President Donald Trump is reportedly planning on claiming that the 2020 Georgia Senate elections were stolen and that the two Democratic incumbents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are not legitimate lawmakers.
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One prominent conservative commentator is arguing that if Trump does indeed act in this way, it will benefit Ossoff, who is up for reelection in a competitive race this November.
“Jon Ossoff is running for re-election this year in Georgia and the President is rumored to be making an in-kind contribution to Ossoff’s campaign,” wrote right-wing podcaster Erick Erickson on X on Monday.
Erickson is not alone in criticizing Trump for reviving his 2020 Big Lie, which holds that he won the election even though he was proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been defeated by then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
“Things are about to get very, very, very bad,” podcaster Chris Mowrey stated on X. Journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez offered a more detailed take.
“If this is true it just shows that Trump is becoming more and more authoritarian, but the stupid kind of authoritarian who can’t even mask regime lies in a convincing way and so it’s obvious to everyone that he is terrified of his opponents (Ossof [sic] is a viable presidential candidate for Dems, one with more appeal than Vance) and also the average voter, which is why he keeps shamelessly pushing the SAVE America Act,” Gonzalez posted.
Policy consultant Adam Cochran pointed out that Trump’s attempt to dislodge Ossoff and Warnock from power misunderstands how the Senate operates.
“Doesn’t work like that,” Cochran pointed out. “First off, there was no fraud, but you seized the ballots and the paper back ups to make sure no one could question it.”
Read more Legal experts alarmed as Trump plans to claim Georgia’s Dem senators are illegitimate
He continued, “Second, the Constitution has no way to nullify a swearing in. Only peer expulsion. Third, this sudden ‘announcement’ is when Trump is down by two senators and desperate to pass a bill. Lastly, Trump had 64 court cases to try and litigate the election, including in Georgia. No case turned up any evidence, including after an audit of these ballots.”
He completed his thought by writing, “Trump’s own lawyers and advocates then admitted to making up the conspiracy about this county, and were charged for it. Part of the court evidence included their own email records of coming up with the plot.”
In addition to falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump is employing a number of tactics to try to make sure he does not lose control of Congress during the 2026 midterm elections. He has threatened to use ICE and radical groups at polling places to intimidate voters, potentially purged voters from the rolls, attempted to impose restrictions on mail-in voting and pushed for strict voter ID laws, most notably the SAVE Act.
Writing for The Washington Post in February, conservative columnist George F. Will broke down how Trump’s claims about the 2020 election have been decisively debunked.
“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”
Will concluded, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.”
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