Before listening to the tape, and not yet having read anything about how the call came about, I was possessed by questions about “Why?” Why would the President of the United States take time on a Saturday, maybe in the final hours of his Presidency, to talk to an inferior elected official in the State of Georgia for an hour? I had swallowed whole the false narrative fed by the early Sunday reports that this was some kind of nefarious effort by the President to corruptly persuade the Georgia official to produce some fraudulent vote totals ahead of Wednesday’s joint session of Congress.
How would that ever be something done one-on-one between a President and Secretary of State — of a State — when whatever the subject matter of the call might have been, subordinate officials in the White House could have easily tended to the matter.
But then I saw a report that the call was part of a “confidential settlement discussion” concerning the litigation pending in Georgia courts.
“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.” ― Euripides, The Phoenician Women