Left: (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Right: (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) put former President Donald Trump on blast for repeating his “recycled conspiracy theories” about the 2020 election in a new op-ed for National Review, characterizing the fixation as “boring and sad.”
Raffensperger is well known for his refusal to give in to Trump’s pleas for him to overturn the results of the presidential election in Georgia three years ago, and resounding won re-election 2022 despite having to contend with a Trump-backed primary challenger.
“As originally conceived by its inventors, the concept of the ‘big lie’ is supposed to be a tale so audacious and captivating that people can’t doubt it. Its unbelievability is its power — so impossible that it will change public beliefs,” wrote Raffensperger, who submitted that “the once-fantastical lie that the 2020 election was somehow ‘stolen’ from President Trump through voting-machine irregularities, foreign intervention, or out-and-out fraud has become repetitive, boring, and sad.”
He continued:
These fabricated assertions were certainly entertaining at first — like the water fixtures in front of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Every 15 to 30 minutes, jets of water spray up, down, and rotate in a rhythmic and visually amusing pattern. But one can’t watch it for very long before the patterns become predictable and boring. The big lie about the 2020 election, repeated now for more than three years, has brought forward no proof and nothing that hasn’t been publicly known since January 2021. The current variations, on display regularly during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign thus far, are merely part of the dancing fountain of lies that have been disproven by the count, the recount, and the audit of the 2020 vote in Georgia. Not one single shred of evidence has been offered in its support, in my state or in any other.
Raffensperger went on to note that it gave him “no joy to report to President Trump in January 2021 that he had lost Georgia in the presidential contest,” because he had “been a conservative all my life and a Republican for the entirety of my elected career,” even voting for Trump twice.
But, he argued, Trump is so polarizing that he has lost Republicans elections.
“It’s important to emphasize that the key to Trump’s loss in Georgia was that the Georgians who didn’t vote for Trump were Republicans. The thousands of voters who made no choice in the presidential contest in Georgia voted for other Republican candidates on the same ballot,” he reminded readers.
Raffensperger ended the op-ed by plunging the knife ever deeper, lambasting Trump for his “recycled conspiracy theories and repetition of already disproven allegations.”
“The three-ring circus that was once the Trump entertainment spectacle has withered away to a single decrepit pony, desperately performing its one trick, hoping to regain the audience it once held in thrall. Iowa showed that performance can still keep some people entertained. Others can make up their own minds,” he concluded.
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