Trump's 'weird' defense of his call to Georgia Secretary of State is 'not how reality works': op-ed

In the wake of the Fulton County special grand jury releasing the results of its investigation into Donald Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020, of which it found no evidence, the former president didn't waste any time responding.

As MSNBC's Steve Benen points out, Trump responded with the usual claims of his "perfect" call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, but Benen says there was one line in Trump's response that stood out: “Between the two calls, there were many officials and attorneys on the line, including the Secretary of State of Georgia, and no one objected, even slightly protested, or hung up," Trump said.

"Even for Trump, this is awfully weird," Benen writes, adding that Trump seems to think that since no one spoke up immediately, this offers him some sort of loophole to get out of trouble: "Election interference must be seen as legally permissible if the relevant state official doesn’t express immediate outrage."

"This isn’t how reality works," writes Benen. "Raffensperger was speaking at the time to the sitting president of the United States. Maybe the Georgia Republican stayed on the line as a courtesy. Maybe he waited to see if Trump would apologize. Maybe he was stunned by the scandalous lobbying effort."

Read the full op-ed over at MSNBC.