President Donald Trump told thousands of supporters gathered at a Dec. 5 rally in Georgia that the election was stolen from them, pointing to "overwhelming" evidence of fraud in the results of the presidential election.
“If I lost, I’d be a very gracious loser,” Trump told a large crowd gathered at Valdosta Regional Airport. “But you can’t ever accept when they steal and rig and rob.”
Trump attended the rally in support of the two incumbent Georgia senators—businesswoman Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and former business executive Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).
“We’re here to ensure that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler win the most important congressional runoff in congressional history, I really believe that,” Trump said.
The two face runoff races against Democrat challengers filmmaker Jon Ossoff and pastor Raphael Warnock on Jan. 5, 2021. Ossoff and Warnock held a virtual rally with former President Barack Obama on Dec. 4.
Trump said the challengers were two of the “most extreme far-left liberal Senate candidates in the history of our country.”
“The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, control every single taxpayer dollar. Very simply, you will decide whether your children grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country,” the president said. “And I will tell you this, socialist is just the beginning for these people. These people want to go further than socialism, they want to go into a communistic form of government, and I have no doubt about it.”
He then went on to list what he said were “irrefutable” facts presented in multiple legal cases now heading to the Supreme Court. He said that just some of the available evidence already reveals that enough illegal votes were counted in the presidential race to bring into question the outcome.
“For mail-in ballots—drastically less than the historic norm—in Georgia, 0.5 percent of the mail-in ballots were rejected in 2020 compared to 5.77 percent [in 2016],” Trump said. “That's a difference of 11 times more.
"It's hundreds of thousands of votes. ... This issue alone is enough to change the election results in many states.”
Trump also said the congressional results tell a very different story from the popular vote for the presidential election. Republicans didn’t lose a single seat in the House, Trump said, and will potentially hold its majority in the Senate.
“Think of it ... normally, you lose two, three, five, and you replay. We lost nobody," Trump said of the House under his leadership.
“I worked hard in the House with Kevin McCarthy, not losing a single legislative chamber and making big gains at the state level and holding onto the Senate ... we better hold onto the Senate."
"Let me tell you, this election was rigged ... We can't let it happen again,” he told the crowd, to chants of “Stop the steal.”
“We need somebody with courage, somebody that makes decisions," he said. "We’ll be going up to the Supreme Court very shortly, and we really—if we have courage and wisdom—I think you know what the answer is going to be because you can’t let people get away with what they got away with."
He reassured supporters that the “medical miracle” of vaccines are on their way "at a level that nobody ever thought possible" thanks to the many people working with the administration on the "Operation Warp Speed" effort.
“You have to get out, you have to vote,” Trump said. "Let them steal Georgia again, you'll never be able to look yourself in the mirror. We have to hold the line."
