How Trump tried to spin his election fraud alternate reality into a pitch for the Georgia GOP senators

“They can only win if they cheat,” Trump said of Democrats, broadly. “They can’t win this state unless they cheat, and they cheat better than anybody.”

That was supposed to be the part of his rally dedicated to telling Georgia voters that they should vote in the January runoffs that will determine which party controls the Senate. Yet it sounded like Trump thought the opposite.

Trump was more interested Saturday in litigating his own election loss than promoting the strength of the Republican Party after he’s gone.

The outgoing president dedicated most of the 90-minute-plus rally to falsely saying he would have won major states such as Georgia were it not for massive fraud, an argument courts across the country have soundly rejected. At times, he sounded like someone accepting his loss but needing to offer up an explanation that doesn’t involve actually losing. He interrupted his own rally several times to air selectively edited videos from pro-Trump media outlets about fraud.

The significantly maskless, in-person crowd was right there with him, chanting “Stop the steal!” and “Four more years!”

Occasionally, Trump would refocus on Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. He called them to the stage, where his argument for himself detracted from one of their most potent political arguments for reelection, that they’d be a firewall against a Democratic presidency.

“If we don’t vote, we will lose the country,” Loeffler said, hinting as much as she dared at the reality that Joe Biden will be the next president.

“We’re going to fight to make sure we win those seats and make sure you get a fair, square deal in the state of Georgia” Perdue said, trying to cast his own reelection runoff as somehow a do-over for Trump. Loeffler and Perdue are among the 88 percent of congressional Republicans, according to a new Washington Post survey of those lawmakers, who will not say that Biden won the election.

Still, it’s difficult to gauge how much damage Trump is actually doing to Republicans in these Georgia Senate races. He’s making their life much harder by not conceding and by taking his supporters along with him in his alternate reality, where he won.

Trump probably cleared the low bar party leaders had set for him Saturday, that he wouldn’t make things worse than he already has.

On Twitter in recent days, Trump has come across as much more nihilistic about his party than he was onstage. He’s been sharing tweets from supporters that ask why they should even bother to support Republican politicians like top figures in Georgia.

Hours before his rally, Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to pressure him to help him overturn election results, reported The Washington Post. Trump’s Saturday night mention of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who certified Biden’s win after two recounts and is speaking more openly about the dangerous environment Trump is encouraging with his fraud claims, got boos from the crowd. But he didn’t dig into those feuds at his rally, only giving them glancing attention.

And yet maybe Trump’s alternate reality can coexist alongside electoral reality, at least for this election. The Post’s David Weigel reports he’s talked to Trump voters in Georgia who say they think the election was rigged and that they still plan to vote in January.

For those who want to think that way, Trump offered up a rationale Saturday: Vote to get back at Democrats for, he falsely claims, stealing his election win.

“The answer to the Democratic fraud is not to stay at home,” he said. “That’s what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer want you to do, to stay at home. I don’t want to use the word revenge — but it is a certain revenge to the Democrats. You can show up and vote in record numbers.”

Vote in an election to get back at Democrats for rigging an election. That was among the key arguments Trump made in the name of Georgia Republicans.