Trump’s Unhinged Call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Gets “A Closer Look” from Seth Meyers

Today’s a big day here in Georgia, where Paste is based and most of its editors live, and for America overall. Today those of us in the Peach State head to the polls one more time to finally elect our next senators. In a rare stroke of fate both of Georgia’s United States Senate seats are up at the same time, and with no candidate in either race reaching the mandatory 50% threshold back in November, both went to runoffs. Uh, if you pay any attention to politics whatsoever you already know this; if you live in Georgia you absolutely know this—painfully, acutely, nightmarishly—due to the overwhelming flood of mail and TV commercials you’ve been inundated with over the last two months. Today’s the day, though, finally, mercifully, and after tonight we should be able to watch TV or check our mail once more without being pelted by lies and vitriol.

Speaking of lies, the Republican Party—long a big fan of them—is completely falling apart under the weight of the president’s lies and conspiracy theories. Despite roundly losing the election back in November, pulling in over 7 million votes less than Joe Biden and earning only 232 electoral votes out of 538, Trump insists that he actually won and that the Democrats cheated in a variety of outlandish ways to “steal” the election. Instead of promptly telling this deluded con man that he’s full of shit and needs to retire gracefully, much of the Republican Party—and most of its propaganda agents in the right-wing media—support the president’s lies. Over 100 Republican House members, and over a dozen GOP senators, are expected to contest the electoral college results when Congress convenes to certify them tomorrow, and Trump lied on Twitter just about an hour ago that Mike Pence has the power to refuse certification and overturn the election.

The thing is—and this should be no surprise to anybody who’s watched the GOP’s long pattern of accusing the Democrats of the exact same schemes they themselves hope to run—Trump’s the one who’s actually been trying to steal the election. And not just through various bogus hoaxes cooked up by partisan hacks like Mark Levin, a “constitutional” lawyer and media putz who claims anything that doesn’t benefit Republicans is unconstitutional; Trump was caught on tape, just this past weekend, openly pressuring the elected official who oversees Georgia’s elections—a Republican, of course—to “find” the almost 12000 votes he needed to win the state. It’s incontrovertible—you can listen to the whole call and read a transcript at the Washington Post. This is clearly illegal, and various Democratic officials on the national and state level have called for a criminal investigation. Republicans, of course, swear nothing improper happened, and given how the last few years have gone, we expect this entire story to be completely forgotten by, oh, the end of this sentence.

Anyway. Yes, this has all been a set up to a Seth Meyers video. The late night host returned from his holiday break last night, and immediately focused on Trump’s unhinged phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican who is now an outcast in his own party solely for preserving the integrity of Georgia’s elections. If you somehow missed the news about the call over the weekend, here’s a solid and sometimes funny overview of the whole mess. And if you actually live in Georgia, and are reading this before 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021, and haven’t voted yet, uh, what are you waiting for? We can literally make the whole damn country love us—or at least the 60% or so of it that isn’t completely in the bag for the criminal in the White House.

Check out the video below, and on behalf of the entire state of Georgia, let Paste be the first to say you’re welcome!. Or, uh, our bad; sorry about that!, depending on how today’s election goes.