In Search of the Missing 11,780

So Trump was recorded on a phone call trying to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the presidential election results and announce that Trump had won all along.

I encourage everyone to listen to the excerpts, it's certainly not boring. Trump is claiming that someone is shredding ballots "in my opinion, based on what I've heard" and that someone is also removing the "internal" parts of the Dominion machines.

[It's good to remind everyone that of the 351 counties in swing states that used Dominion machines, Trump won 81% of them.. Of the counties that didn't use Dominion, Trump won 79% of those. In other words, whether or not a county used Dominion does not appear to have any bearing on whether it went for Trump. This is also true when you examine the historical trends as WaPo showed.]

By far my favorite part of the audio was this direct quote: "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." and then later "So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break."

Trump lost Georgia to Biden by 11,779 votes. I think it's extremely funny that Trump has the exact number on hand, but also that it appears to be presented to Raffensperger as a negotiation concession. Trump claims at one point that he won Georgia by almost 500,000 votes, but it appears that he'd be satisfied if Raffensperger finds "just" enough to close to margin.

My guess is that at the very least Trump wants some concession that would then translate into "Georgia is taking my claims seriously and investigating, who knows what other states are hiding?" But after that, I'm not really sure what the end goal is given the consecutive court losses and the deadlines that have already transpired. I also genuinely can't tell if Trump actually believes the allegations of fraud he's repeating or if he's just playing up his preferred narrative. As best as I can tell he strikes me as earnest in at least some respects, expressing apparently genuine disbelief that he lost. It's possible that he's only surrounding himself with people who are willing to affirm him and maybe getting high on his own supply. The fact that he hasn't personally disavowed either Powell or Wood (even though his campaign has) is good evidence for that.