Donald Trump's breathtaking attempt to overturn presidential election result in Georgia beggars belief – Steve Cardownie

“The outcome of next Tuesday’s election might well drag on for some time though, particularly as Donald Trump has not yet said that there would be a seamless transfer of power once the result is known. He has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, peddling myths that postal balloting in particular is open to widespread fraud despite evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately all the signs are that if he is beaten he will go anything but quietly.” And so it has proved.

His latest attempt to overturn the result and, in the process, trash the election process is, however, simply breath-taking. For the US President to call Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to argue the result could be changed in his favour if 11,780 pro-Trump votes were to be found is an unprecedented, anti-democratic, desperate attempt to cling on to power.

This man has no shame and peppered his hour-long conversation with the same tired, disproven (not unproven) nonsense about the number of deceased voters in Georgia and “hundreds of thousands” of unexplained ballots that appeared from nowhere and were erroneously counted.

Listening to the conversation, it was evident that even Raffensperger was becoming exasperated by Trump’s falsehoods and he calmly pointed out the evidence did not support the President’s outlandish claims. The fact Trump tried to browbeat him into committing what might be construed as election fraud beggars belief – or would be if it were anybody but Trump.

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