New Georgia Project, which is focused on registering Black voters. You had organizations that were turning out the vote among Asian Americans. So Gwinnett has a huge Asian American Pacific Islander population that turned out in large numbers. Similarly with the Latino vote in Gwinnett and surrounding areas. So it's really, I think, a matter of people who saw the lead that certainly Stacey Abrams and organizers who've been working at this for years and years. This vision that Stacey had almost a decade ago is now really coming to fruition of a totally new coalition in Georgia.

But basically since the presidential election on November 3rd, there have been attempts to discredit elections all across the country. Has that had an effect in Georgia? Yeah, I think, you know, it's had an effect on both Republican and Democratic voters. You know, obviously, Democratic voters here were excited about the outcome of the presidential election. And there would be good reason to think that there may not be as big of a turnout for a runoff because kind of like we did our part, we're done. You know, we did the thing, we flipped Georgia blue. And I think you see those voters staying engaged more than they might otherwise, both because obviously there's a lot of

talk of what hangs in the balance for the Senate, but also seeing this continued effort to discredit the election and votes that are happening. And on the Republican side, I think you see this really fine line that a lot of both voters are trying to walk and the candidates themselves, because I think they see what's at stake if they lose control of the Senate. Obviously, then you've got Democrats controlling, you know, the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. And at the same time, in endorsing the actual process of the election and encouraging people to even vote is saying that the results are valid from November. Or that because of what's happening, turnout could be lower or frankly, just leave a lot of confusion as to what they should be doing. What are voters saying? I mean, what do people think of this moment? I think, you know, I've seen I've talked to many folks who are have said they've never been more excited for the rest of the country to stop talking about Georgia.

Seems fair. feel like if Georgians are not going to be able to elect Democratic senators for both seats and flip the Senate, that sort of the rest of the what Biden is or isn't able to do will kind of be put on Georgia as not being able to turn that out. And I think among Republicans, there's, I think, a lot of frustration that this is continued to be sort of a focal point, you know, that there's potential to frankly be embarrassed and have not only Georgia turn blue, but lose two Senate seats that have been Republican for over 20 years. So I think there's obviously a tremendous amount of tension and just wanting to know what the results will be to feel like we can move forward

because Georgians have been in this perpetual state of being in electoral politics through the holidays that electoral politics is still very much a point of discussion here. Everyone's holding their breath, so good luck. Yeah, we shall see. Sasha Friedman hosts a podcast called Small Power. It's all about local politics in Georgia.

So if you've developed a voracious appetite for that kind of thing since November, Small Power is It's all about local politics in Georgia. So if you've developed a voracious appetite for that kind of thing since November, Small Power is the show for you. Find it where you find your shows. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This one's Today Explained. Sam and Miles, they're going to play us out. Thank you. Take a bow, Miles.