The Conversation (0)
Greg Evans
Dec 30, 2020
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump has just days left in the White House but he is still finding time to embarrass himself and confuse everyone else in equal measure.
As part of his ongoing dispute about the US election results (yes, he’s still not letting this one go) he has hit out at official in the state of Georgia for not seriously investigating his baseless claims of voter fraud.
Trump has specifically hit out at the governor Brian Kemp, who he called a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘stupid’ in a outburst on Twitter on Wednesday. The president also added “Nobody can be this stupid. Just allow us to find the crime, and turn the state Republican.”
Trump followed this up by attacking Georgia’s Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. In his rant, the president made up a conspiracy theory that Raffensperger’s brother ‘works for China’ and that 'definitely don't want 'Trump''. This ambiguous claim, made even more bizarre by Trump putting his own name in quotation marks is not only not true, Raffensperger doesn’t even have a brother .
According to Newsweek, this conspiracy theory about Raffensperger having links to China began to circulate on social media in recent days. The theory is claiming that a man named Ron Raffensperger, who is a CTO of a Huawei subsidiary in China is related to the Georgia official which he isn’t. Not only are they not related they don’t even look alike as GPB News reporter Stephen Fowler when he debunked the theory on 23rd December.
Given that Trump is touting this ludicrous claim after it has already been debunked has seen the president widely ridiculed and scorned for his comments about Raffensperger on social media.
Despite being a conservative Republican, Raffensperger has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election and pour doubt on the results, especially in Georgia. When previously dismissing the president’s claims he said “There are those who are exploiting the emotions of many Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half-truths, misinformation, and frankly, they're misleading the president as well, apparently.”