ICYMI: Perdue Ratchets Up “Violent Tone” and Trump Election Conspiracies

Today, The Guardian published a new story highlighting how former Senator David Perdue’s campaign message and “use of violent rhetoric” is becoming increasingly extreme as he travels the state repeating disproven election conspiracy theories at the direction of Donald Trump.

On Friday, during a campaign stop with the Fayette County GOP, Perdue’s words took a disturbing anti-democracy and “violent tone,” when he stated “over my dead body” would he let “any of the left” run elections in his state, committed to create an “an election law enforcement division,” and sowed doubt in the State of Georgia overseeing elections, noting that he believes an “outside third-party entity” should audit the results before an election is certified.

More from The Guardian below:

A Republican candidate for governor in Georgia has said he would not let “any of the left” run elections in his state, adding repeatedly that it would happen “over my dead body” and underscoring the violent tone that has come to shape discourse around democracy in America. At another campaign event in Alpharetta, Georgia, Perdue repeated the “over my dead body” line, saying: “Over my dead body will we ever turn over an election to any of the left that we saw happening in 2020.”Perdue is promising voters that if elected he’ll create “an election law enforcement division of the Georgia bureau of investigation”, the state’s criminal investigation agency, to ensure that only legal votes are counted.Perdue is already outlining how he would change the way elections are certified if he was elected. “I believe that before you can certify an election, whether it’s a president or a US senator, or a statewide basis, you have to have an outside third-party entity audit the results. Not the secretary of state,” Perdue told voters in Fayette, adding that he believed allowing the secretary of state to certify and audit elections was “sort of like you grading your own homework.”

Trump’s presence in the race has amplified the already extreme and nasty GOP gubernatorial primary, causing unprecedented intra-party fighting which has led to the Republican Governors Association placing its first-ever primary election ad buy to support an incumbent facing a Republican challenger.