Georgia’s lieutenant governor appeared on CNN to bash President Donald J. Trump Thursday, and urge the GOP to move away from him.
“The quicker we can move past Donald Trump – President Donald Trump – and move on as a nation and as a party … you know, I’m encouraged that the movement’s starting to build, and the GOP 2.0 that’s – you know, we should never, as a party, let a person be more powerful than our party,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) told Poppy Harlow on “CNN Newsroom.”
Duncan bemoaned a phone call made by Trump to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), wherein the president questioned the results of the 2020 election, and expressed disbelief at the idea that he lost the election in Georgia by just fewer than 12,000 votes. Duncan said he was “disgusted” when he heard the phone call.
“Well, I can assure you, if we don’t move away from the party of Trump we will continue to lose and we will not be in the White House in 2024,” Duncan continued.
But there is no evidence that Republican voters want to “move away from the party of Trump.” In fact, just the opposite is true. According to recent polling, a vast majority of Republicans still support President Trump, and are unwilling to support a GOP that seeks to move back towards business as usual in Washington, D.C. after Trump leaves office.
Trump also received more than 11 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, suggesting that his popularity increased among the voting population.
While elected GOP officials rush to sweep 2020 under the rug, it appears that voters are simply not ready to do the same.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s election results and the auditing process that followed remain in question after the nationwide implementation of vote-by-mail.
In one example, a vast majority of a sampling of 89,000 absentee ballots were not delivered for counting in accordance with Georgia’s own State Election Board rules.
The Georgia Star News reported:
An analysis of ballot transfer forms from Cobb County reveals that 78 percent of the more than 89,000 absentee ballots from drop box locations, required to be “immediately transported” to the county registrar according to Emergency Rule of the State Election Board for Absentee Voting, took more than one hour to be transferred to election officials.
State Election Board Emergency Rule 183-1-14-0.8-.14 relative to securing absentee ballot drop boxes was adopted by the State Election Board at the July 1, 2020, meeting.
“The ballots from the drop box shall be immediately transported to the county registrar and processed and stored in the same manner as absentee ballots returned by mail are processed and stored,” the rule mandates.
Another persistent trend in the state is a lack of chain-of-custody documents for nearly half a million absentee ballots submitted by drop box.
After begrudgingly conducting an audit of absentee ballots in one county, the Georgia Secretary of State refused to provide transparency into the audit process, as documented by The Star News.
Last week, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) urged the state to unify, and not dwell on 2020 in his State of the State speech. His call for unity was roundly rejected by Georgia’s top House Democrat.
WATCH:
“We should never, as a party, let a person be more powerful than our party,” Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan tells @PoppyHarlowCNN.
“If we don't move away from the party of Trump, we will continue to lose and we will not be in the White House in 2024.” pic.twitter.com/F2ZNZBmExc— CNN News Central (@NewsCentralCNN) January 15, 2021
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Georgia Capitol” by Autiger. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Never Trumper will lose on his next run!
hey dude. keep your remarks in georgia. most southern states are a little po at you