At 9:46 a.m. today, President Donald Trump – his Twitter rights restored – put out the following message, which ran rather contrary to his scripted concession statement of Thursday:
The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
Trump’s words prompted an immediate response from Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. While never a Trump fan, he remains an important voice among white evangelicals in America. From Moore:
Mr. President, people are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. There are 12 dangerous days for our country left. Could you please step down and let our country heal?
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Also this morning: President Trump tweeted the following:
To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
All things considered, this is probably for the best.
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Already posted: Democrats in Georgia’s congressional delegation say President Donald Trump’s role in inciting the violence at the U.S. Capitol warrants his immediate removal from office:
U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath was among the first lawmakers on Wednesday to urge the vice president and Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment as a measure to force the president to step aside instead of allowing him to finish out his term through Jan. 20.
U.S. Reps. Sanford Bishop, Hank Johnson and Nikema Williams also said Thursday that they support Trump's ouster via the 25th Amendment. Their fellow Democrat, U.S. Rep. David Scott, agreed that Trump should be removed from office but did not specify how….
Newly installed U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux of Suwanee was the only member of the Democratic delegation to support impeaching Trump for a second time.
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Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have resigned, citing the Trump-inspired assault on the U.S. Capitol.
It is fair to wonder whether this was out of pure outrage, or a desire to avoid becoming wrapped up in a debate over whether the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove the president – a measure that would require Cabinet participation.
But Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has not and will not resign. Nor does he expect Trump to leave office early. Our AJC colleagues Tamar Hallerman and Chris Quinn today have a look at Perdue that includes this:
After four years of White House tumult, few cabinet secretaries and top aides who joined the Trump administration in 2017 remain in their jobs.
Perdue, Trump's first and only agriculture secretary, is a notable exception. The former two-term Georgia governor has kept his cabinet post until the end, maintaining a close relationship with his mercurial boss while Trump cycled through dozens of other advisers.
Quinn caught up with Sonny Perdue, cousin to defeated U.S. senator David Perdue, in Claxton, Ga., on Thursday. A few answers Perdue gave him:
-- About the invasion of the U.S. Capitol: “That is not what I know of as America.”
-- On Trump’s culpability: “Believe it or not I am not very much of a Tweeter or a Tweeter reader. So if you want to tell me some quotes, I can tell you that. But … as you know, I’ve been a supporter of the president based on his policies, but I think inciting people to interfere in a peaceful transition of power was not the right thing to do and I am disappointed in that.”
-- When told of Trump urging his supporters at a pre-march rally to “fight like hell,” and his attorney Rudy Giuliani’s call to settle the election via “trial by combat”: “That is not the way were resolve things in America. That is not who Americans are. I think it is very sad if we have leaders advising or counseling or inciting people to do those things. If what you told me is correct, it sounds like that was encouraging those types of actions.”
-- Did the president do that? “Again, I told you, I haven’t read the Tweets and don’t know that. I think again, if what you told me about Giuliani is correct, that sounds like that was encouraging those types of actions.”
-- On whether he has heard about or been part of any discussion about invoking the 25th Amendment: “I have not. I have had no contact with other cabinet members in that area. Nor do I expect to have any. I know some people have issued their resignations, which again is their prerogative.
“I think all of us are saddened by the events yesterday. Each one of us would have preferred that that has not happened. It did and we are going to go forward as America. We have a new president and we are going to bind together to as Georgians as Americans and continue to make this country great.”
-- Lastly, Quinn noted that Sonny Perdue was crucial to President Trump’s decision to endorse Brian Kemp for governor in 2018. He asked Perdue if he would support Kemp’s re-election in 2022: “That’s a hypothetical question there. A lot of things will happen in (the next) two years. While you say I supported Governor Kemp, I didn’t make any sort of announcement in that way. I did speak to president trump about him. He certainly supported him. I am a big believer in the ballot box.. Georgians are going to choose a governor that will work for them and they’ll choose the best governor going forward. I don’t at this point plan to be involved in that with any recommendation or anything like that.”
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Today’s most provocative read comes from Charles Blow, the New York Times columnist, explaining why he has left the Big Apple and moved to Atlanta:
Simply put, my proposition was this: that Black people reverse the Great Migration — the mass migration of millions of African-Americans largely from the rural South to cities primarily in the North and West that spanned from 1916 to 1970. That they return to the states where they had been at or near the majority after the Civil War, and to the states where Black people currently constitute large percentages of the population. In effect, Black people could colonize the states they would have controlled if they had not fled them.
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GOP strategist Karl Rove is laying the GOP loss of the U.S. Senate at the feet of President Donald Trump. Rove writes this about the victories of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in Georgia:
In Clayton County in November, Democrat Jon Ossoff had a 71-point lead; on Tuesday it was 77. In DeKalb, Mr. Ossoff led by 64 points in November; on Tuesday, he led by 67. In Gwinnett, he led by 16 points in November and 20 on Tuesday. In Fulton, the state's most populous county, Mr. Ossoff's November lead was 41.6 points; on Tuesday, 43 points. These were enough to erase Mr. Perdue's 88,000-vote lead in November and propel Mr. Ossoff to a narrow victory.
Mr. Trump tried to turnout his rural Georgia supporters, but the results were uneven and insufficient. Take the 14th Congressional District, which the president visited Monday. In November, it had roughly 328,000 voters turn out; on Tuesday, only 282,000 voted there, though there are several thousand ballots still outstanding.
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On a similar note, the New York Times has these data points from Tuesday’s election in Georgia:
[T]he data available so far shows that Democrats benefited from a more favorable electorate, as a greater proportion of Democrats and especially Black voters returned to the polls than Republicans and white voters without college degrees.
…Over all, turnout reached a remarkable 92 percent of 2020 general election levels in precincts carried by Mr. Biden in November, compared with 88 percent of general election levels in the precincts carried by Mr. Trump.
…Over all, turnout reached 93 percent of 2020 levels in precincts where Black voters represented at least 80 percent of the electorate. In comparison, turnout fell to 87 percent of general election levels in white working-class precincts.
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Not long ago, there was some hand-wringing among Democrats about U.S. Rep. John Lewis: He hadn’t identified any known proteges, leaving his seat -- and, more generally, the broader state party -- with a known heir.
Fast forward six months after his death. His dear friend, Nikema Williams, now represents his district in the U.S. House. His former intern and protege, Jon Ossoff, just won a U.S. Senate seat. And so did Raphael Warnock, his pastor.
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A monumental geographic shift. Even as Republicans are relying more heavily on rural support, Democrats are increasingly dependent on metro Atlanta votes. The Senate runoff victories helped accelerate that change. As one of your Insiders noted:
Since World War II, only once before — and then only for a brief period in the late 1990s — have both U.S. senators had metro Atlanta roots. Max Cleland, a Democrat, hailed from Lithonia. Republican Paul Coverdell lived in north Fulton County.
A state lawmaker sent this text that homed in further on the senators’ ITP foundations. “Seems remarkable that both Senators from Georgia live south of I-20 in Atlanta. Amazing.”
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As one of your Insiders reported earlier: An Atlanta attorney and former Republican candidate who took part in the explosive call between President Donald Trump and Secretary Brad Raffensperger resigned from his law firm after his involvement in the conversation was revealed.
Zoe Shore of Fox Rothschild said late Thursday that Alex Kaufman is leaving the global law firm to “pursue new professional opportunities.” He and his father Robert, who is also leaving the firm, joined Fox Rothschild in 2019.
