January 4, 2021

Trump Tried Calling 18 Times Before Georgia’s Secretary of State Finally Picked Up

The brute-force robocall campaign finally succeeded—and delivered his newest scandal.

Alyssa Pointer/ZUMA

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In the two months after losing his reelection bid, President Trump has dedicated nearly every waking hour into building something of a coup, pulling together dozens of failed lawsuits, conspiracy-packed tweets, and strange press conferences in a desperate attempt to stay in power. Now, thanks to a taped phone call first obtained by the Washington Post on Sunday, we saw the latest iteration of the maybe-coup feature Trump oscillating between sweet-talking and vaguely threatening Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” nonexistent votes and overturn the election results in his favor.

The conversation, which you can also listen to here, lasted about an hour. That’s an awfully long time for a demand ultimately based on…nothing! But perhaps the president simply had much to get off his chest. After all, it had reportedly taken 18 attempts to finally getting Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to pick up the phone.

It’s a small detail against the corruption rampant in the already-infamous phone call. But there’s something astonishing about Trump’s brute force phone campaign, failure to take a hint, and knowledge now that his 19th attempt has brought forth his latest scandal. Before you go on fashioning Raffensperger into a resistance hero though, take note that the staunch Georgia Republican pretty much confirmed this morning that despite everything that has ensued since November, he wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Trump again.

“I support Republicans,” he told Good Morning America, “I always have, I always will.” Sounds just about right to me.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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