The many Trump contradictions that could hurt the GOP in Georgia

Here are all the contradictory things he’s been saying about voting in Georgia and could share Saturday, which Republicans fear will depress turnout and cost them the elections.

If Trump won, then logically there’s less urgency to have a Republican-controlled Senate (not that Republicans don’t want one!). Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R) and David Perdue (R) won’t be the last bricks in a firewall to a Democratic White House and a Democratic House of Representatives.

Being unable to acknowledge Trump’s loss eliminates Senate Republicans’ most potent political argument for getting their voters out: Come vote against Democratic control of Washington. Americans tend to prefer divided government, and that’s almost certainly true in a purple-ish, still-conservative state such as Georgia. Republicans had hoped this could motivate Trump supporters as well as Republicans in the suburbs who voted for Democrat Joe Biden.

They can’t do that publicly. In private, though, they’ve been more open about the truth. This week, Perdue implicitly acknowledged Biden will be the next president in a video call with a Republican group obtained by The Washington Post.

Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged by Democrats have crumbled in court, but polls suggest his supporters are receptive to them, to the point that it’s all some of them want to talk about in Georgia.

Perdue ran into this at a recent campaign event south of Atlanta, reports The Post’s Cleve Wootson Jr. As he was trying to give his campaign pitch, a man interrupted: “What are you doing to help Donald Trump and this fraud case?” the man screamed, as one woman said “Amen” and the crowd applauded. “What are you doing to stop what’s been going on here and this election fraud?”

A prominent conservative Georgia lawyer, Lin Wood, is leading a charge for Republicans to actually boycott the January runoffs. He held a rally this week where he paradoxically encouraged attendees not to vote unless the state’s Republican leaders started fighting to overturn Biden’s win.

Trump has occasionally acknowledged he was sabotaging his own party with this. So to the extent Trump cares about the Republican Party’s health, he’s tried to change course by saying something equally contradictory, such as: The election was rigged, but we still have to vote.

The political risk for Republicans in thinking voting isn’t worthwhile is real. Before the November elections, Trump spent months falsely railing against the security of voting by mail, only to halfheartedly encourage his supporters in some key states such as Florida to vote by mail anyway. Nationally, people didn’t listen to him, as Trump supporters voted widely in person.

It’s tough to measure how widespread sentiments are in Georgia not to vote. Maybe this will all quiet down in the month between now and the runoff, says The Fix’s Aaron Blake. But to win, Republicans need their base to turn out, and right now the messaging from the top is exactly the opposite.

Trump has trashed every way of voting in Georgia. He’s joined in a baseless conspiracy theory that voting machines counted votes wrong. And he’s accused election officials of being too lenient when they matched up signatures on the outside of voters’ ballots with what’s on state record to authenticate those ballots. The message to Georgia Republican voters is that no way of voting is safe.

“I think you’re dealing [with] a very fraudulent system,” Trump told reporters on Thanksgiving, speaking about Georgia. “I’m very worried about that. They are tremendous people. Kelly Loeffler, David Perdue are tremendous people. They should be in the United States Senate, they’re desperately needed. But I told them today, I said, ‘Listen, you have a fraudulent system.’ ”

Trump ignited an unhelpful civil war among Georgia Republicans by turning against Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger for upholding election results that show Trump lost the state.

Shortly after, Trump turned on Georgia’s governor and a loyal ally, Brian Kemp (R), for not helping him overturn the results. “He’s done nothing,” Trump said angrily.

The president is starting to sound nihilistic about supporting Republican politicians who indeed supported him, but who won’t help him undermine democracy. Why even bother with the Republican Party, he says, by sharing tweets such as these two recently about the Republican Senate and governors such as Kemp and Arizona’s Doug Ducey (R) who certified results in their states.