Amid record-setting coronavirus case numbers, a Christmas day suicide bomb, and the Hilaria Baldwin long con, President Donald Trump is spending his few remaining weeks in the White House tweeting about Georgia, the officials there who don’t love him enough, and their imaginary brothers. Late Tuesday evening, Trump had some choice criticisms for the state’s Republican officials, including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after they failed to investigate completely unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
“I love the Great State of Georgia, but the people who run it, from the Governor, @BrianKempGA, to the Secretary of State, are a complete disaster and don’t have a clue, or worse,” Trump tweeted. “Nobody can be this stupid. Just allow us to find the crime, and turn the state Republican.”
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But the fault-finding wasn’t only directed at them. Trump wasn’t too pleased with Raffensperger’s brother, saying in a second tweet, “Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want ‘Trump.’ So disgusting!” One small, quick, super minor problem though: Raffensperger doesn’t have a brother.
...The consent decree signed by the “Secretary”, with the consent of Kemp, is perhaps even more poorly negotiated than the deal that John Kerry made with Iran. Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want “Trump”. So disgusting! #MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2020
While Twitter was eager to refute Trump's claims, the reason for Trump's egregious lie might be the best part. Yes, there is a Ron Raffensperger, who is the Chief Technical Officer of a subsidiary of Huawei, a technology conglomerate in China. But while the two men share a last name, that is as far as the connection goes. It is merely a coincidence. So where did Trump get this idea? Certainly, he’s not trolling LinkedIn for possible relatives of people he dislikes for not supporting his erroneous schemes.
Over the last several days, a conspiracy theory began making the rounds on Twitter allegedly outing Georgia’s Secretary of State for aiding interference from China in the 2020 presidential election — all linked through this imaginary brother. Specifically, the memes and posts suggest that China’s interference is connected to the Dominion voting systems that Trump has spent so much time trying to undermine. The conspiracy claims that Dominion is somehow owned by China when it is, in fact, a privately owned American company. And no, despite what other conspiracy theories about Dominion would have you believe, the company is not owned by the Biden family either.
The theory originated from a website called Gateway Pundit, but the link itself is broken. Still, people are sharing it and re-aggregating it on other far-right websites known for disseminating misinformation. Last night, the conspiracy made it to conservative media outlet Newsmax when political commentator Dick Morris spouted it off as truth.
Of course, this is far from the first factually inaccurate theory that Trump has shared in the last month. First and foremost, he still firmly believes that he won the election. He also said that the current natural immunity rate against COVID-19 is as effective as any vaccine. (It’s not.) He also claims that the voting machines in Michigan have a 68 percent error rate. (They don’t.)
At every turn, this conspiracy theory doesn’t hold up. Dominion isn’t owned by China, it has no connection to Huawei, these two Raffenspergers are not even related. What we do know is that Trump lost in Georgia and he lost the election. And we don’t need to make up an imaginary brother to know that.