On November 3, 2020, American voters elected Democrat Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States, temporarily inoculating us from the awful Trump Virus that had ravaged the country the four previous years, culminating with his violent attack on the country just two months later.
Tragically, we learned but four years after that election, that America had still not developed a vaccine against bigotry, racism and misogyny; our corporate media had failed yet again— and in some cases refused — to counter Big Lies with the truth, and proved pathetically incapable of recognizing the greatest threat to this nation since the Civil War; our feckless Department of Justice catastrophically failed to do the one thing it simply has to: protect the American people from further attacks; and Republicans showed just how little they value the democracy hundreds of thousands have died on the battlefield to protect.
Make no mistake about it, as I type this today, Donald Trump, the most notorious traitor the United States has ever seen, has escalated his attack on America, and is doing everything he can to finish us off. By continuing to use his office to attack past elections like the consequential one in Georgia five-plus years ago, he is telling us he does not intend to honor any future elections in this country.
With few exceptions, our corporate media is still treating all this as just another cloudy day, and a willfully ignorant American public has been worn to a nub by the normalization of a soulless authoritarian regime in Washington.
With that as a backdrop, and Trump readying for another primetime attack on Georgia tonight, I want to take you back to that election in that historic state in 2021, and how one of America’s greatest days spiraled into one of its worst in a span of just 12 horrifying hours.
Here is the indisputable telling of that hopeful and terrible time in America. I type it with hope that truth is still an inoculant to the most dishonest White House in our nation’s history.
Following Biden’s 7-million vote victory in the 2020 presidential election, there were still political mountains to move. The sickly Trump had refused to concede, and was on his way to losing 43 legal challenges to our election results.
Still in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, and the constant wailing coming from the 74-year-old baby in our White House, our tired eyes turned to Georgia where control of the United States Senate was yet to be decided ...
It was late-November, 2020, and Georgia Democratic Senatorial candidate Jon Ossoff had just joined a clutch of us across the country on a conference call as he drove home for a late dinner with his wife following a long day of campaign appearances all across the Peach State.
Ossoff was still alive to become the state’s first Jewish senator, and his buddy, Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, was still in the running to become the state’s first black senator because decidedly racist election rules that were built by the suffocating hands of white, racist Republicans in Georgia 60 years earlier were finally in the process of collapsing all over their very own candidates.
The Georgia Republican incumbent senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, were in a strong position to be re-elected in the November 3rd popular vote, but because of other GOP candidates in the field were unable to clear the necessary 50-percent threshold that was needed to win outright in the state, thus setting up runoff elections on January 5, 2021, against the rising Warnock and Ossoff.
The 50-percent rule that had been put in place in 1962 by Republicans to prevent what they called “Negro bloc voting” and blacks from ascending to political office by galvanizing their support behind one candidate, was now blocking the lily-white Perdue and Loeffler from keeping their jobs in the Senate pending January’s runoff results.
If both Ossoff and Warnock, who were now tabbed as slight underdogs, somehow won on January 5, the United States Senate would be tied 50-50, and the nation’s first female Vice President and person of color, Kamala Harris, would have the deciding vote in the case of ties.
And if you aren’t tasting the delicious irony of all that, then I have done a rotten job of cooking and presenting the meal ...
Now Ossoff was on the phone with us delivering crisp talking points, setting the scene on the ground in Georgia, and taking questions. I remember being struck by how smart and engaging the guy was, despite his grueling schedule.
A few of the people on the call outside the realm of journalism and on the inside of political circles from afar wanted it known they were ready and willing to do whatever was necessary, including traveling to Georgia during the pandemic, to help him and Warnock prevail.
That’s when he thanked everybody and said he had but one request, which he proceeded to deliver like an order:
“I know y’ll want to come on down here and help us get out the vote,” he said with a buttery southern accent, “But we would appreciate it if y’ll would just stay right where you are, be safe, and let us Georgians handle things on the ground here. This is our fight, and we got this. Thanks.”
This is our fight, and we got this …
Of course, Loeffler and Perdue could give no such orders to their supporters because their boss, Trump, was throwing a series of high-test tantrums and threatening anybody he could find in the state who had given Biden their stamp of approval.
Anybody who heard it will never forget his call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on January 2, 2021:
“There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated. So look. All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
Trump had just been caught on tape trying to rig an election. We know now he had been doing similar things in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
While Loeffler and Perdue were trying to make their case for reelection, the wild man was intent on flying in and landing dead in the middle of their rallies like an orange stink bomb and polluting the air whenever he damn well wanted. He made it clear he didn’t much care about them, or who won the Senate. He just needed everybody to understand that he was the victim here, and was looking to get even with America.
Understand this because it is key: NOBODY hurt the Georgia Republican candidates more than he did with his repulsive behavior, and Georgia voters, now galvanized by the horror they were watching, were not going to let him get away with it.
Still, he continued threatening the lives of poll workers in the state and shaking down Republican and Democratic election officials like the two-bit thug he most certainly has always been.
That also meant lining up fake electors to hand to his mealy-mouthed vice president, Mike Pence, on January 6, to make sure our peaceful transfer of power was as crooked and violent as he was.
That also meant flying in his sweaty orcs like Rudolph Giuliani, black hair dye dripping down his gross face, and lopsided lawyer Sidney Powell to poison the air and smash the integrity of Georgia’s airtight voting system by spouting one disgusting lie and empty threat after another.
Trump and his thugs quickly assembled a crime syndicate in the state with scotch tape, rusty nails and endless white privilege, all while a just-elected, Black district attorney in Fulton County named Fani Willis sat back and quietly took notes ...
Ossoff and Warnock stayed focused, on message, and slowly began peeling away voters from their opponents, who were in the tank for Trump, and slowly drowning because of it.
Black voters in the state galvanized and heroically braved long lines and a virus that had killed more than one million Americans to make sure they protected America.
By the time the runoff finally got underway the morning of January 5, there was something special in the air. Early voting had been strong, turnout was brisk, and Georgia was on the cusp of once again making history.
As the numbers came pouring in that evening it became apparent that the engaging Warnock was going to handily beat Loeffler. Ossoff was in a much tighter battle, but as the clock ticked toward midnight, he began closing like a freight train on Perdue. When hours later, he finally caught and passed him, freedom rang.
The people of Georgia had pulled off one of the greatest feats in U.S. political history by helping send the presidency to Biden, the Senate to the Democrats, and Democracy an injection of much-needed life.
Champagne corks popped all across America.
That celebration lasted only 12 hours.
On the afternoon of January 6, 2021, the day after Georgia was heard from again, our United States Capitol began to get ripped to shreds by an army of Trump’s Deplorables. Inside the Capitol, Republicans’ worst, among them, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, indicated they weren’t much interested in fighting fair or certifying Biden’s win until they, too, were forced to run for their lives from Trump’s mob.
Pence was threatened with hanging.
Our peaceful transfer of power, a hallmark of America, was now being wrecked by the most anti-American president in U.S. history.
After failing to steal the election, the son of a had actually attacked us.
While law enforcement officers were beaten with flag poles and crushed by the stampede, and lowlifes like Hawley and Cruz hid, Trump sat back in the White House, and for hours and hours did nothing but root for the attack’s success.
We know how that day ended, and for more than four years we waited for justice to begin.
It unforgivably never happened.
What did happen that day was Trump stumbled onto the White House lawn and grudgingly called his attack off, but not before telling the enemies of the United States who had attacked us that he loved them.
He told them that he loved them ...
Ultimately he was charged with nearly 100 felony counts in four different cases for his never-ending attacks on decency and our democracy. We sadly know now that a legal system that can produce people like Clarence Thomas, Samual Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh, and gutless prosecutors like Merrick Garland failed us.
Now ask yourself what would have happened if those January 6 attackers had been Black …
So now the man who violently attacked us that day is just itching to finish us off for good, and has reportedly picked Georgia to escalate his war on our vote.
There is no place in America that has giving me more pride than Georgia during the course of my long lifetime. Georgia’s sons and daughters have been beaten but proceeded unbowed to make sure that liberty rings across America.
Georgia, the state that has given us John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr. … Jimmy Carter and Stacey Abrams … Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy, Jr. … Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff …
Georgia, which carried on through a killer pandemic and threats from the President of the United States to make sure every, damn vote got counted is once again under attack.
This time Ossoff, Warnock and the brave people of Georgia could use our help, and we should do whatever we can to give it to them.
There’s never been a better time or place for the most dangerous man in the world to finally ride to his epic fall.
Georgia must be on all our minds right now.
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.
