McConnell shrugs as Georgia Republicans excoriate Trump and Washington over bogus election claims

As Republicans in Georgia pleaded Tuesday with President Trump to stop making baseless claims about the election being stolen from him, GOP leaders in Washington remained silent about the avalanche of lies, conspiracy theories and open threats of violence made by the president’s allies.

“The future will take care of itself,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when asked why he had not condemned Trump’s unproven claims. “The Electoral College is going to meet December 14th, there will be an inauguration January 20th.”

But in Georgia, an official in the office of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger delivered a passionate rebuke of Trump and those in the GOP who have stood by and said nothing as the president has misled millions of Americans about the election, sparking death threats against Raffensperger and his family, as well as against rank-and-file election workers.

“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said. “Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”

Elections, Sterling said, are “the backbone of democracy, and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this.” His voice rising and cracking with emotion, he added: “I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now over this. And every American, every Georgian, Republican and Democrat alike, should have that same level of anger.”

In fact, Trump labeled Raffensperger an “enemy of the people” in remarks on Thanksgiving Day simply because he has not bowed to Trump’s demands that the Georgia election results be thrown out so that he can be declared the winner in the state. That phrase, “enemy of the people,” has a long and bloody history, having been used by dictators and totalitarian regimes in Russia and China to dehumanize groups of people who were then slaughtered.

Sterling referenced comments by Joe diGenova, an attorney working on the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the election results, who said that the fired federal cybersecurity official who concluded that the election had been free of foreign interference should be “drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot.”

“Somebody’s going to get hurt, somebody’s going to get shot, somebody’s going to get killed. And it’s not right,” Sterling said.

But with a few exceptions, most Republican lawmakers in Congress have kept their heads down out of deference to Trump. McConnell, who usually shields most Republican senators from tough comments and votes, has led the way on avoiding the problem of speaking out against the president’s wild claims by simply stating that the process is moving forward.

Senate majority leader since 2015, McConnell could lose his position of power if Republicans lose the two special runoff elections in Georgia to be held on Jan. 5. If Democrats win both races, they will control the Senate.

To avoid that outcome, McConnell needs Trump to try to turn out his supporters in Georgia. The president is scheduled to campaign in the state on Saturday on behalf of Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, which helps explain why McConnell has not rebuked the president for his incendiary post-election rhetoric and unfounded claims.