In an unhinged public tantrum on Twitter in the aftermath of Election Day 2020, President Donald Trump insisted that his campaign had “claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes” states that he had not actually won. Does he think that if he just claims a victory loud enough, then a given state automatically stays in his column? That’s not how it works! Legitimate elections aren’t decided on the whims of a petulant wannabe tyrant like Donald Trump. Elections in the United States are decided based on the will of the people — but Trump continues to peddle anti-democratic conspiracies about the ballot-counting process anyway.
The states that Trump said that his campaign is ready to “claim” included Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan, although the last one came with a caveat — Trump said that his campaign would “claim” Michigan “if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!” Twitter placed another notice on one of Trump’s posts, notifying users that “[some] or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” The notice seemed to be in reference to the “dumped ballots” lie.
Trump posted the following lie-riddled message on Twitter as ballot-counting dragged on:
‘We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!’
There was not a large number of secretly dumped ballots in Michigan, and news organizations have already called the state for Biden. Furthermore, no matter the Trump team’s rush to claim Pennsylvania as their own, huge chunks of the state’s votes were not included in initial results. The votes that were reported were ones that had been cast in-person on Election Day — and Trump’s own supporters have long been known to favor that method for casting their ballot. As of the time of Trump’s post claiming Pennsylvania, large numbers of perfectly valid ballots in the state hadn’t been counted. Nobody had won the state as of the time of the president’s totally ridiculous proclamation.
On top of this — seriously, how ignorant is Donald Trump? Why is he going through the motions of saying that his campaign “hereby claims” certain states as if these “claims” have any legal or otherwise meaningful weight whatsoever? Election results are eventually certified by authorities — and that’s what has the legal weight. These certifications ordinarily take awhile after Election Day to be completed.
Check out Twitter’s response to Trump’s nonsense below:
