The president’s words asking for 11,780 votes were taken from a recording of a phone call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, which was obtained by The Washington Post.
During the call, Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find” ballots that would overturn Georgia’s Election Day results in his favor, challenging his November loss to Joe Biden.
The Gregory Brothers shared an audio clip which played “Seasons of Love,” a song from the musical Rent, in a tweet noting: “Trump asks for 11,780 votes, but it’s to the tune of the Rent song.”
In the audio clip, the actual lyrics of the Rent song, which starts with “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,” is replaced by Trump saying “11,780,” which he said in his phone call with Raffensperger.
The clip begins with the president saying: “So all I want to do is this, I just want to find” before his voice appears to sing the words “11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” to the tune of Rent song.
Trump is then heard saying: “Have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts,” and repeats “11,780” against the backdrop of the tune before the clip ends.
The aforementioned line refers to a moment in the phone call where the president is heard asking: “Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County. Because that’s what the rumor is.
“And also that Dominion [Dominion Voting Systems] took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?” Trump added.
Ryan Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel, answered: “No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.”
Trump then replied: “But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?” to which Germany said “No.”
At the time of reporting, the tweet by The Gregory Brothers received at least 32,700 likes and 9,400 retweets.
In the hour-long recording of the call, Trump aggressively attempted to persuade Raffensperger, a Republican, to find him enough votes to sway the Georgia election in his favor.
The president threatened the official, begged, flattered and warned that he would be taking a “big risk” if he refused to help his efforts at securing re-election.
A few Republicans condemned the president’s behavior, but most GOP lawmakers in Congress have kept quiet. Others defended the president and criticized the release of his “confidential” phone call.
