Trump presses Pence to ‘come through’ and overturn Electoral College results at Georgia rally

Donald Trump called on Vice President Mike Pence to somehow reject President-elect Joe Biden’s wide Electoral College victory when Congress meets this week to certify the result – his latest brazen move as he attempts to retain power.

“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us. I hope our great vice president comes through for us. He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him very much,” the outgoing president said less than 48 hours before the House and Senate will meet together to count the electoral votes and hear challenges from GOP lawmakers. He also was overt in pressuring Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has announced he will not support the electoral challenges: "And I just want Mike Lee to listen to this when I'm talking, because you know what we need his vote."  

The president, to cheers from his supporters in rural Georgia, claimed he won a “landslide” but “communist” Democrats are “playing games.” He ignored state laws that mandate mail-in ballots, which tend to lean heavily towards Democratic candidates, be counted after in-person ones when he said he had big leads in several states on Election Night that all evaporated. He also talked about “illegal votes” in Georgia, even though state officials have not found any widespread fraud during their investigations. Mr Trump’s own Justice Department has said the same.

At one point, he ticked off a list of unsupported and refuted claims about illegally “backdated” absentee ballots and voters illegally moving back to states where they once lived just to vote there against him. He talked about “cheating” and “theft,” but presented no evidence – just like in his lawsuits that have failed to have a single ballot nullified. The president appeared to pull numbers out of the air for his claims; he did not explain them, but attributed them to the US Postal Service.

“These numbers, just so you know, are more than we needed,” he claimed. “By far.”

Mr Trump, who is reportedly in a dark mood of late as he runs out of options for creating a path to another term, lashed out at senior state officials at a rally that was billed as to support two GOP Senate candidates in runoff elections on Tuesday.

He promised he would be back in the state to campaign against Governor Brian Kemp, a former ally, and its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.

“People will remember those who don’t support us,” he said as he continued trying to pressure Republican lawmakers into joining a long shot bid to reject the Electoral College result. “If we don’t do something fast, there won’t be another fair election in this country.”

Mr Trump, who claimed he was “badly screwed,” wasted little time bringing up his baseless election challenges, which have been thrown out of federal court by a number of judges – including ones nominated by the president.

“There’s no way we lost Georgia,” he said to cheers just seconds after beginning his remarks. A few minutes later, he added: “When you win in a landslide and they steal it … it’s unacceptable.” (He has lost multiple recounts, as well as the initial count, there.)

The House and Senate will meet in a joint session on Wednesday afternoon to count the electoral votes. At least six challenges are planned, with the chambers splitting up to consider each one for up to two hours, meaning the final result could come very early Thursday morning; even the objectors say they know their challenges will fail to win simple-majority votes in each body.

The president was back in the Peach State a day after a recording of a Saturday phone conversation between him and Georgia state elections officials – including Mr Raffensperger, surfaced during which he told those state leaders he wanted them to help him “find” nearly 12,000 votes needed to win the state.

But even some GOP lawmakers who typically side with the president have criticized him for appearing to press state officials to help him unfairly win a state and increase his Electoral College vote tally.

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, typically a Trump ally, broke with the president over that phone conversation, calling it “one of the things, I think, that everyone has said is that this call was not a helpful call.”

While the outgoing president appears to believe his office has the power to order state officials to take specific actions related to elections, Ms Blackburn and other Republicans see danger in his view.

“Now, one of the things you have seen us talk about with our coalition that is looking at election integrity is sending this issue back to the states. The states are the ones that are going to resolve this issue. We do not have federalized elections in this country,” she told Fox News. “We do not want federalized elections in this country.”

Read more: Georgia runoff election polls: What are the latest odds for crucial Senate race?

Read more: Can Georgia flip the Senate?

In full campaign mode, Mr Trump called Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock “radical,” saying the former is “not a senator” and opposes law enforcement. “That’s why you must vote, and get out tomorrow and vote for David Perdue,” he said. About Mr Warnock, he said the Black Baptist pastor is “the most radical and dangerous left-wing candidate to ever seek this office,” telling the mostly white crowd “he does not support your values.”

During his own rally in the state a few hours earlier, Mr Biden questioned the president’s ongoing election challenges, saying the outgoing chief executive spends most of his time “whining and complaining” rather than doing “the work” of his office.

“The president spends more time whining and complaining than doing something about the problem,” Mr Biden said at a campaign stop in Atlanta, referring to the slow Covid-19 vaccine distribution process.

“I don’t know why he still wants the job, he doesn’t want to do the work,” the incoming president said of Mr Trump’s efforts to try to create a path to a second term.

Mr Trump and Mr Biden were both in Georgia to advocate for two Democratic candidates a day before voters will decide the winners of two Senate runoff elections that will determine which party controls that chamber during his term that starts on 20 January.

The duo’s toe-dipping in the Peach State shows just what’s at stake. The Senate’s majority leader has the power to control what comes to the floor, meaning a Democratic sweep would allow New York’s Chuck Schumer to move Biden administration-backed bills and the incoming president’s judicial nominations.

Both would likely be blocked, with a very few exceptions, by a Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican did just that during his time as the Senate leader while Democrat Barack Obama was president.

Polls taken just before and after Christmas suggest both Senate runoffs are dead heats. Some gave the two GOP candidates slight leads, and others put the Democrats ahead. But each margin fell well within each survey’s error range, meaning the races look neck-and-neck weeks after the longtime red state was won by Mr Biden.

Though he stressed the importance as the Senate as the “last line of defense” to stop a Biden-Democratic agenda, his main message was of unproven voter fraud.

“We run all over the world telling people how to run their elections,” he said to boos. "We don't even know how to run ours."