Monday, January 4, 2021

Perdue says Trump call with Georgia secretary of state won’t affect runoff

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/perdue-says-trump-call-with-georgia-secretary-of-state-wont-affect-runoff

Perdue, who was a guest on "The Next Revolution," said he was "shocked" that a member of the Republican Party would tape a sitting president and leak it to the media.

"It’s disgusting in my view," he said. "But what the president said is exactly what he’s been saying the last few months."

Perdue said that Trump has been consistent with his claims that there were voter irregularities and said Trump just "wants some answers."

Trump's deranged phone call with Georgia secretary of state reveals a desperate man

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/03/opinions/donald-trump-phone-call-georgia-election-dantonio/index.html

 The latest turn in loser Donald Trump's campaign to overturn the 2020 election reveals a desperate man willing to say almost anything to get what he wants but instead getting rebuffed by officials who are made of finer stuff. As he pressures them to abandon their duty and come over to the dark side of politics, their refusal makes Trump's corrupt methods all the more obvious.

To their shame, nearly a dozen Republican senators and senators-elect and more than 100 House Republicans say they are going to challenge the vote certification. This will not alter the result but it will, like that call Trump made to Georgia, affirm what we already knew: Trump is a corrupting force who will reveal a politician's character.

Concern as virus rages in Israel's yeshivas after Hanukkah

 https://www.ynetnews.com/article/SJk4FJkCP

Health Ministry memo seen by Ynet says religious seminaries have lost control over outbreak, no longer isolate infected students and allow many to learn with rest of student body; father of one student says no one in authority willing to speak to parents

Trump's Republicans have dumped Lincoln – they're the Confederacy now

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/04/trump-republicans-electoral-college-sedition-secession-lincoln-confederacy

On Wednesday, the Republicans’ transition to the party of the Confederacy will be complete. A day after Georgia’s runoff elections, at least a dozen lawmakers in the Senate and more than half of the party’s House membership will seek to overturn the results of the 2020 election and disenfranchise the majority of US voters. A coup attempt in all but name, this is how democracy dies.

President Trump, in Recorded Call, Urged Georgia Election Official to ‘Find’ Votes to Overturn Biden’s Win

 https://time.com/5926038/trump-georgia-recorded-call/

 President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election, repeatedly citing disproven claims of fraud and raising the prospect of “criminal offense” if officials did not change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation.

The phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday was the latest step in an unprecedented effort by a sitting president to pressure a state official to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election that he lost. The president, who has refused to accept his loss to Democratic president-elect Biden, repeatedly argued that Raffensperger could change the certified results.

Breaking Trump News 1/3/2021 9PM | MSNBC News Today Jan 3, 2021

Trump tells Georgia election official to 'find' votes to overturn Biden win

 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55524838

US President Donald Trump has been recorded telling Georgia's top election official to "find" enough votes to overturn the election result.

"I just want to find 11,780 votes," Mr Trump told Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a recording released by the Washington Post.

Mr Raffensperger is heard replying that Georgia's results were correct.

Joe Biden won Georgia alongside other swing states, winning 306 electoral college votes to Mr Trump's 232.

Since the 3 November vote, Mr Trump has been alleging widespread electoral fraud without providing any evidence.

COVID haredi unit head: Enforcement ineffective

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/covid-haredi-unit-head-enforcement-ineffective-654167

 The head of the Health Ministry’s coronavirus department for the ultra-Orthodox community, Roni Numa, said on Sunday that there was a lack of coronavirus enforcement in the sector because of its political power and the upcoming elections.

Numa denied, however, that the COVID-19 infection rate in the yeshiva system is out of control, although he said that several factors had led to an increase in the number of students being infected.

Former US defense secretaries: The time for questioning the election results has passed

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/294222

The 10 living former US defense secretaries on Sunday published an opinion piece in The Washington Post in which they said that the time to question election results has passed, adding there is no role for the military in changing them.

The authors of the op-ed include Trump’s two former defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, as well as each surviving, Senate-confirmed Pentagon chief dating back to former vice president Dick Cheney, who was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

“Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted,” the former defense secretaries wrote. “The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.”

A quarter of all new virus cases diagnosed are among ultra-Orthodox

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-quarter-of-all-new-virus-cases-diagnosed-are-among-ultra-orthodox/

The Health Ministry official overseeing action to counter the coronavirus among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox population revealed Sunday that the community has recently accounted for over a quarter of all the new cases diagnosed, even though it makes up little more than a 10th of the total population.

During a video press briefing, Roni Numa said that enforcement of lockdown restrictions and quarantine for virus carriers among the ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim, was not good enough, in part for political reasons.

‘Find 11,780 votes,’ Trump recorded pressing Georgia official to overturn vote

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/find-11780-votes-trump-recorded-pressing-georgia-official-to-overturn-vote/

US president heard warning state election chief and lawyer that they could be criminally liable if they fail to find that thousands of ballots were destroyed, despite no evidence

Trump urged Georgia election official to 'find' votes in phone call, insisting he won: report

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-insists-he-won-georgia-in-call-with-state-election-official-urges-him-to-find-votes-report

President Trump insisted that he won the state of Georgia in the 2020 presidential race during a phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the weekend, reportedly urging him to "find" enough votes to reverse the state’s results.

"He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more," Trump tweeted. "He has no clue!"

Raffensperger replied Sunday morning stating: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out."

Breaking Trump News 1/3/2021 3PM | MSNBC News Today Jan 3, 2021

Trump's bid to steal Georgia exposes GOP election ruse

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/04/politics/donald-trump-georgia-election-joe-biden-congress/index.html

 Astonishing new evidence of a desperate President Donald Trump caught on tape trying to steal the election exposes the depth of his corruption and makes his Republican Capitol Hill allies complicit in his bid to thwart the will of voters.

In a fresh abuse of power, Trump tried to bully a top Georgia GOP official into finding votes to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's win in the state. The staggering telephone call, audio of which was obtained by CNN and first reported by the Washington Post, amounted to the most serious threat yet posed by his authoritarian instincts to American democracy.