Donald Trump busted acting like a Mob boss on the phone
One of the go-to tactics in the Republican playbook is distraction. In particular, when Republicans are caught doing something wrong, they try to distract the media and the public by focusing not on the substance of their wrongdoing, but on who leaked the story of the wrongdoing. We saw that, for example, in 1997, when Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was caught on an intercepted cell phone call coordinating his response to ethics charges with Republican House leaders Richard Armey, John Boehner and others, in violation of Gingrich’s ethics case settlement. The Republican distraction by focusing on the interception of the call rather than improper call itself, was a success in that instance.
On Sunday, something similar happened with Donald Trump. The Washington Post released the recording of a recent telephone call from Trump to Georgia‘s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, on which Trump begs, cajoles and even threatens Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to change the certified result of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The reaction in many circles to Trump’s Georgia phone call has been one of appropriate outrage. For example, Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, interviewed on CNN, stated:
In any other conceivable moment in our history, this tape would result in the leadership of both parties calling for the resignation of the President of the United States immediately.
Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal summed it up this way:
Not a fake, nor a hoax, a real tape in real time: the President sounding exactly like a mob boss & potentially committing crimes. A gut wrenching moment of reckoning. https://t.co/Uljj7dizuf
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) January 4, 2021
U.S. House Democrats Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice also wasted no time, forwarding a criminal referral to FBI Director Christopher Wray in which they demand an investigation of Trump regarding the phone call.
Among many Republicans, however, the reaction to the Trump call has been very different. Here’s what Republican U.S. Senator Raphael Edward “Ted” Cruz did:
Ted Cruz calls new Trump tapes a 'distraction' — then blames the mediahttps://t.co/8Uxp7p4E8C
— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 4, 2021
Similarly, here’s right wing syndicated talk show host Jesse Kelly, with a rather desperate Hail Mary regarding Raffensperger’s release of the Trump phone recording:
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1345885052350164992
Another right wing media figure, Erick Erickson, described the reactions of “Georgia Republicans”:
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1345874775051276288
Likewise, Trump advisor and cable TV fixture Jason Miller criticized Raffensberger and the Washington Post, falsely accusing them of cherry-picking only a select few minutes of the call:
“They published 4 minutes and 31 seconds – where is the other 35 minutes? @GaSecofState Raffensperger is a political hack who doesn’t care about election integrity, nor does he care about telling the entire story. Release the full tape!” – Jason Miller, Trump 2020 Senior Advisor
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) January 3, 2021
In fact, however, as linked above, the entire call recording was released, and many people who listened to it agree that the full version is extremely devastating to Trump. But here’s how the folks Fox “News” reacted when they interviewed Raffensperger this morning:
Fox had Georgia's secretary of state on this morning and pressured *him* on hurting the country with the Trump phone call.
Host: "Why put into jeopardy our country by leaking a phone call of that nature?"
"I dont understand why truth would ever jeopardize our country," he said. pic.twitter.com/GQdPD5Bagp
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) January 5, 2021
We did not need more evidence of the stark difference between Democrats and Republicans, but we certainly have it with Donald Trump’s Mafia-style telephone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State (after Trump was impeached for doing something very similar on a telephone call with the president of Ukraine). In response, Republicans are predictably going to their tried and true distraction playbook once again. It’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t work this time.
Photo by Mike Licht, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/3u7uYf
